Released 2020-08-14

Joy In Repetition is my second full album under the name Wers. Listening back, it feels like a big step up from my first, and the natural progression of the sound. This time around, I went for a much more gritty and raw sound, while also focusing on progression, which I felt was the weakest part of Manual. I could come up with an idea but didn't know how to make the tracks evolve. This album was also the first time I ever collaborated with anyone. Of course, the main track to point this out on is Shattersphere, where I worked with my brother on the percussion. This was haphazardly achieved by him drumming over a demo I sent him, and me editing the raw audio he sent back. Aside from that, I also sent all the demos I had for this album to my other brother to get his opinions on which ones he liked. After picking those out and tweaking them per his notes, I felt the album was ready for release.

While creating this album, I worked at a local pizza chain as a delivery driver. Because of that, that job is primarily what this album makes me think about when I listen back to it. In fact, the cover art is a picture I took while out on a delivery sometime in the summer of 2018... While several of the songs on the album were originally created during this time, actual production of the album started after I had quit that job, towards the end of 2019. In early 2020 the album was finished. Then, I simply waited until summer, which is when I wanted to release it.

The title is inspired by something one of my teachers would say frequently about practising. While I felt that to be somewhat fitting for my growing skills musically, I thought of an alternate meaning relating to my (at the time) perferred musical taste. Techno and House music. If something sounds good, loop it! This is something most forms of electronic music do best. Since my goal with the album was to focus on longer pieces of music with more progression, I instantly knew this was the correct title for the album.

Joy In Repetition (the song) started out as a hardware test and a proof of concept, then I kept working on it until it was a song. Making something good enough to open an album is tough, and I actually had three different intros I wanted to use. In the end I chose this one, after I made a few last minute changes to it that sealed the deal. Also, the song was named after the album as opposed to the other way around.

Shattersphere is the single for the album, released in April, 2020. Even today, I think this is one of my best songs, and I think the uniqueness of the real drumming takes this to it's own level within the world of my music. Someday we'll have to work together again...

Electric Strike is named after a picture I took while at work. While a lot of my music is inspired by musical acts on the opposite side of the planet, What I choose to label my music often comes from what's around me. The artwork for almost every album I've made is a photo I've taken, and many of my titles are things I read, people say to me, or are things I find accidentally. This song is a bit long, but I quite like it because of how much it develops. There's much more from this song that's unreleased, like different iterations or paths of progression that I ended up throwing out. This song, I think, took the most time to make, and was revised several times.

DKX and Horus were made around the same time, and were originally intended to be on their own EP that never ended up coming to fruition. DKX is named after a license plate I saw, while Horus is named after a simple typo I made. Both of these are naming schemes I use often, actually. These tracks are basically a pair, as they were also created in the same way. By preparing a few melodies, samples, drum loops, and effects beforehand, I could easily play the songs "live" using a midi controller I had recently been gifted. This was an entirely new way of making songs for me and it's how a lot of this album was made.

Autonomous Bassline is a simple song. It's also stupid. I bought, from a classified ad, a completed Andromedia Autonomous Bassline kit. This thing was tiny, janky, and hilarious. It was barely held together, but fortunately I was able to cobble together a couple recordings from it. Unfortunately, I ended up throwing it out after it sat in a drawer for a few years. However, I was able to salvage a few of the electronics from the circuit board to use for other things... Anyways, I named the song after that little machine. So as you listen to it, think about it, and it's untimely demise.

R.I.P.

Taxing Merlin is... a song. Finding good samples is hard. When you can't find a good one, settle for the weird ones. This song is basically just the culmination of me screwing around with this one sample until I couldn't think of anything else to do with it. It's stupid and silly but also, I hope, fun enough to be enjoyable.

Gilligan... Years ago I attempted to remix the Gilligan's Island theme song because I thought it would be funny. While possibly humorous in concept, the song itself sucked. Years later I tried again, and this time it was better but not good enough. The version of the song you hear on the album is a remix of my second remix of the Gilligan's Island Theme song.

Rock On! Without this song, this album wouldn't exist. When I made it, I realized I wanted it, and other songs I had laying around to be released. I finished my first take of this song just before I left for a shift at work, and after driving all the way there, I discovered I had read the calender wrong and I actually worked the next day. So I returned home and immediately did a second take, which is the one that ended up on the album. It's my tribute to Daft Punk, in a way. Admittedly, I kind of stole a melody from them, unconsciously. After I noticed my unintentional thievery, I decided on the name of the song.

Adoration Makes You Blind is a good reminder, and also barely a song. I made this audio years ago, as a joke, and suddenly realized one day while doing something completely unrelated that it would be the perfect way to close the album...