Beyondness is an EP that i released in 2018. it's the first EP i ever produced and was made entirely in Techno eJay 5.
background
before 2018, the last song i had worked on and completed was a remix of a demo song from Hiphop eJay 2 called 'chillordie' which i made in 2014. since then i had stopped making music altogether.
mid-2018 however, i struck inspiration to finally work on a new piece of music for the first time in 4 years and wanted to create something bigger than i had done before since most of my previous work was just arrangements of royalty-free samples from older versions of eJay.
at the time, one of my favourite music genres was trance, so Beyondness was going to be my take on it.
composition
i had a copy of Techno eJay 5 on an old laptop running Windows XP belonging to my father so i used that to make all of the tracks. while Techno eJay 5 has samples, i avoided using them for the most part and created my own using the included synthesizers and drum machine.
i began work on the first track in late-july of 2018. throughout the composition process i got feedback from my father as he also writes and creates music.
the original concept for the album was that it was going to be based on the scientific method, with each song being named after a different step in said method. however the scientific method has six steps to it and after finishing the 4th track i had no other ideas to make two more tracks. rather than forcing myself to make more i instead just stopped and renamed all of the songs based on the vibe i got from them. another thing i wanted to do was make each song at least one minute longer than the previous song, however i struggled with making track 4 longer than four minutes so i left it as it was.
i named the album Beyondness after the 3rd track.
album art
the album art was drawn by finnish graphic designer Henri Ekholm, who i was friends with at the time. the requested design was a drawing of a wasp queen (who i used as my avatar at the time) as she was "floating in space [...] with a planet or moon somewhere in the background". Henri came back with 3 designs, with the last design being the one that i used as the album cover.
Henri Ekholm went on to do pixel art, 3d modeling and character animation. he worked on character modelling and texturing for a video game called Cosmic Purge. you can look him up on Twitter or Artstation.
release
Beyondness was released on september 3rd, 2018 to newgrounds, bandcamp, soundcloud and youtube. the youtube version is currently incomplete due to the 3rd track being de-listed.
reflection
at the time of release i was very happy with the album and i called Digital Rockets my best work at the time, but looking back on Beyondness i'm not that happy with it. i find the title track in particular a very difficult listen due to its repetitiveness and the lead synth not being that good.
i've contemplated taking the album down in the years since its release, but i've decided to keep it up as a reminder of where i've come from. Beyondness was the last piece of music that i ever made using any form of eJay software and it marks the start of my transition from there to fl studio. i consider Beyondness the starting point for my "real" music-producing journey.
tracklist
| No. | Title | Length |
| 1 | Stargazing | 0:59 |
| 2 | Digital Rockets | 2:40 |
| 3 | Beyondness | 3:55 |
| 4 | Isolation | 3:48 |