A symbolic journey from the sea to the sky, Follow the Chain is a project that's composed of music that's scrapped from or inspired by previous projects I've worked on, as well as a remix from my friend ThatLittleLarry. The album acts as the summary of the triptych of projects I've made with the moon in the sky representing the celestial mystery of Black Satellite, the tumultuous ocean representing the dark, violent tones of Hail the Mariner, and the colossal iron chain connecting the two symbolising The Larcenist Contingency. The art was done by the phenomenal TomTC (@tomtcart.bsky.social) who managed to encapsulate the feeling of the album in a beautifully painted piece that I'll probably print out and put on my wall at some point.
The first song Ruido ("noise" in Spanish) starts a slow and steady crescendo with heavy fog horns that herald the beginning of the album, building into a barely organised cacophony that suddenly fades away. In a way, this song is like a warm-up.
Horizon Divers & Polycoria are both songs that follow the themes of Black Satellite, leaning into digital bells and repeating patterns that swirl and coalesce into ethereal themes of a cold and lonely expanse of space. When making themes for Black Satellite I have no particular style guide, no specific instrumentation and no naming convention, all I require is that when I listen back to the song, it reminds me of that nightmare that inspired it all. This album also features a cover of Projection done by a friend of mine who goes by ThatLittleLarry, who happens to also be the wildly talented digital artist that also did the artwork for Larcenist Contingency. For the first remix/cover of my work that I've ever received, he absolutely nailed it and made a version that is both faithful and distinct at the same time.
SINKERS & SOUND OF THE DROWNED lead the album into the themes of HAIL THE MARINER with heavy bass synths and thumping beats that accompany the melody of acoustic instruments and church organs. With the strongest presence in both listening and visual aspects (with the all-caps naming theme sticking out) they bolster the midsection of the album and take advantage of their placement to pull no punches. These songs, quite frankly, sucked to mix properly because they're both very dynamically strong and often the heavy bass instruments would cause issues when it came to making the songs not sound like they were put through a low-bitrate blender. Regardless of the process, I thoroughly enjoy how they turned out and I hope you do too.
Best Kept Secret, Valence Drive & Back From the Dead are the last songs in the album and finish the project off with a return to the Larcenist Contingency with themes for characters and stories. Best Kept Secret is a theme for another character I've met at Scy'Kadia, a rogue named Correlius with a dangerous "secret" that everyone just happens to know. I borrowed a passage from Rachmaninoff's "Variations on a Theme of Corelli" half for the pun and half because it sounds REALLY good, and used the name as both a joke on how poorly the secret is kept and also to mean that it should continue to be kept a secret. Valence Drive is the theme of a fallen Aasimar named Cain in my current campaign, a monk with a dangerous persistence and hardened resolve who won't learn his lesson until he's dead, and even then it's unsure. The album ends with Back From the Dead, a slow, simple instrumental that combines the themes of both Reverie from Blood Stained Rainbow and the motif of Larcenist Contingency, connecting an old revenant known as Galeross from my old campaign into my new one with his indefatigable purpose... To hunt and kill the party and whatever the cost. The song ends with a simple sine wave, tying up the complexities and motif into a single final sound that leads either into silence or whatever your next choice of music may be. For this ending I was inspired by Danger's work on the Furi OST, with 19.07 ending in a similar way with such an impact on me that 5 years after first hearing it I felt like doing it myself.