About the Album
“Lights in a Starless Sky” is my first fully vocal album and is also part one to a two-part story. The story itself was originally conceived by one of my sisters and myself many years ago as part of a collaborative attempt between young siblings. The story as a whole involves twin royal siblings, separated at a young age by their evil uncle when he took over the kingdom they were associated with. The brother was captured by the uncle and trained to be a loyal commander in his specialized warriors. The sister had escaped with the uncle’s wife and their guardian and was raised together with her cousin in a hidden village. Years later, when the siblings had become of age, the uncle had discovered the hidden village, destroyed it, and sent the brother and his group after the sister and her group. Her group included her cousin, her guardian, and her brother’s former brother-in-arms. As the brother’s group pursues his sister, it slowly falls apart, until only himself and his love interest remain. When they experience a particularly bitter failure, they return to the uncle to beg for mercy. The brother goes out to find and bring back the Necragon, a skeletal “death” dragon, while his love interest is taken to a dungeon with the intention of being turned into a specialized vampire. This latter detail was kept from the brother. The brother soon came to realize that his uncle had been controlling him and, as a form of defiance, stands up against the Necragon and defeats it, albeit after great difficulty.
When coming up with the songs and lyrics for the project, I used “Little Light” as the core to the rest of the project. It serves as the central road through which all other ideas and concepts come together and support each other. “Little Light” itself was a song that I had come up with only a year prior, conceiving of the melody and lyrics at that time. It was originally a lullaby that a character was to sing at a point of time in my world multiple hundreds of years after which the previously entailed story takes place. It was to soothe the souls of her friends and family as they undergo one of the darkest trials their group had ever faced up to that point. That got me to think that perhaps this lullaby was passed down through the generations up to that point in time. If so, then one of the earliest (as of August 2025) instances of this song appearing in the canon would be here. All of the other songs are more story-centric in nature and have direct connections to differing points in the narrative as a whole. They weave those story elements with basic ideas and concepts to become the finished products in the album.
This album was definitely another round of teething for myself as an artist and fledgling producer. Not only did I have to add new pieces to my workflow, namely the vocal recordings and production, it also proved to be a big learning experience with regards to mixing and mastering. Additionally, I had made a few compositional choices that I feel could be better, especially with more experiences under my belt. But this album is still special to me because it was the one that got me to break out of the shell of “not professional enough yet” and into a brand new journey of discovery and experimentation. I will say that some of my favorite parts were when I played around with vocal effects in small but impactful ways. My favorite example of this is where my voice goes full robot in “So Long Brother” for a small part.
Inspiration-wise, I snagged some elements and ideas from Amaranthe and took inspiration from Ado’s vocal performances. A lot of my vocal production ideas came from My First Story and most of my compositional choices felt like they came from either Castlvania or Metroid. These are the one’s that immediately come to mind, of course. I listen to lots of music from a variety of genres and so it can sometimes be hard to pinpoint where certain ideas came from. Overall, I’d say that this album’s biggest contribution to my discography is that it felt like I was really starting to find my groove with this whole chiptune-rock hybrid style I have going on.