NEKO - THE PRECURSOR [2005]

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this the earliest existing full album of mine, predating even the Renard alias, created in the midst of peak weebery (the babelfish japanese, holy shit! you think google translate sucks? try babelfish circa 2005!). a lot of these tracks have survived, and not in much higher quality than this. this is an early print-on-demand CafePress CDr, and if you could believe it, you had to upload in 192kbps MP3 at the time. this was still a lot for my dialup connection at the time (about 2kb/s, maybe 3 on a very good day) and was something i had to upload overnight, tying up the phone line the whole time. it failed a couple times, too, so it was a few sleeps of trying to get it uploaded.
there was a lot of disc rot going on with the last remaining copy of this (many thanks to an old friend for holding onto it and delivering it as soon as possible - he's featured on this record, playing the flute on "KING OF SORROW"), and you can hear read errors at the tail end of the last track in particular. issues regarding disc rot are especially prevalent among earlier CDr media, so if you have any old discs you're hoping to back up, do it now!
crazy to think this was 15 years - nearly half my life - ago. i would've been 15-16 when i produced most of these. of note, this is the first "official" appearance of Quiet Man, which was already in its second revision. of course, the "NEKO" name would somehow live on as a fish with a lot of tails, but only for one hard trance track for the most part. i guess their natural evolution was Mayhem? fucked up.
the tool i use for most of my work today (OpenMPT) is the same tool i used to make everything you hear on this record (an older version without VST support, granted - those old DirectX effects go quite a ways though!).
i hope you find this look into the past enlightening or entertaining - and more than anything, i hope it inspires you to keep developing your craft, whatever that may be. ♥
00:00 HALF-SPIRIT
03:38 CRIES OF THE NORTH STAR
06:28 HEAVENS
10:13 DREAM DWELLER
12:41 MAGIC ROCK
15:02 BUNBUNBUNBOOBUN
16:38 5-DAY FORECAST
18:55 HUNGARIAN DANCE NO. 5
20:17 KING OF SORROW (FEAT. WARBUCKS)
22:29 DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
25:25 SLEEPING
28:54 DOWN IN THE GOLDMINE
30:36 DRAGON IN THE MACHINE
33:23 LONG DISTANCE (INSTRUMENTAL)
35:46 PHOENIX NEBULA
37:24 SAD SONG
39:02 NEVERLASTING HAPPINESS
40:49 SUGARKILL
44:02 SONG WITHOUT A TITLE
45:20 TIN MAN (INSTRUMENTAL)
47:40 WHO THE !@#$ IS RICHARD D JAMES
50:39 WINTER
53:10 MAGIC ROCK (MINIMAL ARRANGEMENT)
55:26 X+Y
59:03 QUIET MAN (2.0)
1:02:23 THE PRECURSOR (THINGS TO COME)
1:05:52 SPIRIT (HALF-SPIRIT ARRANGEMENT) and SPIRITS' WALTS
lots of love ♥
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