Overclock (Official Music Video) + Brute Force: Overclock Release

Overclock Video:
Here is a video I made for the second track Overclock, taken from Brute Force: Overclock. It is the first DLC expansion for my latest album Brute Force, coming out November 25th via FiXT. It features 3 brand new tracks + a remix from fellow producer Drumcorps.

Tracklist:
1. idle
2. overclock
3. double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory
4. floating point (Drumcorps Remix)

Preorder:
We made two bundles for the DLC expansion adding the midi files or both the midi files and an Artwork poster: https://fixtstore.com/collections/the-algorithm

If you prefer Itunes, Amazon or any streaming service you can just follow this link to get to your preferred service: https://TheAlgorithm.lnk.to/BruteForceOverclockWE

Brute Force Track Commentary - Brute Force (4 of 10)

The title track and also one of my favorites of this album. 
I don't remember exactly how the first riff idea came about but I remember it being kind of influenced by Gojira's Art Of Dying first riff, although it's essentially a different idea. The very first synth is sampled from a single-note computer POST beep. The same one from the intro of Boot.

The arpeggio riff at 0:33 is almost a continuity of what I tried to do with the introduction melody on Pointers, except I went way more apeshit basically. I loved playing around with subtle nuances between the left and right melodies. I was already sorry for the drummer Jean Ferry learning this mindfuck. But obviously it didn't stop me from making it even more complicated. *evil computer laugh*

The part at 1:34 is a very important part in the story of the album. This section obviously leans towards the post-rock side of my ideas, which is a very unexplored territory so far. But I think it's exactly the kind of part that allows me to express more emotions. You see, it's not all about being complicated as fuck. In my tracks I really need the space to talk from the heart and while that sounds a bit cheesy, it's exactly what I like. A lot of the writing process is about trial and error, or about experimentation, or a about sitting there and changing things for hours. But the true joy often comes from those simple riffs and melodies where I take time to infuse my own melancholy. And I guess that's what the album is telling you right at this moment.

The rest of the track is very inspired by these sets of ideas and tries to bring nostalgia in a more focused way than the tracks before. The black metal part is kind of a nod, or is at least very inspired, by Der Weg einer Freiheit and their amazing melodies. When the track collapses, it leaves a lot of room for what it is - i think - the deepest of my own nostalgic and lonely self... But that's where writing music becomes a remedy. :)

The title is inspired from cryptography:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_attack
Full album stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDS9gmdHtB8
Live video of the track in Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whZh0lnK3l0

Read the track commentary for:
- Pointers:https://www.facebook.com/TheAlg0r1thm/posts/10157034129285483
- Floating Point:https://www.facebook.com/TheAlg0r1thm/posts/10157008090870483
- Boot: 
https://www.facebook.com/TheAlg0r1thm/posts/10156954238585483

Brute Force Track Commentary - Pointers (3 of 10)

Holding the computerscience-core flag way high, Pointers is one of my favorites from this album and I started writing it almost exactly one year ago. I remember messing around with chords I usually never use, and I used that as a starting point to write "a very long arpeggiated melody". I had no idea what I was doing but it sounded great, so I kept going until I had the first section down. Then I took a break and decided it was time for some CS:GO. After getting my ass kicked multiple times, I went back to the project and changed the same first melody about 159031 times. Until I finally was happy and moved on.

I guess that's also what happened to most of the middle section of the track, which once again kept being moved around, deleted, re-constructed. It's always difficult to find the right balance between perfectionnism and straight-up insanity, I could keep changing things in my tracks forever but that's when I draw the line before the insanity kicks in.

I always see the track as some kind of subliminal tribute to old school keygen music (https://youtu.be/aQVpW7QZnW0) and everything related to l33t w4r3z h4x0r stuff. I can't really explain why, it's more of a vision or a feeling. Those things are always hard to describe. I guess it's because I grew up downloading illegal softwares and browsing through warez forums. I was the guy who burned CDs of cracked games for my friends.

The title is a reference to pointer objects in programming, because I'm still a nerd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointer_(computer_programming)
The video was directed by the great Richard Oakes at Dark Fable Media, give him a like!
The algoshit is the guacamole.

Brute Force Track Commentary - Floating Point (2 of 10)

Floating Point is far from being the most complicated track of the album but it's the one that took me the longest to write and mix. It's also the track that had the biggest amount of versions and I used the writing process as a way to explore and try a lot of different sounds that later defined the whole vibe of the album. I always see it as the "playground phase", as I was still unsure whether I wanted more or less of certain new elements like guitar leads (and more or less 1524Hz on that very specific 1 second noise at 1:23 when I later entered the evil "over-thinking phase").

The concept follows the previous track and is meant to represent some sort of gate into the infected machine. The first melody reminds me of a crazy Tron imagery for some reason. 
The voice at 1:54 was sampled from the metronome track on the Roland TD6V, it's kind of a private joke.

The first part of the slow section was originally written with more of a post-rock vibe with acoustic drums and more guitars, but for the sake of contrast and to link this section with the nostalgic techno stuff at 3:20 I finally decided to make it more electronic and dropped the whole post-rock thing. Maybe for next time. That section at 3:20 by the way is somehow a reference to Boards Of Canada's sounds.

Then something that usually never occurs in my tracks just so happen to be here: A riff repetition! I guess I've experimented with non-repetitive structures so much in the past that the only way for me not to repeat myself would be... to repeat myself? Now that's ‪#‎deep‬. Hashtag definitely deserved.

Floating Point is one of the most satisfying tracks to play live and Jean even made a youtube video for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnVIpU7_6jg
The name originates from maths because I'm a nerd:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point

Would you like more of these track-by-track explanations? What's your favorite track on Brute Force? Do you like 1524Hz?

Brute Force Track Commentary - Boot (1 of 10)

I started writing Boot last year in May. It's the first track I wrote for the album and was intended to be used as the intro track from the beginning. I’d say that the main influence behind it is this idea of driving really fast on a super straight neon highway. I wanted to give a feeling of speed and fast movement, as if a crazy overclocked turbo mode suddenly was activated on an infected AI. The first concept for the album then became overclocking and the codename became Overclock. The codename for this track was… ‘1’. Pretty original, right? It only became ‘boot' a lot later during the writing process, as it didn’t matter for now. 

The structure of the track changed a lot through time. The techno section at 2:18 had a 2-guitars third harmony. From the beginning on I knew I wanted to bring more guitars into my sound, but the harmony didn’t make it as I went back through the track months later and decided that a straightforward synthwave-ish feel was a lot more powerful and gave more of this speedy feeling I was looking for. The first breakdown sounded a lot more simple in the first version of the song, I progressively added complex patterns and glitches as I refined the sound I was going for along the writing process of the album.