memos

haha it's actually a blog - tricked ya!

where did we leave off? - catching up and some 'let sleeping dogs die' history

the first dawgbytes album is out. actually as i'm typing this, work is 95% done on it. i still have a little to do but i've been prepping this website to coincide with the launch. i'm very busy and very tired - though i don't mention this in a "woe is me" kind of way. it's been a genuinely wonderful feeling to exercise myself creatively considering it has been a while. i suppose that's the purpose of this blog entry. let's catch up:

if you've been following my work from the former half of last decade, you may perhaps have wondered why i have "fell off" as the younguns say. honestly i used to refer to that time, somewhere along the lines of 2016-202(?), as me "falling off the face of the earth". though i realize i owe nobody an explanation (nor do i expect anyone to truly care), i feel like i do want to provide some insight as to how things have been with me for the people who do indeed truly care as i am in a much safer space to express my thoughts as i please.

at some point towards the end of 2016, i met with the apex of my anxiety disorder taking hold. this is when i was officially diagnosed with GAD, though i recall having these feelings since i was a young child - hair falling out, constant catastrophizing, difficulties concentrating, etc. exacerbated by a slew of personal matters, some brewing and some sudden, my anxiety began manifesting itself physically. i experienced my first panic attack around then, confused and well... panicked. i was alone at home and didn't know what to do. thinking i was dying with no real resources and certainly not in the right frame of mind to make any rational decision, i wrote a note to the loved one who would find me and simply laid on my bed of blankets and pillows on the hardwood floor of the bedroom i mostly kept in where i then blacked out. i don't know how long it was but i eventually came-to, still alone with the note sitting beside me. tearing it up and binning it, i journaled what had happened and simply went along my evening. i probably watched an anime or ate a bowl of plain sticky rice or some shit lol.

some context: a month or so before this is when i wiped my older music work off the internet. a few years ago as i was looking back on this time of my life, i concluded this surely was a contributing factor to my anxiety manifesting in the form of panic. as i was working on what would have been a full-length album under an old alias "numin", an artist i had looked up to at the time had reached out to me essentially asking me to stop biting their style. in my defense, i was like 20 and didn't know how to make music like "me", but i digress. i felt like the sentiment they were sharing with me should've been kept to themself - i wasn't really an "anybody" and didn't feel like a threat to their livelyhood but at the same time i did not want to step on toes nor did i want to be the person riding someone elses coattails. i spent that evening an inconsolable wreck: confused, upset, sorry. though i respected their wishes, i did not handle the situation well in the slightest. the day after i made the rash decision to wipe the work i spent the last 3 years cultivating off the internet, though i would not understand the implications of that decision for some time. despite how i may feel about that work now, it truly meant everything to me. the relationships i made through it, how i used it to get out of a shitty home situation as a teenager, but mostly the escape. i could sit down at my piece of shit Gateway laptop and put on my headphones and just let myself go. i decided i would can the whole "music" thing, not taking it off the table for good but rather indefinitely. i wasn't equipped to lose that and i didn't realize.

but back to the anxiety disorder. the first panic attack came and went and i kept it to myself, unsure if telling anyone in my life would really help the situation any. afterall, i didn't even know it was a panic attack at the time. about a week-ish later and i would experience another. this time i wasn't alone though, so i tried my best to tough it out. i played it off pretty well, saying i'd be going to bed early and just kind of laid in my andreneline-fuled state for as long as i could before it brought me to the point of exaustion. i woke up the next morning with the worst chest pain i have ever experienced up until that point and even up until now. still not wanting to burden anyone else with my issues, i would remain keeping to myself. i went to work thinking "this will surely pass". i woke up the next morning and same chest pain, no better no worse. i chalked it up to "probably a muscle strain" and carried on with my day-to-day, knowing it wouldn't last forever. but the days became a week, and weeks came. a black cloud had been lingering over me the entire time. i didn't know exactly what was wrong then, but it was the anxious mind on overdrive. over those few weeks i would not be able to focus on anything, be it work-related or leisure. towards the end of those few weeks i had a couple of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, again keeping it all to myself. it had been over a month at this point with the same persistent chest pain and this sense of panic peaked with me fainting in a meeting at work. i started percieving the chest pain as getting worse, so between that and the fainting episode i left work early and had someone drive me to the ER.

i've never seen an ER that packed. ultimately, me being there was a waste of ER resources, but this was a percieved emergency in my anxious mind. they x-rayed me and scanned me and some other shit i don't remember. i remember fainting again during the x-ray which looking back was sort of funny, don't ask me why. they found nothing. they gave me an IV drip in the hallway and a doctor came out to talk to me and tell me they found nothing wrong with me, to take some acetaminophen for my chest, and to follow up with my GP (which i did not have as i was uninsured). i left irritated, still anxious, chest still in massive pain, but oddly assured. a week prior to this, i had confided in the person who had drove me to and stayed with me in the ER (i'm thankful for you forever for putting up with all my bullshit) what was going on with me, and they told me they believed it was symptoms of a panic attack. me being the stubborn person i am did not believe it and was genuinely under the assumption this was a heart attack waiting to happen, or whatever other irrational conclusions i was drawing at the time. they drove me to the grocery store and i got us breakfast after being in the ER for 12+ hours and i went home to find a GP to see and get some rest.

chest pain didn't immediately get better but the fact i wasn't dead certainly started helping it. GP happened, saw some people, cool i got GAD. thanks doc, that explains a lot! ended up getting fired from the job i was working for missing that day and a half - i guess fainting on the job and bringing a bunch of documents showing i was in the ER wasn't enough to get me out of that. whatever. it's 2017 now. i started doing some gig-economy food delivery bullshit before realizing that shit sucks and then i started delivering pizza for a national chain. it kept us fed. it had been about 8 months since i wiped my music off the internet at this point. i figured i would dip my toes back into it, not revitalizing my old project, but just trying to enjoy a hobby again. in the spirit of starting anew, i would forgo my old DAW FL Studio in favor of Cockos REAPER and started learning.

it was nice to try music making in a different capacity than what i got used to in the past. it was mostly nice to have that something to keep me intereted and curious though. no plans to release music or anything, i was just having fun. throughout 2017-2018 i was trying a bunch of SSRI's and NDRI's - when i realized one was not "for me" i'd cycle to the next per doctors or friend recommendations. none were for me, though maybe that would be different now. still, i was much better at regulating myself mentally in spite of this. yet, my personal life began falling apart a whole year after that initial panic attack and i just had to sit and observe.

i will spare most of the details as to not get messy - that's not the point here. compounding relationship issues which i was too much of a pushover to say "enough is enough" and break from, home life falling apart (quite literally, i was living without a sink or stove for a very good while), and social isolation were taking over. i began heavy use of psychedelics, for better or worse i cannot tell - it's complicated. through all of it i was still doing my best at managing my anxiety. i attribute this to working on music again and i ended up releasing a little "sketchpad" of sound design focused work in 2018, and a vaugely DnB EP in 2019. though not to the same fanfare as my old work, i had to remind myself that this was for me.

at some point in late 2019 after aformentioned EP, my main work PC hit the fritz and i had no means of making music. not a big deal though. my last break from music taught me how valuable experiencing life is in relation to creativity. i just got a new job and i would use the time to pay off some debts and get my PC back up and running. enter 2020 and well, we all know how that goes. COVID era. hell world. if i thought life was breaking down before OH BOY BUDDY: BUCKLE UP!

this is the point in the blog where i can actually start tying events to today. i was out of work due to COVID and living with an older individual whom i did not want to get sick, so i figured i would start a pandemic project. my partner at the time had a real POS laptop: slow as all hell, screen falling off the hinges. so i asked if i could use it, and used it i did. i knew working in REAPER on this thing would be a computing nightmare, so i decided i would work solely in openMPT, as i picked it back up in 2017 after having not used it since 2011. i spent a few days gathering samples from whatever i had sitting around in a Drive account, ripping data off N64 games, sampling other sources and such, and got to work. over the course of the next 3 weeks i'd have what would be 'Dawgsounds - Pawsy Feel EP'. obviously that did not come to fruition due to disputes with the artist who was slated to work on the cover art - and i'm so glad the project didn't get realized in that state.

the original EP was 5 tracks, 3 of which made the cut for 'let sleeping dogs die'. 'pawsy feel', 'milky', and 'lonely premonition' were the ones that ended up making the cut. i'm unsure if i even have the .IT modules for the remaining 2 anymore so i couldn't share even if i wanted to. i think they ended up not making the cut because once i started revisiting this project in its current form i decided they did not fit in thematically with what i was cooking up for it, even before i conceptualized this as an album.

again, sparing many details: 2020 came and passed. enter 2021 and my PC is back up and running and i'm hauling ass on commission work and more personal work that never ended up seeing the light of day for aforementioned reasons. 2021 was very challenging in the life department and music work came to a slowdown due to living conditions heightening a sense of mental-unwellness. mid 2022 marked the end of a 9-year relationship i was in and the week before Christmas that year i was kicked out of the home we lived in together since 2014. i was reluctant to be the dude in their late 20s living with mom, so my brother let me crash on his couch until i figured my shit out. i didn't figure shit out. in fact this was argueably the worst point i was ever in mentally. when i was kicked out of home i had the cops called on me under the false-pretense of me being aggressive (which anyone who knows me personally can attest to my mild-mannered demeanor) and the cops took my dog from me as i was preparing to move to my brother's. i did not handle this well, exemplified by the 8 month bender i would promptly go on. i was drinking every single day (i can probably never drink Pink Whitney again). every night i went to sleep was a nightmare around my dog so i'd smoke so much weed in hopes that would stop me from remembering my nightmares. it didn't work. it was not until a few months ago i could even bring myself to answer a knock at the front door out of fear it would be the police.

i always knew there was one constant in my life through everything though: making music on my computer. crashing on my brothers couch i did not have a lot of room, so one day i felt the itch i had to scratch so i took my PC and monitor out of storage and found an old keyboard he had laying around and i got to work. i made 'shadowboxing' as an .IT module over the course of 2 days in 2 sessions on the floor of the apartment with my monitor on a shoebox. still, i had no plans of making an album but just the fact i was able to work on music again was the only thing keeping me sane as i was burning my savings on fast food and alcohol. i got a desk that week and began making music every day, be it for myself or with my brother when we'd hang out and he'd be like "let's make a Limp Bizkit song" and we'd fuck around with some drinks cause he's not a musician. i will not sugarcoat it - i was indeed going through it - but my music on my computer was always there for me and i'm nothing short of thankful for the opportunity to have at least had that.

the alcohol didn't kill me and i ran out of money. fuck. what do i do? i guess it's time to pull myself together and get a job again. i shot myself in the foot waiting until i absolutely needed money because the move on such short notice absolutely killed my credit (i'm still getting that under control PLEASE buy my album (jk jk)) but hey whatever, maybe i needed to go on a bender for my character. i was still undoubtedly in a terrible place mentally so finding work became a challenge. i thought i needed a job away from people so i tried work-from-home call center type shit, but i was so bad off from the past year or so that i was regularly struggling to speak complete sentences without tripping over myself. okay well that's a bust but fuck, i gotta get paid. i found work that would ultimately keep me away from people shortly after. okay, baby steps here.

working away from people is a double edged sword in a sense. on one hand, if i cannot string together complete sentences with confidence then of course i shouldn't have a job that requires me to be around people. but on the other hand, being alone with my thoughts all day given my mental state was a nightmare. i think it was the better choice out of the two though. so alone with my thoughts i am, and the idea of putting out music again starts coming to mind. pretty often at that. i had spent all of 2023 starting a lot of tracks just for the sake of making something. even if i didnt finish it, at least i could say i tried. 2022-23 saw my WIP folder really stacking up. could i do something with these?

one day at my job i was humming a melody from an .IT module i had from after the "Pawsy Feel EP" sessions. canine_eyes.IT. i remember being stuck on where the tune should go and my mind was spinning between that and my general life situation. i don't typically write lyrics when i use words in my music, but the words also don't come easy to me either. though as i was humming this melody the words instantly came to me. i wouldn't consider myself a "songwriter" but i knew i was on to something if these words came to me so naturally, almost like it was something i needed to spit out. i didn't even bother writing them because i knew if this was something i had to say that this wasn't just some fleeting idea. so i get home later that day, record the vocals, and the dawgbytes album starts. "well. i have shadowboxing, i have a few off the unreleased 'Pawsy Feel' EP, maybe i can put canine eyes and shadowboxing together with those 3 and try the EP again?" i thought to myself. that was in January of 2024 but there was more in my WIP folder and apparently more in my mind i had to get out, and it all started coming together. "is home" was the first track finished out of the WIP folder, intended to be only instrumental. as i was bringing it in to REAPER for mixing, i got to mixing the outro, added some elements not present in the .IT module, and felt a wave of emotion over me. i broke down in tears, took a minute to collect myself, armed a track for recording, and same as 'canine eyes' just let it flow. i'm really proud of that one. i worked out the other WIPs, tracked vocals for 'would you please hold my paw forever', and assumed i was done. i started the cover of Weezer's 'butterfly' as a kind of "maybe this can be on the album?" kind of deal - the concept version that was meant to be a "what if?" is drastically different from the version that made the cut. the Drum n Bass-y section was originally me fucking around as a joke but i was like "wait this kind of fits the Soichi Terada-esque vibe i'm going for" and let it slide. still unsure about how good of an idea putting a fuckin' WEEZER cover on an album is, but i'm not one to ever take myself too seriously. after much debate the setlist was worked out. now off to tackle the big issue: finding the confidence to mix, master, and release.

at the point where tracking was done, it had been 5 years since i have had a release on DOG PARK RECORDINGS. my life was drastically different than where it was the last time i put out music. previously i'd think a lot about "relevancy" and "do the old fans even care?" and blah blah blah. it was all bullshit in my head. this album has been sitting around in a "mostly finished" state for a few months now, and i just couldn't come to grips with these complicated feelings about releasing music again. but the more i struggled to brush it off, the more i started thinking: it's not about having a successful album release or getting as many views as i used to get when i had a bigger audience on tumblr to springboard my numbers - it's about me expressing myself. this is what it's always been about and this is the first instance in my entire life i can say this work is entierly an expression of me and my experience. working on this album and seeing it to the end has helped me so much in coming to terms with going through my lowest points. i'm so glad it's out of my hands now and that i get to share it.

and so here we are. i have mixed feelings about this record - both the result and the process. i feel somewhat similarly about it to the work on my old label 'RADDONS RECORDS' in the sense that a lot of this is old material and not necessarily a reflection of what i were to make if you had sat me down today and said "okay, make a 'dawgbytes' record". but on that same note, i feel like that's why i want to share it. to rid myself of everything that went into it and look towards whatever may come next. truth be told, i have two more albums in the pipeline for a "sooner than later" release window. the first being a sort of "return to form" where you'll be glad to hear if you were in it for the work i was posting 10+ years ago and the second being something different entirely. i feel similarly about these too because these are also two albums that have work started/conceptualized from 2017 or 18. but i don't want to be sitting on these forever, despite how i may feel about them. it's not that i think they're bad or anything either or that i want to get them out just for the sake of getting something out; but i do want to show everyone that i indeed did not "fall off the face of the earth" and that i've been here all along, just being me.

if you read all of this: wow. sorry lol, i did not intend for this to be so long. or to talk about heavier aspects of my life so much either. it feels kind of strange actually considering i'm usually pretty reclusive and reserved. also balancing deciding what i want to talk about in regards to the making of the album without directly talking about what the songs are about is kind of a challenge because i like to "paint pictures" with my words as opposed to making it blatant to the listener. really though, so much of the past few years i've spent building walls. out of misplaced anger and confusion, i've lashed out and treated people in a way they did not deserve and i am truly sorry. i know there's oughta be at least one old friend or acquaintance out there that is curious as to what has been up with me, and i don't want to keep everything in the dark anymore. that's what a blog is for though, right? i promise things won't be so doom and gloom next blog entry - things are really looking up right now ^_^

-Trent S.