18 May. 2022
FINALLY 'RENAISSANCE' IS RELEASED
Wow… that flew by. That whole Corona period was quite a show.
Like most bands, we were restricted from live performances. That alone was quite special.
Luckily we already had our minds set on our newest project, ‘The Renaissance Series’.
With thousands and thousand of hours of work we finally managed to finish and release the five-part stop-motion film in March 2022. I can’t even begin to describe how awesome this felt.
Of course it came at quite a high price. While we were able to release the individual songs along the way, under the German restrictions (where the band operates from), we were not permitted to practice nor perform. This meant we had to work online and involved 10-12 hours per day of filming, editing and drawing.
I can truly say that this has absolutely been the most monumental task Substereo has ever taken on.
Our practice room
The project began in 2019 when we started writing the songs and arranging them for pre-production.
After this, we started recording our parts. Everything on this album was recorded in our practice room and at home. Getting the drums to sound right was quite a task.
Luckily for us, Robin (guitars) is very knowledgable in recording and mixing, and so it ended up working really well.
The vocals were all recorded in my livingroom, as were most of the guitars and bass parts.
In 2020 we started mixing the songs. …let’s just put it this way, The processing power needed to mix the 15-20 guitar parts and keyboards in each song (which by the way only sound like 2-3 guitars after the mix), would make Robin’s relatively solid computer crash every time we did to much. but it worked!
The songs were mixed, and we sent them off to be mastered by one of the biggest mastering engineers in Copenhagen Jørgen Knub.
We decided to drop-release the music one by one every three months or so, as this allowed us time to work on the music videos and maintained a certain level of band-activity and internet presence.
As far as the film was concerned, we worked on each chapter individually. These were also released every few months between the audio releases. It also takes about 4 months to make a 3 minute stop-motion video, so that felt like a natural way to do it.
‘Episode 4 - Remember’, was especially difficult to make. This involved animating in watercolour, and required thousands of individual paintings to be made. This took about half a year just to get the drawings done. …my hand hurt a bit.
On the fifth and last release, all the techniques we had learned along the way were put together into the last chapter.
Once all the chapters had been individually released, I recorded the music for the monologues in between the songs that have our protagonist Ben tell the story from his point of view. Almost like a diary.
In March 2022, the project was done, and the whole film was released!!!
RECEPTION AND RELEASE
I still can’t believe it. while we were making the videos, we were also participating in online music festivals, where we would compete against other music videos.
We also sent the whole film and competed in the short film category. The reception was incredible, we were selected and nominated time and time again, and ended up winning first place 12 times!!! We also made semi finalist a few times. I couldn’t be more grateful! It seems all the hard work paid off!
The idea now, is that we will prepare a live show where we perform the songs while showing the complete film on a projector. Just like the album before it, that we also performed as a story-book, where I will narrate Ben’s diary at live concerts.
We previously had success performing it as a silent disco where the audience wears headphones, and I think this might be a great format for this album as well.
Imagine sitting in a living room or a theatre and watching the film while the band plays the soundtrack live! We personally can’t wait to get it out in a live version now that the pandemic seems to be over in most countries.
And as you probably already know, the previous album ‘Nowhereland is connected to this story as well, so maybe we can perform both albums at our concerts too!
We really hope you enjoy it!
Chris
