Month: October 2023

Breaking the silence

21.10.2023

It seems that nowadays I’m constantly in some kind of a reflective mood: I retrospect on everything I did in the past, while trying to figure out, how to go on. The first two and a half years of my musical journey have been centered around building up things: I put three albums together, worked on polishing my recording, mixing and mastering skills, and at the same time, I significantly improved my gear. Well, mission accomplished: my first three releases are out – you can listen to (or even download) them, if you like.

However, I feel like something is still missing. I realized that I’m sitting here in an isolated bubble while composing, recording and playing songs. Creating music alone is a blessing and a curse at the same time – and while I prefer to keep it this way, I desperately want to connect with you guys who listen to my stuff. If we accept that “music happens to be an art form that transcends language” (by Herbie Hancock – and who would disagree with that…?), then its most important capacity is to help people getting closer to each other by transmitting feelings and thoughts from one to another.

So, I think it’s time to relocate the emphasis from the current “composing-recording-mixing-promoting-repeat” cycle to something more personal. Last week I did a small survey on my Instagram, and it seems that you guys are interested in seeing me live. So… I’m working on going live on Twitch, YouTube, or any suitable streaming platforms. I still need some time to put it all together (I recently had a couple of dental surgeries, and my jaw is still not 100% suitable for longer conversations, and I also have to learn, how to use those platforms…), but my intentions are clear.

Stay tuned friends, because live sessions are coming in the near future!

The ultimate “why”…

04.10.2023

In a recent interview, the former Accept singer Udo Dirkschneider claimed that younger metal bands need a concept to stand out. While I fully agree on that (the question is always there, how one can differentiate him/herself from others in a world where approximately 100.000 songs are uploaded on Spotify on a daily basis…), it was not the main reason, why I finally – after much hesitation – wrote this post.

It’s actually quite hard to answer such questions in a few concise sentences. Why do I still bother to formulate such a “mission statement” to my music? The reason is simple: I want you guys to fully understand, what are my main motivations when composing and playing songs (apart from the pure love for music, of course). While I already wrote quite a lot about my personal motivations earlier, I never defined the exact conceptual framework that glues the small fragments together. Per definitionem, I would say that my aims are the followings:

  • My most obvious aim is to explore all those territories that lay between “modern” and “classical”. I firmly believe that all sorts of music belong to a continuum, and although I’m first and foremost a metal musician, I’m also free to implement elements from the vast legacy of past and present musical styles in order to express my feelings and thoughts in the most appropriate way.
  • However, if we believe that “The purpose of art is to make the unconscious conscious” (Richard Wagner: Opera and Drama (1851)), then even a musician has to be always accountable for his/her ultimate motivation for creating anything at all. In this regard, my answer is quite simple: music is the ultimate manifestation of my profound quest for meaning of all things. In other words, my music can be considered as some kind of a very personal soundtrack to my inner struggles, while I’m still wandering inside the vast labyrinth of the human existence. Well… in the “dark night of the soul“, as St. John of the Cross would have said somewhere in the sixteenth century Spain.

You might have already realized my interest for all things beyond the veil of visible reality in the denomination of my songs and albums. The track titles of “Hexapla” and “Missa Innominata” are clear references to the rich transcendental heritage of the Western civilization, while “Thanatology” refers to a scientific discipline that explores the physical termination of the human existence. To be absolutely honest, I have always been searching for the answer to the excellent question posed by G. W. Leibniz in 1714: Why is there something rather than nothing? (“Warum ist überhaupt etwas und nicht vielmehr nichts?” In: Die Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade) – and I think that our personal answers that we give to this fundamental question of metaphysics have a decisive role on our whole human existence.

Will you join me in this quest? Will you listen to this soundtrack to my trip in my own dark night of the soul?

Future plans

01.10.2023

Sometimes I feel like I’m writing these posts mainly to record, how time flies. Thanatology was released almost two months ago, and I must admit that it’s performing even better than I expected. Being an independent musician I have extremely limited resources to promote my stuff, but despite all these limitiations, I have visitors both on the streaming platforms and on this website. I’m extremely grateful for that!

Furthermore, I thought that it would be useful and informative if I provided you a timeline for the next few months’ planned activities – just to show you, what are the main goals I want to achieve. Well, here are the plans:

  • First and foremost I’m working on substantially remixing all three Darkwave albums. The reason why I’m doing this is quite simple: I want to improve the sound for CD printing. Yeah, that’s right: I want to release all three Darkwave albums on physical CDs! This will probably be the hardest job I’ve ever done: I need to remix and remaster everything, re-record bass tracks for Hexapla and Missa Innominata and design full CD booklets. Also, I have to find a manufacturer who can print physical CDs (with cover art and booklet) for a reasonable price and find out, how to promote and distribute these physical copies.
  • Secondly, I already started translating my lyrics from Hungarian to English. It proved to be a shockingly demanding job: translating poems to a different language requires time, inner peace and a special state of mind. But I understood that I shouldn’t omit vocals from my music anymore – not just because I constantly get feedback from people who explicitly request it, but rather because I also feel like I should make these songs to a more wholesome experience by supporting the emotional content with words. I must admit that I still have no vocalist in sight, but I’ll work on the problem once the lyrics and the vocal patterns get ready.
  • As always, I started working on something new. To be honest, I haven’t even stopped writing music for a second: it seems that for me it’s impossible to take a break from composing and practicing. And I think it is the normal way of doing things with passion, dedication and love.
  • And on the long run, I plan to go live online. I really miss direct, face-to-face interactions with people who are interested in my music, so I decided that once I’ll get ready with my remixing activities, I go live on one of the streaming platforms. I have no idea, how does these things work (to be honest, I’ve never ever streamed live), but I’ll find out the ways and possibilities soon enough.

Wel, these are the plans. I always repeat it, but it’s true and I mean it: I’m extremely grateful for your presence, support and love. Being an independent musician means being alone most of the time – no bandmates, no live shows with encouraging faces, no frequent feedback. But I feel like a small, supporting circle of friends started to develop around Darkwave, and it’s extremely important to me.

Thank you.