I put it in #pubski but I thought I'd make a slightly more thoughtful writeup of the album here.
The "official" release is today, though when you put something on Bandcamp it seems like it just ignores your scheduled release date and puts it up right away, which is cool too I guess. Distrokid (for spotify, iTunes, etc.) got caught up in weird problems, so that will come later I guess.
https://elkbird.bandcamp.com/album/nature-expansion-pack
Download links for the Hubski crowd
Most of these tracks were written 1-1.5 years ago and I just sat around on them wondering what to do with them. I knew after the after the first release I didn't want to rush to the completion mark, but have a lot more fleshed-out tracks rather than short soundscapes. Still, the draw of soundscaping is strong for me. There's a Board of Canada quote I relate to hard about their short vignettes: "we write far more of these than the so-called 'full-on' tracks, and, in a way, they are our own favourites".
Stylistically, there was kinda a big shift for my that happened after Moloko Plus and 81z. After those tracks, I knew I wanted everything to have the textured, dark sort of sound I had with those ones. I made heavy use of a Tascam, a monotron delay for noise, and an app called Tardigrain which is absolutely dope for sound design. It's for granular synthesis, where you take a short (or not short) soundclip and manipulate it various ways. I ended up collecting tons of sounds from various experiences and using them for soundscaping via Tardigrain. Japan trip sounds, my cat's collar, lab equipment noises... all cool noises that really endeared me to the music making process. By that same avenue, a lot of Japan stuff made its way into the album.
Another big thing was nature sounds. I made some synthesized rainstorm sounds a while back on a Yamaha TX81z (the workhorse of the album) and incorporated those into songs, along with waves and bird noises at various places.
It's been a big leap forward for me musically so I'm pretty satisfied with the result at the moment. In the future, I think I'll do a lot more piecemeal stuff and worry less about album releases and such; just focus on doing music.