About

BIZ001 was my big comeback / debut. Around mid 2023 I started feeling much more confident in my music production skills and had been growing more and more dissatisfied with my previous music. I felt that a lot of it did not meet my current standards, and I worried that my music from years ago could damage someone's first impression. When I returned to releasing music in mid 2024, I decided to

Looking back, the songs in BIZ001 and the overall vibe are all pretty self-contained. Mostly because I made them all within a short timespan, but I also haven't done much music in this IDM-leaning vibe since. I intended this release to be a new introduction to my discography, and the only song that really sounds like anything I've done since is Techium (Dub). I think this strengthens the release, honestly. It's unique in my discography. Upon release, I wrote that this EP is indicative of clear skies and new beginnings. I felt like I was finally at the end of a rut in my life.

Production History

In early June 2023, I started working on a new song I initially called Downtown, but later retitled to Airspace. At the time, I passed an airport on my way to work every day, which got me thinking about the sky one morning while I was previewing the song in my car. This song was basically complete within a few days, but was continually tweaked throughout late July to early August, and received a final edit in December.

Throughout the rest of June and July, I worked on more songs that would appear on BIZ001 including Texture Mill, Viaduct Rave, and Arco. Texture Mill was completely finished in just over an hour on 2023-06-24 and it ended up being my favourite on the EP.

However, all these tracks were still disconnected. I didn't think about putting them together as an EP until August 2023, and I pitched these songs to my friend demo sphere. I also added two previous songs from earlier in 2023; Laminar and Wax Blast. At this point, the EP (then simply titled Airspace EP) was essentially finished, but I felt like the EP needed something more substantial to tie it all together. Originally, I wanted to push for a vinyl release, and researched many pressing companies across Canada. I had the idea to put the entire EP on side A, and have a really long song fill side B. Techium was an eleven minute song I made back in March 2021, and I thought it would fit in well with the rest of the songs. It was good as is, but it was even better after I remixed the song to make it fit a dub techno vibe.

In September I started thinking about what I wanted the artwork to be, and drew a quick idea for a center label, since I knew I wanted the artwork to be circular. A pretty classic techno cliche. I wrote out the tracklist and sketched a diagonal viaduct. In late January 2024, I finally came up with the idea of calling the EP BIZ001, which I felt better illustrated that it was the new first release of mine. I was inspired by Skee Mask's "ISS" series of EPs on Ilian Tape, however I felt it would be funny to never make a second "BIZ" EP. I finalized this version of the artwork, and scanneda drawing of a viaduct as well as a handwritten tracklist.

In November, I made a new song called Phonogroove based on samples I pulled from a 1960s work out record. I quickly realized this track would sound great on the EP and I slotted it into the tracklist.

I didn't do any more work on the EP until early June when my friend niski suggested I use a photo of an otter for the cover. Back in April, I travelled to Australia to visit demo sphere, where he previewed the EP for the first time. Incidentally, I also visited the Adelaide Zoo and photographed the otter exhibit. One of my photos of turned out really well with a dithering effect applied to it. I reused the scanned, handwritten title and tracklist but inverted the colours to better stand out against the background. This turned into the final artwork!

niski also mastered the EP, and finished on 2024-08-18. After that, I began making plans to release the EP, including a teaser video to post on social media (Seen below).

I decided on 2024-08-22 as a release date, and on the day published the Bandcamp page and a Youtube video showing the whole EP (minus Techium (Dub), which I made into a bonus track only for those who download the EP.