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Reposted by brk.phs - New Album Out Now

brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 27/07/2024

Interested in instrumental, experimental musical storytelling? My new album Pumping Smoke Into Glass is out now! brkphs.bandcamp.com/album/pumpin... #MusicSky #instrumental #experimental #ambient #music #Bandcamp

brkphs.bandcamp.com

Pumping Smoke Into Glass, by brk.phs

10 track album

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 27/07/2024

brkphs.bandcamp.com

Pumping Smoke Into Glass, by brk.phs

10 track album

063

brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 26/07/2024

Pumping Smoke Into Glass is available for streaming and purchase now, exclusively on Bandcamp! I'm so excited to finally be able to share it in it's entirety with everyone! brkphs.bandcamp.com/album/pumpin...

brkphs.bandcamp.com

Pumping Smoke Into Glass, by brk.phs

10 track album

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

For this record, Waves is easily the most intricate and technically challenging song I've written while also being, for me, the most emotionally charged part of the whole project. If I had to pick a favorite from the album, it would be Waves.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

Waves was written to be the denouement of the story, letting the dramatic conclusion of On The Shores Of The Moon settle and tie the narrative up nice and neatly. Waves and Ripples ended up being written concurrently because I wanted a main theme to bookend the story.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

This shift also worked to clarify the narrative and dual themes of the album, if this song hadn't been written, the final album would have been radically different.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

However it felt weird to have only one traditionally composed song on a record full of ambient sounds, so that caused me to shift the balance of the record and write Vitrified and Sunrise to provide the cohesion to make Shores work.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

On The Shores Of The Moon was actually written as a form experiment to try and tap back into my rock playing roots, but as it progressed it started to take on this intense quality that I knew would make for an excellent finale for this albums narrative.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

It eventually found it's place as the last of the more ambient pieces and the start of the conclusion of the albums narrative in part because of how well it meshes with the ending of Nevada Sunrise and provides a deep tension the ending gets to resolve.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

Discovering Nowhere was the first song for the album I'd made in SoundBridge, largely because I still envisioned the album being in distinct halves between semi-organic ambient works and darker, more mechanical ambient sounds.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 19/06/2024

Was busy the last few days and neglected to make the behind the scenes posts for the rest of the songs

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 14/06/2024

I eventually used that recording of the sunrise in the song, since I wanted this to be the start of the second half, using more natural sounds than the first half.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 14/06/2024

Nevada Sunrise is the other song inspired by walks with my dog, we had woken up early to go record the sunrise after a New Moon and when I got home I sat down and made a simple piano and violin arrangement that would become Nevada Sunrise.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 14/06/2024

So Far Away is also the third and final song made while I was in Portland, I found myself stuck for a long time not knowing where to take the project next, but after introducing a guitar at this stage I was starting to think about using it more.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 14/06/2024

All the sounds in So Far Away are made on that guitar except some distorted vocals and the return of the cassette player sound from the start of Delving, since this was always meant to be the midway point, only difference there was what would come after.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 14/06/2024

So Far Away started as an idle melody I was playing on a cheap acoustic guitar. At this stage in the writing I wasn't planning on using any instruments or composing traditionally, but after working with the melody a bit I decided to record it.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 12/06/2024

One thing I'd figured out by this point was the more times I worked with a new element I didn't understand, the more creative I could be in learning that element. With Movement, I felt I'd exhausted what Audacity would allow me to do, so I moved on.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 12/06/2024

This also marked a return to the project after several months of being totally stuck on what to do for it, and if not for this song I might have dropped the project altogether. Of the ambient tracks this one nails it's vibe the most completely, so of course I chose to do the rest in Soundbridge.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 12/06/2024

Movement Without Direction was the first song I wrote in Nevada and the last one I wrote in Audacity. It's largely inspired by watching my dog run around all over the place which is why she's sampled heavily throughout the song.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 11/06/2024

Vitrified is one of two songs inspired by walks I would go on with my dog, back when it was cool enough to spend significant time outside in Southern Nevada. In a lot of ways this made it the easiest to write, the whole piece sort of composed itself out of my feelings at the time.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 11/06/2024

Vitrified was supposed to be the start of the second half, using its loops and building tension to kick off the higher energy the rest of the record would maintain, but I later decided to have the split narratives running concurrent to each other, which slid Vitrified to it's current position.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 11/06/2024

Vitrified By The Sun was one of the first songs I composed in SoundBridge instead of Audacity, it utilizes the most layers and effects, and is also the longest song on the project. When I originally decided to incorporate traditionally composed works, I wanted to have the album split in half.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 10/06/2024

It's also the last song I wanted to have really harsh and abrasive sounds, I still wanted it to be really rough sounding to help establish the starting point of the narrative but didn't want the focus to be solely on that particular soundscape, even in the early stages.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 10/06/2024

Adrift In Misery was the second song I wrote for this project, and the one I think has the absolute clearest message of all of them, mostly because it has the least processing done to the original sounds so it's still very clear what they are and what they're conveying.

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Reposted by brk.phs - New Album Out Now

brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

Ripples was actually the final song I wrote, and I knew I wanted it to function like an overture, in tandem with yet in contrast to Delving. Where Delving used odd and harsh sounds to pull the listener down, I wanted Ripples to have more soothing sounds.

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Reposted by brk.phs - New Album Out Now

brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

Delving Into The Uncomfortably Familiar was the first song I wrote for this project and definitely the one I did the most experimenting with, I was aiming for a very specific vibe and narrative with the sounds and it came out precisely how I wanted it to.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

This let me have these two opposing sounds and themes work side by side into the albums singular narrative, sometimes literally folding into each other while being allowed to diverge in the most natural way possible.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

When I first started on it, I actually planned on it being the opening of one long, continuous work that evolved and progressed, that changed once I started working traditional compositions in, but it still is an effective opening and sets the stage for the albums narrative.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 07/06/2024

It's time to reveal the song list for Pumping Smoke Into Glass! Over this next week I'll be talking a little bit about some of them as I get ready to start releasing the first singles! Follow me at brkphs.bandcamp.com to get notified when the songs and album are live!

A gradient of blue, red, brown, yellow, and green watercolor paint. At the top is the album title, Pumping Smoke Into Glass, and below it is the songs listed
1. Delving Into The Uncomfortably Familiar
2. Ripples
3. Adrift In Misery
4. Vitrified By The Sun
5. Movement Without Direction
6. So Far Away
7. Nevada Sunrise
8. Discovering Nowhere
9. On The Shores Of The Moon
10. Waves
In the bottom right corner is brkphs.bandcamp.com

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Reposted by brk.phs - New Album Out Now

brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 05/06/2024

After moving to Nevada I wanted to pivot direction musically and start weaving more traditionally composed works into the record, which became it's own challenge as I didn't have much experience working with piano or violin and couldn't just rely on "the vibes" to guide the course of a song.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 05/06/2024

This is largely where the visual art takes it's inspiration, this idea of things being part of a cycle, changing and evolving while still being relatively the same. There's moments of stagnation, there's moments of sudden and rapid change, but it all comes back around at some point.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 05/06/2024

However this challenge opened up a whole new avenue for exploring the themes of the record and helped the secondary theme bloom properly. The juxtaposition of harsh and noisy sounds against softer pieces highlighted the ups and downs of depression in a way I don't think I could have using just noise

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 05/06/2024

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 04/06/2024

This is also largely where the title comes from, taking an amorphous, meaningless sound and then imprinting meaning on it, like filling a crystal ball with smoke to try and divine something out of it, which became the first thematic goal to the whole record.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 04/06/2024

These odd textures were something I couldn't control or anticipate and it was really exciting getting different sounds out of the samples each time I did this, so I experimented a bit more with applying effects in different orders and different stages and got some really cool results out of it.

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 04/06/2024

The first songs I wrote for Pumping Smoke Into Glass I wanted to try a technique that was radically different than how I'd written music in the past, so I recorded sounds with my body and furniture and contorted them in Audacity which left them with a strange sort of fragmented quality.

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Reposted by brk.phs - New Album Out Now

Brock @brashbadger.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

I’ve been lucky and gotten to listen a bit early and it is beautiful. Mark your calendars!

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Reposted by brk.phs - New Album Out Now

Nari @lunarih.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

Really excited and proud of this, going to divert most my talking about music production over to the artist account from here on out so make sure to follow @brkphs.bsky.social if you want to be in on the updates and behind the scenes stuff

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brk.phs - New Album Out Now @brkphs.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

Excited to announce the release date and reveal the cover artwork for Pumping Smoke Into Glass. July 26th. Over the next couple weeks I'll be posting the track list, a teaser, and provide some behind the scenes info about the production of it.

Watercolor painting of an abstract landscape, blue and red skies over a brown mountain range casting a shadow across yellow desert ending in a deep green wetland. Clouds, rain, and a river cutting across it bleeding from the sky to the land. In the top right is the album title, Pumping Smoke Into Glass, and in the bottom left is the artist name, brk.phs (pronounced Break Phase)

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