Derek Kortepeter – Stochastic

The Preamble:

Every once in a while, we like to request submissions of original music to the KMA. If you’ve made a track, an album, whatever, send it to us and we’ll review it! It works out well for all of us – we get to hear new music, and you get your music heard, and a page link you can send to your friends and use for promotion! Win win win!

The other day, I learned that Mike’s friend Derek has made an album. Did I wanna hear it? Absolutely YES! It arrived here in the KMA offices and I was ready to give ‘er!

There’s a web page that explains the thinking behind the record. I did not read any of it BEFORE playing the album – I wanted a pure listening experience. But I did go and read the whole thing AFTER hearing the record! And it explained a lot. Very well done. I recommend you all go read it!

I will also link you to Mike’s review of this instrumental record. He nailed a lot of what I wanted to say right on the head.

The Review:

Veritas starts with some scratching and becomes a beautiful guitar exploration. Burning Embers adds drums and a second guitar line and lets us drift away on the rock. I love how heavy the bottom end was recorded, here. Illusion is futuristic, and on first listen I thought the drums were just off, but on second play I knew it’s better that way – keeping things off center occasionally says a lot.

Solitary is strong and clear, which deceptively sounds like it has no plan but I know it totally does. Fusion is a brilliant, jazzy track that I loved a lot! Perspective is short, and gentle. I’d call this an intermission.

Glitch is electronic melded with guitar. It plays like a meditation on the evils of technology. Solar Wind is a metal freak-out, distorted and hell yeah! Disconsolancy glimpse 1 plays like another intermission, a short, classical jazzy piano piece. That leads into an eastern-sounding piano noodle called Heliosphere, and building off that is Light Within, a track boasting Eddie Van Halen guitar tone, a jam session that’s bloody brilliant.

Disconsolancy glimpse 2 brings us a lovely classical, strings piece, while Fragmented Sky is another distorted guitar rock out jam that builds out of a rain storm. Yes! Wow, this is a highlight track! At 3:30 it’s almost like explosions, and then lift off! And finally, Omega layers echoey guitar over synths, then around 2:15 the synths disappear and the guitar fades us out.

In Sum:

Wow. My brief descriptions here do not do this record justice. They may, in fact, be a disservice. Listening to this is to run the gamut of emotions and styles. There’s a logic to the song sequence, a lot of thought gone into every moment. It’s really great for time spent in personal exploration – just listen and respond to the songs. And you WILL!

I did notice that it sounded great in the car stereo, and then when I played it at home in the good headphones, it’s recorded so loudly in the bottom end that it distorted a bit more. And that made it even better!

Well done, Derek!! This was great. Thanks so much for sharing this with me. I will be playing this again. And again!

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