Bit Escape is out, second EP from my 8-bit, Commodore-64 inspired project Ninja 9000.

This one is a bit different from Bit Collapse, more schizophrenic. The tracks are shorter, but simultaneously they also contain more musical ideas. The rhythms and melodies are more varied, and the harmonies waver from cheesy dance to experimental atonal expressionism.

For example the Neuschwanstein track is built upon an exploration of a "neutral scale", popularized by amongst other Arnold Schoenberg. The scale is neither major nor minor, and constructed to be able to shift from any key to any other key, without introducing any emotional value or sense of musical progression. I set up an automatic, self-randomizing and self-modulating set in Ableton Live (love those Follow properties), together with some pitch script editing in Kontakt (some notes pitchshift the whole patch, others play regular notes), and let it run for some time and recorded the output. This is the harmonic and melodic elements of the track, I just structured it slightly, selected different parts for instruments and built a glitchy beat on top.
 
This EP was intended to be released a month ago, on Halloween. I had five tracks, close to finished, but needed a few days to wrap them up properly. This I never managed to squeeze in. The original theme of the EP was rather ghost-and-ghoul-ish, after missing out on a Halloween release I toned this down a bit and dropped the fifth track. Finally this weekend I was able to balance the mixes on a system and wrap it up.

Like the previous Nebular Spool - Ruins release, the EP is free for download at 160 kbps, and purchase-able at 320 kbps.