Dan Warren

This is a track I did for the Frog Fractions 2 ARG, it was meant to be an artifact from the remains of the civilization of Bug Mars. It's a song of mourning in the last days of a dying civilization. Lyrics: There was no war, there was no victory No grand defeat to make some sense of the Things that we lost, things that we gave for free Because we never understood That when it's gone, it's gone for good The sparkles kill and then they fade away The heart grows still amid the world's decay Even the atmosphere has bled away And still we never understood That when it's gone, it's gone for good

Sometimes I like to just sit down and build a generative music machine that makes pretty noises. This was one of those days, and this is the result.

Just a little instrumental thing I bashed together while learning to use Playbox

This is the instrumental track for a song I have still never recorded. I wrote the song near the end of 2020. It's about reassuring yourself that the currently horrible world events are temporary. It was a sort of cross between optimism and intentional irony, and of course 2021 turned out to suck even worse. Maybe one day I'll record it, but for now it just sort of sounds like Christmas shopping music that's been left out to decay in the sun for a few decades. Here's the lyrics: Christmastime Where'd the year go? Spent inside Living echoes An endless parade of identical moments that shuffle away, leaving no real impression at all, but Things will be better next year I know they will Things will be better next year Christmastime And I miss you Soon it won't be an issue Maybe by June we can meet in a restaurant surrounded by people and think nothing of it at all? Things will be better next year They have to be Things will be better next year

This is just a rough draft of a ridiculous thing I built from a Librivox audiobook of an old book called "The Book of the Damned", by Charles Hoy Fort. The chapters these samples were taken from were read by Matthew Shepherd.

Welp I set out to just make a nice little western thing and it ended up sounding way too much like Gorillaz. I swear it wasn't on purpose. Back to the drawing board.

Just a positive, relaxing, possibly slightly creepy message for you

Just a quick little guide for self-hypnosis and acupuncture.

I'm tired of not understanding Japanese, so I made a machine to do it for me. It's just a sampler fed with random syllables from my Pimsleur Japanese lessons, with the two voices occasionally asking each other if they understand and forlornly responding that they don't.

This is a very old track, basically a found poem taken from a vocabulary building record from the 80s. It (in my mind) tells the story of a relationship that starts off strong but gets weird and creepy, and ends with them parting with no real lessons learned.

I was messing around in bitwig with a rhythmic pattern I learned from karnatic music and I think I accidentally made prog. Lyrics: bwoooop booop peeeoww weeeener neeeener

Last week I was playing around with sampling some sounds from an old data cassette as well as an XDR toneburst. I ended up using those sampler instruments to flesh out a bit of music I'd already been working on, and the end result sounds like a discarded and poorly weathered cassette of some old video game music.

This track is me sort of exploring the idea that quantum foam and the big bang imply that the universe absolutely cannot tolerate the existence of true nothingness. There can be nothing, but not for long. Sort of encouraging, in a perverse way. Anyway it takes a long time to get started; the track began as sort of an experiment in building music out of environmental noise. Lyrics: Can you call it vacuum, the spaces between spaces where there were never things? Can you call it darkness, the absence of a light that never has been seen? Either by sheer providence or through some strange technology, nothing never lasts forever; something comes to be. At its core, true nothingness is riddled with instability, simply as a consequence of some innate geometry. So in the end the emptiness is an impossibility. Nothing never lasts forever; something comes to be.

This is just me playing with some sounds in Bitwig. The progression is fun because when it sounds like it's looping back to the beginning it's actually a step lower than it started out (hence the name). The other neat thing about this one is that the super funky electric piano bit that starts at 1:30 is just running the same chords through two different arpeggiators - it happened entirely on accident but I decided I liked it.

This is a completely ridiculous little thing that I wrote many, many, MANY years ago that just suddenly came back to my mind the other day. For some reason the thing that brought it back to me was that I remembered playing it for Jon Mooneyham and him being incredulous that I had name-dropped Clarence Clemons. Anyway, it's a very stupid song and now a bad recording of it is on Soundcloud forever. Lyrics: I don't understand a fuckin' word you're saying you just sound like a saxophone Somewhere in my mind I have got Clarence Clemons and he's not going to leave me alone Oh what a world, it's a sad sad world It's a world I always hoped I'd never live to see Woke up this morning just find that everyone had bought a vocoder except for me

This is just a little thing where I was playing with odd time signatures and trying to follow along on my Wavedrum.

This is just a snippet of music I came up with years ago, completely forgot, and then stumbled across this morning while looking for something else. I don't know that I'll ever do anything more with it, but I do think it's kinda pretty.

You are walking through the woods when you stumble across a robot church group baptizing one of their own children in a stream. Two robot children are singing a song to mark the event. Includes a field recording by Nick Friedman.

Okay it's been way too damn long since I've uploaded anything so here's this. It's just an instrumental demo for a new take on an old song of mine.

Yet another ambient-ish track, but this one morphs into more of an actual song as it goes on.

Another drone track, this one just built with an acoustic guitar and a buttload of effects.

This is just me learning how to use the automation in Arturia Pigments, and throwing out some massive brraaaaaams in the process. This whole track is one chord, and the rest of it is just delays, reverbs, and distortions with a bunch of interacting automation.

Okay this is a demo of a short (or half finished, depending) track that sort of straddles the line between depressing metaphor and "oh maybe there are actual zombies in this song", which is a pretty funny concept to me. Very rough recording, just using my ipad mic in the kitchen the other morning. Lyrics: Some people die with their eyes open And just keep walking around They learn to smile with their heart broken And to cry without making sound Have to look twice to see that they're drowning in it Oh I Sometimes Wish that that was me Oh to be doe-eyed Bovine Waiting patiently No more suffering Only shuffling 'round Aimlessly Leave the living to the living and be free

This is an old demo for a song from about 2010 that I just never got around to polishing up. Lyrics I only wanna be on your good side But I give too much away Trying to make things right in all the wrong ways I only wanna be on the inside wherever you are Stand and press my face against the bars I am an awkward silence Waiting to be broken on your tongue I'm a contented sigh that's still to come I only wanna be right by your side Wherever you may go Anywhere you are is home I don't understand What else could you need? Anything you want from me, I want to be

This is just a super-rough demo recorded on my phone, for a song currently (but not necessarily permanently) called "You'll Know". Mostly I recorded this so I wouldn't forget the lyrics I've come up with, but I also think the song is going in a really good direction so I wanted to share it. Lyrics (as of today): When the time has come for you, you'll know While we wonder what to do, you'll know When the air grows thin, and Vacuum burns your skin, and Somehow you begin to glow You'll know There's a thing behind your eyes, I know, that Nothing ever satisfies, and so In the end, defying Your own fear of flying And the terrifying odds, You'll go I know Clearly you're meant for another age One more deserving of you Bent on transcending the everyday Bound to become something new That's you Well if it doesn't quite work out for you At least we'll know beyond a doubt that you Chose your own disaster Despite their howls of laughter And they'll name the crater after you When you go You know

It’s quiet out here Look for the sun, I can’t find it out here And all that dumb shit that they told us about our manifest destiny Is gone and forgotten now And sure, our goals are pure What good does that do out here? I’m not sure And looking back now at that comic book future we used to believe in So foolish in hindsight, I see We’re only survival machines Connected like mother and child Each needing the other to thrive It’s all or it’s none that survive Gone in the night, all sense of purpose A thin veil of lies that just lay on the surface And I long to unload this cargo of corpses And own my own life

Who are you now, when all your fear is stripped away? Who are you now? What do you remember from the day? What did you surrender to get away? Hey, are you all right? Are you going to be all right? You seem to have forgotten how to breathe, or lost the urge for quite a while.

Oh you temporary thing departing since the moment you arrived you know you can't survive this on your own you solitary thing now reaching out in hopes that you will find that another of your kind is reaching too Some signal in the static peeking through; there's something out there looking out for you and hey, you know it might be true You ordinary thing, less different than you want to believe yet terrified to leave your gun at home, you sedentary thing now dying only inches from your birth the master of the earth for all you knew You looked around and found nothing to do but never thought to blame your point of view and say, "you know this can't be true" "There must be more than this a message that we missed I just know somehow this can't be all, this can't be all" Oh no, you broken nameless thing cast up in ragged pieces on the shore hoping that there's more than just the one last quick and painless thing; that life was just a shadow on a wall and now you'll turn around and all will be revealed The color and the shape will make it real and somehow you will know how you should feel While that isn't quite the deal, there's something more than this a message that you missed You had to know this can't be all, just can't be all oh no

Will you lose it all because you're afraid to choose? Will you lose it all because you're afraid to choose? When the time has come to pick a side, will you simply refuse and say there's nothing you can do, when you know that it's not true? You defined yourself with things that you consume With your wine, your wealth, your car and your perfume So when someone bought the same things and that person became you there was nothing you could do, from that moment you just had this feeling as though something quite significant was lost but you can't quite define what it was And now you rise and fall like an empire every day as you build your walls just to watch them all decay Maybe nothing much is gained by it, but somehow that's okay all that anyone can say is that it had to be that way when any meaning you might find would be subjective anyway And hey, you did your best to keep the darkness away

Brittle fragment of a memory Still and silent over centuries Wake, my love, and greet me Wake, my love, and never never go again Do not forsake me Love, do not forsake me Awaken to me Take a breath now Hesitation is the enemy Every instant is a victory Wake, my love, and greet me Wake, my love, I swear it I swear it can be Everything you wanted Everything forever Forever's not so long Forever's not so long

I know your face From some other place But this can’t be real, just can’t be real Too clean, too bright To be quite right This can’t be real, this can’t be real I know, oh I know But then I see you now, a perfect point of light So small and yet so bright Reaching out to comfort me Wake up superman Do what love demands Seize eternity I sense you there In empty air But this can’t be real, just can’t be real Too perfectly What ought to be This can’t be real, just can’t be real I know, oh I know But still I see you now, standing in the light And everything’s all right Holding out your hand to me Stand up superman Love holds out its hand Seize eternity I’m on your side Take my hand Seize eternity I’m on your side Don’t let go Seize eternity

Maybe we never made it home Maybe we swerved across the center line You know that bridge we crossed that seemed to just go on forever? Maybe that’s what death was like But then if you and I are ghosts We get to spend the afterlife Two drunken poltergeists that haunt this old decaying empire Dancing every night And we’ll be saved like flies in amber Perfect and pristine Dancing through each coming winter Dead but evergreen Dead but evergreen The way we think will never change We’ll never lose the appetite The years to come won’t find us turning into other people Wouldn’t that be nice? And we’ll be saved like flies in amber Perfect and pristine Dancing through each coming winter Dead but evergreen Dead but evergreen And when the earth is swallowed by its aging sun We’ll still float in space unseen Forever dancing Never changing Evergreen

I can't describe What I see in this light With my eyes wide open Almost divine So real and so right So loud, unspoken Falls on me Soft Like a frosty morning And blurs the outline It's too close to be seen Like the act of blinking Hard to define It's just a thing that you are Without even thinking You'll always be What I need Be it sail or anchor I'd gladly fight so hard for this love But you make it easy If you can't get by On your own any more Any more than I can Look to your side Because you know that I'm there And you know that you can Call on me I'll be what you need Be it sail or anchor I'd gladly fight so hard for this love But you make it easy

And so we hold tight to a lone mote of dust in the infinite night straining ourselves just to cling to the surface our singular purpose to stay side by side and what does it mean that they could have used fear or almost anything but love is lever they've chosen to move us to shape and improve us to keep our lives evergreen? Does that make us survival machines connected like mother and child each needing the other to thrive it's all or it's none that survive

I feel like I'm finally nearing the end of production on my album Evergreen; everything is recorded, and now it's just a question of final mixing and mastering. Here's a more or less final version of the song that started it all, Sail or Anchor. Fun fact: much of the percussion is recordings of Ann Druyan's brain waves from the Voyager golden record, combined with tiny (< 1 second) snippets of ASMR videos ripped from Youtube. Lyrics: I can't describe what I see in this light with my eyes wide open Almost divine so real and so right so loud unspoken And it falls on me soft like a frosty morning Blurs the outline it's too close to be seen like the act of blinking Hard to define It's just a thing that you are Without even thinking And you'll always be what I need, be it sail or anchor I'd gladly fight so hard for this love, but you make it easy If you can't get by on your own anymore then you know that you can Look to your side and you'll know that I'm there and you know that you can Call on me to be what you need, either sail or anchor I'd gladly fight so hard for this love but you make it easy

This is a very rough demo of a song I've been working on. I recorded it on my iPhone, playing the piano that I learned on as a child. It's in bad repair these days and sounds like it, but it has a special place in my heart. The song is about the aftermath of an alien abduction where a couple have had something installed in them that will record their thoughts and memories, and that in some strange way connects them to each other. They weren't supposed to be aware of it, but at least one of them is. Lyrics: When the stars came closer We were all at first afraid But when the night was over We only wished that they had stayed Tell me, have I grown transparent? Can everybody see right through my skin? And are my bones apparent? Does everybody know where I have been? They've taken something from me And left a vacuum in its place A mouth that's always hungry An absence nothing can replace It's something that we owe each other A fire that burns eternal, bright It's a part of us that lives forever Far from these pale orange city lights Oh tell me you have not forgotten Tell me everything will work out right Promise me you'll be there waiting Far from these pale orange city lights

This is not really meant to be a track per se, just demonstrating a proof of concept. This is essentially taking the idea behind Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In A Room" and faking it by chaining the same reverb over and over again instead of repeated recordings in a real space. Then I'm basically turning those reverbs on and off rhythmically while running a drum loop through them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAxHlLK3Oyk&ab_channel=TrilobiteJuice

Okay this is a sad one. I wrote this song about four years ago when I was approaching the end of a postdoc fellowship and didn't yet have another job lined up, and was contemplating what to do if I wasn't able to continue my academic career. At the same time I was talking to my family back home about how my brother's health was failing, and the abysmal quality of care he was receiving because he had the misfortune of being poor in America's healthcare system. I wrote this song in maybe thirty minutes and recorded it in the voice memos on my iPad so that I'd remember it. It's not precisely about his situation or mine, but it's not NOT about that either. For some reason the other day this song came back into my head, and I thought about rerecording it. When I went back to the iPad recording from four years ago, though, I found that I really liked it despite how noisy and rough it was - there was something about getting it down when all of those feelings were fresh that I really liked. So in the end I just added a bit of piano and a bit of organ to reinforce what was already there; other than that it's what I recorded on the day I wrote it. Lyrics: I command you to stand hold your heart in your hands and say the words you're falling to pieces, aren't you calling for Jesus aren't you what makes you think he's going to want you now? I command you to lie up all night asking why he made you one of the world's worst dancers and subject to all those cancers don't settle for easy answers now How long can you keep this going? How long can you hold one single breath? Got my list of demands I hope the world understands why it's so long when I've spent my whole life hunting frequently finding something but never could stop from wanting more How long can I keep this going? How long can I hold one single breath? I command you to kneel Tell the world that you feel neglected, it's not that you want it easy, you don't want their sympathies, but you just need to know someone sees you try How long can you keep this going? How long can you hold that final breath?

Hypnospace Outlaw OST vol. 3 is out, including a bunch of songs from me! They're also included in the new content update, which should be dropping on Steam and elsewhere today! This track is an alt-rock reworking of my song for the initial release, Satellite. https://jtholen.bandcamp.com/album/hypnospace-outlaw-ost-vol-3 Lyrics: Back when we were both young and pretty Oh, you had so much to say But things weren't perfect in the city So now you've moved away And my my, look how your star has faded You spend the night at home Practicing your drums for a gig that never comes Casting dirty glances at the phone You've still got mountains in your mind You never even tried to climb You never seemed to have the time You know you used to shine so bright Was that all reflected light? Were you just a satellite? Lord knows, these things get so confusing When you have flown so far Back home the almond trees are blooming But it's autumn where you are And my my, now all the leaves are changing Just like the color of your hair Time flies, soon everything looks strange and A chill is in the air You've still got mountains in your mind You never even tried to climb You never seemed to have the time You know you used to shine so bright Was that all reflected light? Were you just a satellite? You know you used to shine so bright Was that all reflected light? Was nothing coming from inside? Were you just a satellite?

Everybody loves a good swing cover of a modern song, right?

I decided to see whether I could use the R package "googleLanguageR" to use Google's API for speech-to-text and automate my sampling process for my spoken word fuckery. Answer: very yes. This is just me playing around for a few minutes with clips from Attenborough's "Life Stories".

Here's a draft of a song for Evergreen. Musically it started as an exercise in writing nonfunctional harmony. I've probably pulled this one apart and put it back together more than any other song I've made in recent memory, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm satisfied with it. Lyrics: Brittle fragment of a memory Still and silent over centuries Wake, my love, and greet me Wake, my love, and never never go again Do not forsake me Love, do not forsake me Awaken to me Take a breath now Hesitation is the enemy Every instant is a victory Wake, my love, and greet me Wake, my love, I swear it I swear it can be Everything you wanted Everything forever Forever's not so long Forever's not so long

This is currently slated to be the last track on Evergreen. It's a reprise of the first song, Survival Machines. Regardless of whether anyone else ever likes it, Evergreen is a project I've grown so personally attached to that it's just getting harder and harder for me to be completely satisfied with the arrangement and mix of any given track. Nonetheless, this is one of the ones that I think is closest to exactly what I wanted it to be. Lyrics: And so we hold tight to a lone mote of dust in the infinite night straining ourselves just to cling to the surface our singular purpose to stay side by side and what does it mean that they could have used fear or almost anything but love is lever they've chosen to move us to shape and improve us to keep our lives evergreen? Does that make us survival machines connected like mother and child each needing the other to thrive it's all or it's none that survive

Here's a new take on my song Wretched Beast, with some lovely harmonies provided by Tanja Manners. It still needs a bit of mixing work, but I'm going to be traveling for a while and decided to go ahead and post the rough track because it's darn pretty.

This is just a quick sketch of a song that's still only half-written. I basically sat down to record this just to make sure I wouldn't forget the vocal arrangement I'd thought of, but I ended up liking the way it came out enough to share it. Lyrics: The next time we see each other we will know this dance by heart and we'll do it in that instant, no matter where we are If it's a thousand years before we do, I promise I'll still recognize you Because I hear you in the evening when the crickets sing good night and I see you in the morning in the flicker of the light In every single thing I see and do, in some small way I recognize you You're burned into me deep For everything I keep forgetting I will always recognize you I don't believe in heaven, but I'd be happy to be wrong I'd like to think that somehow you and I will carry on Whatever life may turn us both into, I know I'll always recognize you

Just a weird little song I came up with as an experiment. I actually had the idea for the weird vocal sound first and wrote the song around it, and I think it worked out surprisingly well for having been written from the top down like that. The percussion is mostly one of Sound Dust's chaos engine thingies, and that lovely synth in the chorus is Samplephonics' Dirty Modular. Lyrics: At the bottom of the ocean There are colors nobody sees You have your own, in unguarded moments You share with me You let me see There's a certain smallest distance That is allowed by electricity Staying within those physical limits Come close to me Just as close as you can be Come closer Take and surround me Gently Please come close to me At the moment of creation When everything was just energy There was a process set in motion To bring you to me Just as close as you can be Come closer Take and surround me Gently Please come close to me

yospos bithc

It's been a while since I've uploaded something, and unfortunately I'm traveling again so I can't record much at the moment. Until I get something else put together, here's a noisy living room recording of a song I've never released before. I threw this together in Australia as a demo just so I wouldn't forget the song, and I've been meaning to get back to it for years now.

This is a track I did for Jay Tholen's new video game, Hypnospace Outlaw. Within the game, the song is by an imaginary 90's alt-folk band called Barnaby's Chair. https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/ Lyrics: Back when we were both young and pretty Oh, you had so much to say But things weren't perfect in the city So now you've moved away And my my, look how your star has faded You spend the night at home Practicing your drums for a gig that never comes Casting dirty glances at the phone You've still got mountains in your mind You never even tried to climb You never seemed to have the time You know you used to shine so bright Was that all reflected light? Were you just a satellite? Lord knows, these things get so confusing When you have flown so far Back home the almond trees are blooming But it's autumn where you are And my my, now all the leaves are changing Just like the color of your hair Time flies, soon everything looks strange and A chill is in the air You've still got mountains in your mind You never even tried to climb You never seemed to have the time You know you used to shine so bright Was that all reflected light? Were you just a satellite? You know you used to shine so bright Was that all reflected light? Was nothing coming from inside? Were you just a satellite?

This is a slightly rearranged and remastered version of something I've uploaded before. I think it's close enough to a final version as makes no difference at this point. Lyrics: Oh you temporary thing departing since the moment you arrived you know you can't survive this on your own you solitary thing now reaching out in hopes that you will find that another of your kind is reaching too Some signal in the static peeking through; there's something out there looking out for you and hey, you know it might be true You ordinary thing, less different than you want to believe yet terrified to leave your gun at home, you sedentary thing now dying only inches from your birth the master of the earth for all you knew You looked around and found nothing to do but never thought to blame your point of view and say, "you know this can't be true" "There must be more than this a message that we missed I just know somehow this can't be all, this can't be all" Oh no, you broken nameless thing cast up in ragged pieces on the shore hoping that there's more than just the one last quick and painless thing; that life was just a shadow on a wall and now you'll turn around and all will be revealed The color and the shape will make it real and somehow you will know how you should feel While that isn't quite the deal, there's something more than this a message that you missed You had to know this can't be all, just can't be all oh no

Lemme get pompous for a second: I've always loved the idea of the unreliable narrator in music, because I think people are a lot less prepared for it in that situation than they typically are when reading prose, watching a movie, or something like that. I think there's something about setting words to music that tends to circumvent people's skepticism and perceive the lyrics as fundamentally honest, rather than as a work of fiction. Having a first person perspective where the viewpoint is either unreliable or kind of a shithead is really interesting, because people tend to take that personally in a weird way. On that note, here's a song that starts off sounding like a take on the "I'm broken and you can fix me" school of love songs, but as it goes on you sorta realize that the person in question isn't just emotionally screwed up but in fact mentally unstable. I had this idea of doing an entire album based around this idea, where it starts off as just a sort of romantic story but it turns out that the narrative voice is a doomsday prepper type who has a basement full of canned goods and guns. This song would be one of the first places where the romantic narrative starts to crack and the craziness shines through. The "naive" person the narrator is in love with is in fact just sane. Lyrics: I don't understand you like you think I do I'm trying to, but it's so hard There's something beautiful I see in you that I don't fully understand Oh darling, take it easy on my heart I'm trying to be everything you need You've gotta take it easy at the start Eventually I'll come up to speed Do you remember when I came to you I told my shame to you, and it was so odd How all you ever did was look at me and say "I don't really understand" Oh darling, take it easy on my heart How can you be so perfectly naive? I'm sick of being everything you aren't and desperate for something to believe I can see you now in my mind surrounded by golden light like a neon sign advertising faith in all mankind And I can see it now in your eyes the sense that there's a grand design that I could never find in my own heart even though I tried and tried Just outside this circle of electric lights there are appetites that've waited so long We're counting down the hours 'til they realize that everything has come undone Oh darling, take it easy on my heart I'm trying to be everything you need We've got to take it easy at the start, if we try to move too quickly it will bleed