Could you tell that I'm terrible at updating my website, let alone this blog?

Lately I've taken to doing weekly releases on YouTube, mostly of video game covers and sometimes the odd original. Really, I only release (or re-release) originals on YouTube whenever I can get a new song mixed and mastered and whenever I can make a music video or visualiser for it. For the most part, otherwise, it's easy for me to simply improvise piano over some themes that I cherished.

In the way of originals, over Christmas 2025 I released a music video for a song I'd written almost a year prior, called lonely, which dealt with the cultural loneliness I feel around Christmastide.

And some time before that, I released another original, in French this time, called autrefois j'avais une étoile (tr.: “once upon a time I had a star”). It's a song dealing with the loss of friendship. The video has English subtitles if you don't already understand French and would like to follow along.

In the way of improvised piano covers, I finished a Kirby's Adventure-themed series in early December, and then began a Kingdom Hearts-themed series in January. The lot can be listened to in the Video Game Covers playlist – though, bear in mind that said playlist also includes covers that I made before I began improvising almost weekly.

A chapter in my life as a musician is soon to close. In late February, I will no longer be junior choir director. However, another chapter has also simultaneously opened: in early February, I begin my position as an adult choir director, my first such position.

Of course I'm going to feel all manner of bittersweetness around this thing, but also, I must press on.

If Inkfinity Festival has unlocked something in me, it's the desire to share music and visuals with you on a somewhat regular basis. After I'd shared three separate behind-the-scenes videos, there was a void that needed to be filled.

This isn't explicitly a Friday night release – this one was done for the OST Composing Jam, which I'll get to in a bit – but this one is the first video for which I drew and put together a visualiser that moves, lives, breathes. Not just moving peak effects, but moving water, lights that grow and shrink.

I'd neglected my YouTube channel for years for the simple reason that I couldn't figure out what made videos look nice and catch people's attention. Now it's different: I have a release every Friday at 21:00 BST (or GMT, when the clocks eventually go back). That I have a regular release schedule suggests that I've gotten to the point where I'm happy, visually, with what I'm outputting. And I guess I am. Watch this space.

Recently, fellow game audio person SnugglyBun and I tag-teamed for the OST Composing Jam 8. The text theme given to us participants as a prompt was the phrase “one summer night.” An image prompt was also supplied, too: an image by xin.cere depicting a girl waiting on a jetty as dusk fell (hence my visualiser above, which was intended to be a direct reference to this).

One look at the image and text prompt and both Snuggly and I immediately thought, visual novel. The result, as posted on our submission page, is an OST that is both airy and bright, and mellow and emotional.

At the time of writing, we're waiting for the results of the jam (it is ranked). But we're also not holding our breaths. More than 260 people submitted to this jam, which I can only imagine is an ordeal to sift through. After we've dedicated time and energy to a project that we can be proud of, we feel like it's time to move on to the next project, whatever that may be.

If anything, I'm glad I participated with Snuggly, and I'm glad we finished. I improvise piano in a matter of minutes; Snuggly is an exceptional arranger and composer. We've borrowed each other's leitmotifs. For one of these tracks, she took what I had drafted and turned it into a fully-fledged, airy, 2000s instrumental rock track. We've looked upon our finished soundtrack rather fondly, with hearts wide open and bursting with emotion, and no results screen is really ever gonna take that from us.

A lot has happened in the last two weeks, and I've been taking a while to process them all. I think I'll write about them all here in this one post.

Rebellion Festival

First of all, the punk band in which I play drums, Those Fucking Snowflakes, opened Rebellion Festival in Blackpool!

For those of you unaware, Rebellion Festival is the punk festival in Britain. A selection of acts across various stages of their career, from the new and undiscovered to the absolute stalwarts, perform in different stages at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, and it typically spans four days in the start of August, from a Thursday to a Sunday. (Just before that, you have Rebellion Fringe, where various venues across Blackpool host punk bands and people party through the night.)

This was us when we were done with our set. We were on a high of emotions and we felt this was our best gig yet.

As we were the opening band altogether and we were playing on the Introducing Stage at the Pavilion, we were surrounded by merch shops on the outer perimeter. We were expecting to have numbers not far different to what we were used to playing to by this point. What we weren't expecting was a 200-, 300-strong crowd and people from outside looking in. This was our biggest audience yet.

The audience was wonderful. Some were singing our lyrics, people who previously weren't familiar with us even. Some were dancing. The atmosphere was very electric. The crew – the crew were absolutely wonderful. The help they gave us was invaluable, and a number of them rooted for us individually and as a band. They kept a well-oiled machine from start to finish, with so many bands performing and so many moving parts to worry about, and they gave us a great sound. I have nothing but massive respect for them and just how tight they were.

The food was great, too. We had a selection of vegan meals: nachos, butter “chicken,” a burrito whose fillings I don't remember… I don't even remember the full extent of the menu but I went for the burrito. There was also a cake on the side, with the lightest whipped cream I'd ever tasted. Once we'd eaten and hauled gear away, we could enjoy the rest of the festival, hopping from stage to stage to enjoy the music of a good few other bands.

I can only speak for myself in these situations; I will cherish this experience forever.

Inkfinity Festival / SATUR-8

For the last several months, a bunch of us creatives banded together to make a modded Splatfest (for the uninitiated: a Splatfest is an event in the Splatoon games, typically structured like a festival with lights, in-game music performances, two straight days of matches, where people get into teams and battle each other.) We called it Inkfinity Fest.

This team had the likes of Caitlin Koi, riji monogatari, tacoyaki, other people who knew what they were doing – 3D modellers like LegendofLonk Studios and Nami so 95, scriptwriters and lyricists like Sally Strings, modders who knew the battle mechanics like Alessio798, composers and arrangers like Lumiflag and Xion … and two meeps, Christoph Jakob and myself. I don't think I've cited everyone in this team – it's an extensive team, to be sure.

Christoph mixed a few tracks, notably our crown jewel, Three Wishes, which is due to release on 13 September.

As for me, I composed a number of the SATUR-8 songs, first drafting them on piano. I'll provide the current strongest example, a battle track called Deepsea Rainbow Trihards, which is based on three songs from Caitlin's, riji's, and tacoyaki's bands – Rainbow Rumble, Deepsea Graffiti, and Triumphant Trihards.

The whole thing includes all the team shouts – ordinarily, if a particular team is winning and there is only one minute left to go, their specific fragment plays at the end of the battle in-game. For illustration purposes, here is Trench's:

The themes were all arranged by Xion, but to demonstrate how they began, below is the behind-the-scenes video that shows the piano sketch that began it all. All themes that I composed for Inkfinity Fest follow this process: I open FL Studio, make sure the piano is connected, and then chordbash until I'm happy with what I hear, then I send the MIDI over to either Xion or Lumiflag for arrangement.

The above video premiered last night to a small audience – my YouTube channel has been small for a long time – but Caitlin hopped on, which made my day, and riji watched it soon after the premiere had ended.

Footage for Inkfinity Fest is hard to come by, especially footage featuring SATUR-8 songs specifically, as the songs are typically played randomly. However, if you want a taste of what Inkfinity Fest looked like, a stream or two of it exists.

My sincere hope, from all of this, is that everyone in this team gets hired for games industry work. There are a good few people who specialise in narrative here and they've all but smashed it. Christoph's mixing takes several leaves from the bands he loves, notably Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bear's Den. Lumiflag and Xion are powerhouse arrangers. Lonk and Nami so do wonderful 3D work, and they, riji, and Caitlin have done excellent work compositing their videos. WiglahWoo has a sexy voice (they are Mito from Trench). Caitlin, riji, tacoyaki, and Sally Strings are great wordsmiths. tacoyaki is a great organiser, for the project wouldn't have come together or the ship wouldn't have been nearly as tight without them. I am the least of these, but I daresay I composed and I composed and I composed.

Games industry people? If you're reading, you've got a pool of people here to hire!

A renewed vigour for solo stuff and Two Meeps

Things are cooking in the background. Watch this space!

Hey folks! One of the bands I'm in, Two Meeps, just released our debut album, Valid, on 24 July 2025 at midnight CEDT!

The band is just two people – Christoph Jakob and myself. We've been close friends for a few years now, keeping frequent contact with each other, and we have been working on this album for a year and a half. We'd frequently sent each other music we like; Chris has sent me stuff from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bear's Den, twenty-one pilots, and John Frusciante. In return, I'd sent him stuff from Steely Dan, Mylène Farmer, and the odd musical theatre piece. We figured we could combine those influences together, and cover some really difficult subject matter in the process.

And when I say difficult subject matter, I mean difficult emotions. Things we don't talk about out of discomfort, social awkwardness, or something else. Emotions like shame, anxiety, righteous anger, existential dread, confidence (or lack thereof)…… our goal with this was to make songs that channelled those emotions, whether musically or lyrically.

Everything that Two Meeps has done has been between us both. I drew the artwork (including the one you see above, the actual cover artwork), wrote most of the lyrics, composed eight out of the ten songs, played keys and drums, and sang. Chris did guitar and bass, vocals, composition on tracks 3 and 6, mixing and mastering, and all the video editing as he's a YouTuber himself.

If the influences sound like fun to you, or if you find yourself drawn to the cover artwork, you know what to do: head over to the Bandcamp, give it a listen, tell your mum, tell your dog, tell your nan, tell that annoying friend who loves RHCP or Bear's Den etc; yell about it, and purchase it if you can. It's hard in this economic climate, I'm gonna be real.

There are CDs too, a limited run of them that can be ordered through Bandcamp. If you live across the pond from us and wanna order them, you're most welcome to do so… just be mindful of tarriffs.

In the next few weeks or so, expect me to do deep dives into my contributions to some of these tracks.