Chorophobia by Wrave
Interesting fact #1: There are currently only two copies of Chorophobia. First, an audio CDr made in a Windows 98 machine's CD burner. At the time, I had to haggle a friend of an acquaintance to let me use it while I finished tracks for a few more weeks. Finally, at the end of the semester he brought his whole PC to school. The files were transfered via two Zip Discs, and we burned it at 1x speed because this was the only CD burner for miles, and it only ran at one speed: the original speed: slow. I skipped my following class, holding up the computer lab for an additional 10 minutes. The second copy was made a year later when my friend Glen Hess opted to make me a "cd-copy" as a backup in case i ever lost the original by making an image on his hard drive - a concept foreign to most at the time. I still have both. The original was ripped here to bandcamp except for track #4.
Interesting fact #2: Track #4 was the first track I ever made. ever. It's full of interesting misconceptions I made about Fruityloops 2.1. First, I thought the program was only capable of making 9 loops so the song is made out of 9 loops layered on top of one another. Second, I didn't realize until I made Chorophobia (my second track) that Fruityloops was also capable of layering those loops on top of one another. The entire mix was done in Windows Sound Recorder using a combination of the "add sound" and "mix sound" commands -- something I learned while mixing Warcraft 2 sound effects for a haunted house we made out of my parents' garage as kids. I often wonder what a whole album mixed that way would sound like. Entomophobia certainly contains some of the most unique sounds I've ever created. I'm glad that I never lost it the original wav file! That's what's been uploaded here, for your listening pleasure.
Interesting fact #3: The album cover was my first photo manipulation art piece made in photoshop. ever. The "egg" is a lamp from "lighting effects" applied to a flatbed scan of a flaking CD someone picked up off the street. Some people have recently reported to like the original Wrave logo, and the new logos have been based heavily on this original scribble I made with the pen tool, stroke command, and... yes... difference clouds. Ugh. The back cover is really ugly. You don't want to see it.
Interesting fact #4: All of the tracks made for Chorophobia were made with the demo version of Fruityloops 2.1 The only limitation Imageline put on Fruityloops in the demo was the inability to save your work. Thus, each project file was made in a single day, usually for a straight 6 to 8 hours, rendered as a wav, and then deliberately closed and lost forever. Honestly, that made it the most difficult thing I think I've ever done in my life - especially in the case of Polemophobia. Before I could render the final version, fruityloops crashed. I suppose I'm thankful that even FL 2.1 was as stable as it was back in the day or else I might've never finished a whole album and continued to make music later in life. Outro, my second album, is what I always considered "what Chorophobia would have sounded like if I'd had the ability to save" because I caved and bought it.
