Arum Online Bonus Newsletter - 6-Month Anniversary and Crazy Artwork
i only get so many times to brag a year, just let me have this
Well, it’s that time of year again that comes by every so often - it’s been 6 months since I ended my hiatus and released my first single in 4 years. I wanted to write a short newsletter giving an update on my music before the long-awaited Arum Spring Newsletter drops on ███████, 2024! Stick by ‘til the end to read a (short) update on my first comeback live show and to give this newsletter’s playlist track recommendations a listen. First, I want to answer a fan question that I got in response to the last newsletter:
the sicilian simpleton asks - can you post the newsletter daily or, preferably, minutely?
Nope! On to the newsletter:
Speaking of the Past 6 Months…
Since releasing Startup Sounds on August 25, 2023, I’ve released 6 singles, gotten over 20,000 streams on Spotify (and over 2k on Apple Music as a nice lil’ bonus), sold exactly one song on Bandcamp (shout-out to that one fan for rounding out my 401k), and played 0 live shows. All in all, a pretty solid 6 months! I genuinely want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me and listened to my music, whether it was one stream or a hundred streams. Any amount of time spent listening to my music is really meaningful to me.
Speaking of Artwork…
I just released my latest single, CTRL. It’s a rhythmic, dystopian dance track that has an unrelenting, deep bass that was really fun to make (bonus points if someone can listen to the track and guess which WWII-era speech is sampled) (also don’t report the song for a copyright strike). The track itself has gotten a pretty good reception so far, but I really want to take a deeper look at the artwork, made by my lovely assistant, who can be found @prushman on Instagram:
Wild, right? I think this artwork really encompasses the stand-out aspects of CTRL - the ominous, vague political speech, the feeling of an unrelenting force, and, most importantly, the weird other-worldly orb.
One of the reasons I really dig this artwork is because it’s a reminder of the role that album covers used to play before streaming. When browsing record stores, it was a coin flip whether you had the opportunity to hear a record before buying it. Sometimes the clerk would be able to recommend something, but sometimes you’d have to take a chance and you’d end up with Weezer’s Raditude.
Before streaming, album covers were sometimes the only thing a listener had to go off of to decide whether they wanted to the take the chance on buying a record. Hell, one of the most influential electronic albums for me was Digitalism’s Idealism, which I purchased on a whim after seeing the cover:
This is all to say, the art for CTRL is eye-catching, unique, and just crazy enough for me to confidently say that seeing the art for the record would make me pick it up, beckon a friend over, and say, “what the hell? this looks crazy. I hope there’s a Winston Churchill sample in there somewhere” before promptly shoplifting it. Shout-out to Prushman for making a killer cover - he’s also making the art for my next single, LSW, so keep an eye out for that.
Speaking of Playlist Recommendations…
Here are just a couple additions to the ever-expanding Spotify Newsletter playlist that you can listen to here:
SF4AM - Haight Street Stroll:
The Ridge Racer soundtrack meets a jazz organ in this complex, hype-inducing track. Their Spotify profile picture has (what I assume to be) the band dressed up as pseudo-power rangers, which really fires a lot of neurons for me
Digitalism -
Writing about Digitalism has me thinking about Digitalism, which has me listening to Digitalism. Here’s a Digitalism track if you’re curious about what the hell I’m talking about
Speaking of Future Music…
Here’s my release schedule for the next couple months:
LSW: 03/29/2024
“House Edit of a Classic City-Pop Track”
Neon Vinyl: 04/26/2024
“Warm, Danceable Synthwave Track Featuring Half of Cymatica on Vocals”
.beyond_____(ECSTASY) ALBUM: 05/31/2024
“Arum’s First Album - Will Probably Be Good”
One last update - I’m currently setting up the live album release party for .beyond_____(ECSTASY) and shooting for late May/early June. I’d love to see you there :)
and that’ll do it for this bonus newsletter! Remember that you can submit questions by responding to this email that I might answer in future newsletters. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in ███████, 2024 :)
