0'00" - Ocean Drive at Night
4'01" - Die for You
7'32" - Regalo de Vida
10'45" - Soothe

This album is more focused on my playing around with the Synthwave genre, focusing on certain synths and romplers, and late 80s/early 90s nostalgia in general, but while also keeping it pretty lofi. It's also probably the heaviest album I've ever produced to date.

The album opens with a pretty typical Synthwave-styled track called "Ocean Drive at Night", reminiscent of the music from the classic arcade game "Outrun". The main rompler used in this track is Audiokit's "VHS Synth".

"Die for You" was started as a bit of a challenge to only use the built-in effects, synth, and drum machine inside Nanostudio 2, but it grew to become so much more. It's a song about a crush, unrequited love, and deep loneliness.

"Regalo de Vida" is Ecuadorian Flute Music crossed with Synthwave, and is an uplifting celebration of life itself. I used "Pure Synth Platinum 2" for the "acoustic instruments" and "VHS Synth" for the "synthwave instruments".

"Soothe" pretty much does what the title says. It's a Lofi Synthwave track designed to Soothe the listener after one heck of an emotional roller coaster. I used the recently released "Saga Synth" rompler by Audiokit for most of the sounds (except the sax came from Korg Module Pro).

All tracks were produced in Nanostudio 2 on my iPad Pro and mastered in AUM. A lot of the drum samples came from Ocean's "Infinity Kit", which is a bundle of amazing sample packs for Drill and HipHop. Although on "Die for You" I used the Superdrums 8000 sample pack from Image-Line. (Yes the pack is over a decade old, but the drums are still amazing!)

As mentioned above, I played with Audiokit's "VHS Synth" and "Saga Synth" to get those nostalgic sounds. I also made use of Pure Synth Platinum 2. In "Die for You", I used both preset sounds and cooked up my own in the Obsidian synth.

The vocals for "Die for You" were recorded and processed in Cubasis 3 with Brusfri to clean up background noise, Pro-DS from Fabfilter, and Waves Tune RT. Then they were imported into and edited in Slate in Nanostudio 2.

In AUM, I used "RX950 AD/DA" converter, "Magic Death Eye Stereo" compressor, Baby Audio's "Pitch Drift" for a little tape warble, "Lo-Fi-Af" for a touch more compression and the tape hiss, and "NoLimits" limiter to bring everything up to a little under -14 LuFS. I also highly recommend Youlean's Loudness Meter for an accurate LuFS readout.

I really do hope you enjoy my foray into Synthwave.