Corporate Greed E.P.

It is difficult to make money as a musician.
I looked into royalty free music and sound libraries, and was shocked to find out how badly and predatory their payment schemes were.
I felt a need to make a video about this topic:

The Album came into existence in part for this video, and the musical themes evolved from my work on the script. I needed a song that sounded investigative, and a bit dark as well; like the score for a noir detective movie.
That was the first track I wrote: Investigation.
It is heavily inspired by Clubbed to Death by Rob Dougan (famously from the Matrix soundtrack)
I think that the song works quite well for that purpose.
I wrote it using abletons session view, which I rarely use. Overall I like the workflow of the session view, but, because everything is loop-based, the songs tend to feel a bit monotone.
This is fine for background music though, I just have to keep that in mind when working on session view…

I knew that I needed more than one song for the video, so I wanted to write something that is completely different, for when I am introducing myself and my previous experience with royalty free asset stores.
And, because I am a „very cool guy“ I figured, I should write a groovy, viby garage rock song.
I also just wanted to write a song like that for the longest time, and I finally found a reason to do it.
that’s how Cool Guy Garage was made.

It’s a fairly straightforward song, I put in a ton of time to vary the Drums, so the song stays interesting. the main riffs are good and straight to the point. I was heavily inspired by the song Garage from the Devil May Cry 5 Soundtrack for this. I added some pinch harmonic bends to the background for additional ambience.
I really like how the song turned out, it is exactly what it was supposed to be.
And in fact, the song turned into my ringtone for my phone. It works quite well as that!

While researching for the video, I found out that Music Vine is especially shitty. Their CEO has an open letter pointing out the shitty and predatory behaviours of their competitors, but then when you look at music vines monetisation strategy you find out that they do basically the same as all the others. Immediately I knew that I wanted to display that hypocrisy by writing a heroic theme for music vine, and cite the open letter. That’s how the Heroic theme was made.
I focused on brass and drums, especially the militaristic snare was quite helpful. I spent three to four days writing and mixing it, and the heroic theme turned out quite decent. I heavily referenced Danny Elfmans Spiderman and Batman Themes for it.
It clearly needs some polishing when it comes to the composition itself, there are certain sections I would have written differently, if the song was more important or an actual commissioned work I would have spent more time and effort on it. It works, so I left it as is.

While editing, I found a section where I quoted a company’s mission and decided to write a very „Corporate Image Film“ inspired track. I did some research for that, and looked at other corporate image film songs, and it’s creepy. They all eerily sound the exact same.
I quickly clobbered something together, spent less than an hour on it and it was done, Corporate Greed was finished. It sucks, and is completely life and soulless. 100% Success.

The Last song I wrote is the Intro, Shackles. When I was done with the video edit I noticed that the investigation track was simply overused. I needed something else for the Intro of the video.
So I quickly assembled a fairly basic, drone-like, dark and reverby song. That’s what Shackles is.

Sleepy Kingdom is not in the video. Where did this song come from? Honestly I don’t know.
It’s a bonus song that I wrote simply just for fun one evening, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just released it with this album.
It’s a Lo-Fi hip Hop song. I don’t like the Drum sound on it, but I also could not be bothered with fixing it. I tried but it somehow sounded worse.
Otherwise I kind of like the song. it’s fine. it’s chill.

I assembled the E.P. after the video was out. Not because I think the songs are really good, they are ok, I can do better. But, it’s actually a fairly nice display of my musical range- or rather, a nice addition to it.
So the Intention was to have a short showcase of different musical styles that I can send out to people.

Funnily enough I just assembled a Composer Reel for 2025, and none of the songs are in there.
I tried adding Investigation, Heroic Theme and Cool Guy Garage, but there was no space left, and my composer Reel is 8 minutes long already… Ironic.


Oh and I can actually talk about the Album Cover!
It’s a 3D Rendering I made in a day in Blender.
This was the first time for me applying textures with the intention of it looking decent in blender, and also the very first time I actually had to render out a final image. I am normally only modeling, rigging or animating in blender for games so this was a new experience.
A fun little easter egg: Eons ago I actually modelled my face and head (it’s not perfectly accurate but close enough) the heads on the coins are actually all my head, squished as flat as possible and scaled down.

It’s basically impossible to see or know that in the final album cover, since I also used a fake Lens Blur on everything, but it’s there, and it was quick and easy since I already had the head made.