About the Album
“Peacemakers” is intended to be the second half to the story that “Lights in a Starless Sky” started. Here, the Prince is reunited with two of his former comrades, who all team up to rescue his love interest who had been taken to a dark dungeon. There, she was killed but, just before the wardens could begin the process of transforming her into a vampire, the prince breaks in, kills the wardens, and resurrects her using his powers of light. Meanwhile, the uncle has sent out an army of his twisted soldiers of darkness, including fell beasts of his own creation, to chase down and eradicate the princess and her group. Just when they are all cornered and hope seems lost, the prince’s group steps in and rescues them, dispatching the legion of darkness in the process. Together, the two groups become one new group of heroes called Kesimooji, a name referring to those that make peace in a world of chaos and darkness. They travel to find a place to rest and reset. There, the uncle’s daughter sneaks out to try and confront him, only to have him try and turn her into one of his tools. The other women of the group swoop in to save her last minute and pull her out of there. Meanwhile, the prince and princess are taken to the Halls of Kesimooji where they are given their missions to overthrow their uncle and for the sister to become the new queen. With a renewed focus, the team set out and start their conquest forward against their uncle. The prince finds a Pit of Shadows full of death and vampires. After clearing it, he begins to lose hope. It is only then that he discovers three children named Faith, Hope, and Love, and Love was in need of aid. The prince resuscitates Love and takes the children with him to the group. There, his cousin takes Love and watches over him. Her guardian and true father figure encourages her, and she realizes that she had always been loved. She was so blinded by her own sense of worthlessness that she couldn’t see it. Finally, they attack and defeat the evil uncle, though not without the prince falling in battle. It is thanks to the rest of the Kesimooji that he is resurrected and the uncle disempowered so that the prince can come in and finish him. In the end, as the prince and his now wife are about to ride off into the sunset, Love comes running out to them and tells the prince that he is his hero.
“Peacemakers” feels like I came around full circle with my music, while still growing and challenging myself in new and inspiring ways. Sound-wise, this feels a lot like my first album, “Spectres,” while incorporating many new techniques and sounds through the use of chiptune. There are even tracks where I swapped out the sampled drum kit with doctored up chiptune sounds!
The main challenge I had given myself with this project was to only use sounds from the SID chip found in the Commodore 64 for all chiptunes while only using sounds from an OPL 2 FM sound chip instrument for the ambience tracks. This really forced me to come up with new ways to engage with the writing process, such as not being able to swoop a sound like you can with 8-bit Nintendo sound chips. It also opened many new sonic options that honestly made me question at times if I was really using an 8-bit sound chip. “Faith in the Impossible” is one such example, where the layers of the different SID tracks made me astounded at what was coming out of my speakers. Even the simple use of the noise generator to make percussion sounds shocked me, especially after I gave them a little love with additional plugins.
When it came to the composition and lyrics, I tried to keep my melodic ideas pretty tight to three different ideas. The first idea was to use the melody from “Little Light” and use it, both in whole and in part, throughout the track. The second ideas was to use the melody from “Father’s Joy” as another source of melodic inspiration. I would take these two ideas and alternate or even marry them in different ways, along with the mitivic idea featured prominently in “Victimize.” The words, then, capture the ideas and concepts that come from different points in the story and condense them into a singable form. I would then take the melody ideas for each track and marry them with the words.
Inspirations for this album come from Metroid and Case For the Golden Idol compositionally. In addition, “Victimize” was highly inspired by both Disney villian songs and Three Day’s Grace. The overall structure of the album is heavily inspired by My First Story’s album “Neurose,” a personal favorite, and Thousand Foot Krutch’s album “The End Is Where We Begin.”