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Tom Finster - Year Of I [DIVIDID]

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Welcome to my eleventh (more like Year of XI am i right) album write-up! I apologize in advance for the wall of text that is about to follow. Scroll down for a TL;DR on the LP.

Background

Tom Finster has been a not-so-secret favourite of mine ever since I stumbled upon him on a search for more German DnB talent in late 2019. I even shared my love for him and his uniquely emotional music on a relatively early edition of the Picks Of The Week here. So why go through this background check again, you ask? Throughout all these years I have been pumping out these elaborate declarations of love, shared his incredible music with everyone who would listen and looped his stuff to death. Throughout all of that, I somehow never bothered to clear up my very limited understanding of his musical background. I just always assumed he was a completely new name for some reason. This changes today! Well, for me it changed a few weeks ago at this point, but it will change for you today! So make yourself comfortable, splash some water against your window if it's not raining and turn the blue filter up to 110%, we're gettin' sad up in here.

The Frozen One (1988 - 2012)

Let's go back, to January 1988. 6 years before I was born, almost to the day, scarily enough, and just a few years before the wall separating Western and Eastern Germany fell, a little boy jumped out into this scary world. That little boy's name? Thomas Küchler. After a lovely childhood living close to the Eastern border of Germany, near Annaberg-Buchholz, and a year of voluntary social work (it's a thing in Germany), he made the jump over to Chemnitz, the closest bigger city, in 2007 to study Sociology.

Even before making this first jump to the city that would end up becoming a huge cornerstone for Thomas' life and career, he was already actively pursuing music in exactly the genre you would expect: German Hip-hop! Yep. You're not the only one experiencing a Déjà vu here. If you remember my Zombie Cats review, you will know that this is somehow the second time that I'm finding out a DnB artist had this huge German Hip-hop chapter in their career that I never heard of before. Feelings of living in a simulation that just repeats itself constantly aside for now though: As early as 2004 (!), Thomas had been writing music under the moniker of TiKay One, mostly in the Hiphop genre, which you could even see him perform when he was hosting for the likes of DJ Big Bang, DJ Ron und DJ Shusta! While downloading free beats from the internet was an option, the speeds at which you could actually get these rather mediocre productions on your PC were so abysmal, as anyone who used the internet in these prehistoric times will be able to confirm, that he set out to produce his own stuff instead! Over time he realised he couldn't express himself as well as he wanted to as an MC, so he focused more and more on the production side. Shusta was actually the one he showed one of his first own productions to, who then shared these early gold nuggets with a few rappers he was working with at the time. One of them being Casper.

Anyone who isn't German, or listens to German Hip-hop I guess, will probably not be phased by this revelation, but as someone who fits both criteria, I couldn't believe my eyes when I first read about that. Casper, that guy with the smokiest voice ever, who basically everyone at school was listening to and who inadvertently furthered my love for faster tempoed music with tracks like Jambalaya. To think that Thomas was actually responsible for the songwriting and (pre-)production of a good chunk of his early hits, including Casper's contributions to Chronik 2 and five tracks from his first hit album XOXO from 2011, I honestly still can't believe it. I refuse. I mean, he got an actual platinum record certification for his work on that album, it was that huge. While this collaboration was his main focus in these first few years, he also worked on various other productions for artists, the most noteworthy among them being his songwriting/production credits for Prinz Pi's emotional storytelling masterpiece Laura. What about some solo material though? Good thing you asked!

2012 was the year things truly escalated, in all the best ways. First of all, it was the year he officially remixed the truly legendary Kein Liebeslied by one of the best german bands around, Kraftklub. Not just that though, it was also the year of a lot of firsts for man like Tikay One. Not only did he play his first DJ gig at Rumpel Spielchen, he also participated in the Splash! Festival's Beatfight series for the first time, put out his very first solo EP I'm Not Yours, with prominent features by Rockstah, Bombee and Cop Dickie, and, most importantly, it was also the year he finished his very first DnB tune. Before we get to the DnB though, we still got a few other things to discuss first. Things that involve the aforementioned Mr. Dickie.

Odonkssey Through The Genres (2011 - now)

You see, Thomas didn't just have a hand in a whole bunch of widely successful German music in the early 2010s, no no, he also started up another project that came to be quite successful, Donkong! What a life this man has lived. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The year is 2011. While Thomas was often involved with Hiphop projects, his style was always very much inspired by Dubstep. Since Germany's Dubstep scene is, well, barely existent, it didn't take long for him to stumble upon another fellow countryman dabbling in the genre on SoundCloud. That producer was of course Johannes Schlump, back then better known as Cop Dickie! Inspired by the best of the best of that time, from Noisia to Skrillex to Flux Pavillon, Thomas and Johannes started working together on all kinds of heavy electronic beats, starting with a Trap bootleg of Dub Phizix and Skeptical's anthem Marka in 2012. If you read the chapter title, you can probably tell that they didn't stay in that particular corner of electronic music for very long(kong). 2013 saw them putting together the Molly Grit EP with a lot of talent from all over the world. What's a Molly Grit, you ask? Apparently it's a mix of Moombah, Trap, Tropical, Juke and good ol' Bass. Don't you ever confuse it with Zouk Bass though, that's a completely different thing, obviously. Discussions about super specific sub-sub-subgenres aside, the most important thing is that it's a whole lot of fun! After giving some Krafty Kuts and even Michael Jackson tunes the signature Donkong treatment of heavy-hitting silliness, their approach opened them the doors to becoming a regular on Reid Speed's Play Me (Too) Records, just a year after starting the project.

Not only were they busy putting out class Trap, Moombahton and Drumstep on the Play Me family of labels, some of which ended up being nominated for Best Music Video at the Berlin Music Video Award 2015, they were also putting together a plethora of remixes for the likes of Kayzo, Eliminate and Musemesis, plus a ton of Donkong (a so called tonkong) bootlegs of Major Lazer, Kraftklub and SSIO of all people. Keeping them German Hiphop roots alive and well! Speaking of Germany: In 2013 they played a part in building up PVLS, a brand new platform for showcasing Bass music from Germany, which also featured the likes of Hanuman Tribe and Bukez Finezt. Two years later, in 2015, they also started working together with the Munich-based label Crispy Crust Records, furthering their connections to the German Bass scene. Things continued to escalate further and further, while Tom and Johannes were abandon(kong)ing their initial genre naming scheme in favour of good ol' Trap, I mean Gobal, I mean Bubble, uhm no wait, Bass House, no, Bass, wait there's something missing, ah yeah, Future Bass, no that's not it either, Global Bass! That's the one. If there was ever a world championship in playing ping-pong with genres, these two would be a class above everyone else. They could call their team Pingponkong! Yes, I only mentioned this so I could make this stupid pun. You know what you can also see in Ping-pong matches though? Adidas shoes! You know what kind of music was played in Adidas commercials in 2016? The kind that was produced by Donkong! It's all connected, I'm telling you.

That's not even where the genre diversity stopped either, in 2017 they even tried their hands on a couple of DnB tunes, before bringing all the boys to their yards with heavy-hitting bootlegs of Kelis and Rihanna. All of this versatility started paying off in spades during the following years, I mean just check out this progression of labels they have released on from 2018 to today: Next Level, Gold Digger, Riotville Records, Jadu Dala, Circus Records, Tchami's Confessions (!), Oliver Heldens' HELDEEP Records, on which they released my favourite track of theirs, Gone, Don Diablo's Generation HEX and Spinnin' Records sub-label SPRS. They were already reaching some amazing heights, but they have honestly become a proper household name in the Bass House and wider Bass music scene lately. A Bass House-hold name, one could even say. The thing is, even in this long(kong) list of labels I didn't even mention everything. They also had loads of self-releases, some more releases on other, smaller labels, and remixed the likes of Tchami and Doctor P. They were still not creatively satisfied though, so in addition to all of that, they also both started their own solo projects. Johannes started doing stuff on his own via the barking continues alias and you can probably guess what Thomas did.

Dark Side Of The Tom (2013 - now)

Exactly, he tried out even more genres under his Kosmo alias, which he created way back in 2013! Hah, didn't expect that, did ya? Oh, you did? Damn it, shouldn't have put the years in the title I guess. Anyway. Under this separate alias, Thomas was living out the creative urges that didn't quite fit with the rest of the Donkong sound. This wild ride through different sounds included stops in the worlds of Postbeat, Electroglitch, Popstep, Breaks and Rock (huh), with the occasional return to the classics of Dubstep and Hiphop here and there too. We are still, somehow, missing another few pieces though: He also continued to be involved in the mixing, production and mastering of various different releases of other German artists like Bombee, Die Boys, Kraftklub, Musemesis and Dissy. Phew. There was one, kosmonautically big problem though. Remember my confusion about the Rock track on the Kosmo profile? Well, Thomas was just as, if not even more confused, since that wasn't even his track! Kosmo was just too generic of a name, so other people's music kept getting distributed on his profile. A new name was needed.

Thus, 2017 came around and Tom Finster was born! With only a cryptic German quote from the book Roadside Picnic, by Soviet-Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, linking him to the Soviet-ish Kosmo name, and basically no interviews or articles except for those paywalled ones in the Freie Presse, this was basically a brand new beginning. At least from the perspective of someone who had no idea of all the other projects. Like me. From the view of someone who was more in the know, however, the transition was basically seemless, with Kosmo's later Ambient stuff smoothly transitioning over to Monolith Pt. 01, Tom Finster's first uploaded tune. However, the first official release of his, On, was only uploaded a few months later, on his 30th birthday in early 2018. It wasn't until the next single, Let Me Have A Crisis, dropped a month later that Tom Finster would start being associated with DnB though. Around this time, IMANU started posting his tunes all over the then-relevant DnB Talk Facebook group, which is probably also where I ended up stumbling upon him. Things were a little quiet around him for a while, with only the Ambient tunes Gismo and Off, inspired by a tragic personal loss, coming out, but soon enough, Tom got into a proper groove and the Thomas train got to rollin'.

From 2019 on, Tom fired off one great release after the other, all of which were part of his semi-official debut album All Things Fall Apart. First he made his debut on the one and only Upscale with the wonderful Space Is Empty / I'm Not Over You, and another few months later the super-powered stomper Phantom Finster Power and the incredibly unique half-time journey Element 115 were premiered on my beloved NËU, with plenty of support via BBC Radio1Xtra and Noisia Radio. After more wild genre experimentations with Hudson Lee on Inspected, he started playing around with his own vocals for the first time, resulting in one of my absolute favourites Tom tunes, Our Fears Won't Save Us. Considering the release date of early March 2020, that's quite the fitting title. These vocal talents of his were then also used in the creation process of Hilly, the last song of the All Things Fall Apart era and an incredibly beautiful tribute to his uncle, who tragically passed away a year before the release.

As you might be able to tell from the name and the emotionally heavy sounds, this first album focussed on the emotions associated with things coming to an end, from personal losses to the end of a relationship. These kinds of themes continued to be explored on the magnificent From Here On Blind EP in mid-2020, which was also his debut release on IMANU's and ABIS' label DIVIDID. Yup, IMANU wasn't just sharing his music for the fun of it all this time, no no, he actually believed in Thomas' vision so much he ended up signing him to his label! After this landmark release for him, however, things slowed down a little. Thematically. Other than that, things were continuing on quite well, to be honest. His uniquely emotional approach to songwriting and his now closer-than-ever ties to the DIVIDID gang directly lead to him remixing the likes of The Caracal Project, Rohaan and later even Camo & Krooked & Mefjus's future James Bond theme No Tomorrow. Additionally, he debuted on VALE and played a truly insane set on the main stage at 2021's Save The Rave edition of Let It Roll, which altogether deservedly earned him the title of "Artist To Watch" by LTBGY.

Even in 2022 he didn't slow down yet though, bringing us a non-Dongkong collaboration with barking continues, the rave anthem Lights and remixes for Canopy and none other than the knight in shining armor, Apashe. As you might have guessed from the fact that we're rapidly approaching the current day on this timeline, he was also working on his next album during all of this. Which is out now! Considering all of this, there's a good chance 2022 is going to go down as the Year Of Tom Finster™️. Let's see if my high expectations can be met. Let's talk about Year Of I!

Resources

Track Breakdown

Congrats, you've made it to the Track Breakdown!

1. Second Time Around

On Second Time Around Tom eases us into this deeply personal world of his with a slower-than-halftime Bass-heavy statement of intent. This is not his first rodeo, in more than the one way you might think of. Not only is it (technically) his second album, the lyrical contents are also about being confident that we can handle the awful things that life throws at us sometimes, since we have often already lived through a situation like it once and came out just fine. We've already been there. A third and I guess a little spoiler-y hidden meaning is, that this album loops back around from the ending tune, so if we end up looping the album, we will know how to handle the storm of amazing music that is awaiting us on our second time around.

How does this translate musically though? Well, I don't think I need to tell you how talented Tom is in creating emotionally effective atmospheres and melodies anymore, but it really does become apparent again, right from the intro of this album opener. A few melancholic piano chords, an atmospheric drawn-out almost string-like synth and distant, distorted voices build the background for Tom's own wonderful vocals to shine on, with heartbreaking lyricism right from the get-go. As Tom starts listing all the metaphorical terrible things that life has thrown at him, a ticking clock rhythm, a nostalgic music box and a wall of bass come in, one by one, until this humongous drop comes crashing down on us. With excellent use of empty space, a surprisingly melodic yet extremely heavy bass and a whole chorus of distant, strange voices harmonizing together, Tom manages to perfectly convey the crushing weight of all the things that happened and the toll it has taken on the protagonist's mental health. Once this has passed, however, the vocal repeats once again, reminding us that even after living through all of this, we will fine in the end.

2. Will To Power

Named after Nietzsche's philosophical concept, Will To Power goes into a more meta direction. It's about taking chances when you get them, making the most out of an opportunity that presents itself and not waiting until you go "over your limit" and lose your flow. On the other hand though, it's also about some of the harsh expectations of the scene, that you as an artist should keep up the momentum you've built up so far and keep pumping out your specific brand of music, while still pushing the limits, or you'll be left behind. This "advice" is presented via Tom's own vocals, on top of a wonderfully relaxing piano rhythm, which in my mind neatly symbolizes the relative quietness of the "post-release" part of any artist's process, in which how both internal and external pressures can come to haunt you. The more insistent the Lyrical I becomes that you should just shoot them down already, the more the tension rises. However, instead of a proper explosion of energy, there are only little bombshells of bass being dropped every now, some bigger, some smaller, that ultimately just continue the buildup a while longer.

Turns out, you can't just force great art like that. Sure, you might get a banger here or there, but the truly great stuff needs time. There's a reason this album took around 2 years to make, after all. Tom interjects again, this time from his own perspective and in more of a Hip-Hop flow, revealing that this is "heavier than I thought" for him, adding how hard it is to meet these super high expectations in this brand new niche full of extremely young talents, while he's in his 30s. However, a crowd clapping to DnB speeds snaps him right back to reality, to make the most out of this moment he waited so long for, to take this one opportunity. His one chance. Mom's spaghetti. This time is different though. This time we're treated to a whole whirlwind of energy, comprised of relentlessly fast drums, a flurry of new-school synths and the repeated mantra of shoot them down, all packaged into one hell of a satisfying call-and-response.

What a journey of a track!

3. Sinner

This energized, hyped-up feeling that we just experienced from (metaphorically) fighting our way through the jungle of music to stand out as an artist is seemlessly continued on in track número tres, Sinner. In an almost Punk fashion, Tom is immediately in a rather confrontational mode, especially with the intentionally rough-sounding adlibs repeating the lines. Lyrically he's essentially saying that he will not be apologizing for the things he has to do to live a happy life. That might sound dramatic at first, but it's more about how he turns his phone silent for days on end to get into a proper workflow, ignoring any calls or messages that might come through. Straight to hell with him, I say!

From an instrumental point of view, this one is the most straight-forward DnB tune of the album so far. Fitting for the aforementioned Punkishness of Tom's vocals, we start with a 16th rhythm of guitar strums, with a separate synth melody tooting around in the background. Once we hit the titular "sinner" line, things start picking up steam. Each "sinneeeer" gets a whole choir of different Toms harmonizing with themselves, parts of the lyrics are emphasized with additional synths mirroring the melody and the guitar strum is expanded upon with an additional new-school melodic element. Right as Tom's vocals are chopped up into a thousand pieces, these last mentioned 16th synths are then amplified by at least a thousand percent, rearranged into an entirely too catchy rhythm and placed into an arrangement with a bunch of classic Tom Finster sounds, like the enormous whoomp bass, that little heavily processed sound that sounds a bit like a vocal and some extremely quickly chopped-up synths. You'll know what I mean by these vague descriptions once you hear it! This whole buildup is expanded upon even further and made even more dramatic in the second half of the track, complete with a key change in the drop, making it hit even harder than it already did.

One of my absolute favourites of the LP!

4. Cost Of Living

As we're now approaching our fourth stop on the album, Cost Of Living, life is slowly catching up with us again. Nowadays it would make sense to say this is going to be about the cost-of-living crisis and inflation and all that, but the lyrics imply something more applicable to our system at large. 40 hours of work "grinding [you] down to dust" every single week, sometimes worsened even further by the need to work a second or even third job, just to pay rent and, well, live. That experience of entering the workforce for the first time and feeling the weight of those "mountains of years and days" that you need to chisel away at, one day after the other, just to finally get to retirement and enjoy your life.

It's obviously all a little bleak, but that's the direction the gloomy, sweaty atmosphere Tom created on this one points me to. Sure, Tom's lyrics are already going there kind of, but the russian samples at the beginning and end, whose translations can be found in the album booklet (go buy it!), in combination with these atmospheric melodies sounding like wind blowing through an abandoned Plattenbau settlement are also just depressing as hell. The drops are similarly rough and worn-down, with some incredibly huge, massively distorted walls of basses steamrolling straight over you, while harsh drum breaks relentlessly whip you until you dance the dance already. Even if you keep fighting back against it with all your bass-powered might, you can't quite escape the system. You gotta perform.

5. Nothing

Time for even more depressing themes, with Nothing! Instead of being about bigger-picture themes of hopelessness though, this one focuses on the interpersonal relationship kind. You go on a date with a long-term partner, with whom you had a wonderful few years of a relationship, but at this point the love has kind of fizzled out. Not only do you feel nothing, your partner also has these empty eyes that say everything and nothing at the same time. They're not saying it, they are still hiding their real feelings, but deep down you know they want to leave. It's over. Similarly, the Half-Time-ish instrumental goes a more mellow, minimalistic route too. Melancholic pianos ease us into this awkward, deeply sad encounter, but the main ingredient here are these weighty basses that make you feel like you've actually got a lump in your throat. Even in the second half, when you confront them again and the music gets crazy dramatic with strings galore, it all just ends up with the minimalistic basses trotting along.

6. Unbreakable

We've already established that this is a deeply personal album. It's Tom's Year Of I, not the Year Of I dunno, after all. On Unbreakable he explores a topic that, outside of one single piece of promotional text for Phantom Power, he has not necessarily opened up very much about before and that is occasionally plaguing him, like a lot of other artists: Panic attacks. People ask you whether you took some sort of medication or drug, whether you ate and drank enough before going on stage, but it's nothing of that sort. The lungs are good, your blood is fine, the heart is working well, yet it still happens. Even if it doesn't happen at every show, there's still this lingering feeling of "will it happen again?" that won't so easily go away. While I personally haven't experienced this kind of horrible incident myself yet, Tom makes it easy to empathise and understand what he is going through in these situations. He goes even more in-depth about this in the booklet (did I already tell you to buy it?), but the lyrics themselves also paint a clear picture of confusion, exhaustion and self-doubt.

Since this one is called Unbreakable, this obviously had to be a Breaks-y kind of track. Pun aside, it works really well for the topics explored on this one. The old-school think break vibes, combined with the moody basses, give the whole thing an "afterparty" feeling. Furthermore, it also illustrates the fatigue he describes in the lyrics. You want to go all-in on the DnB, but can only barely manage the Breaks part at a lower BPM. Once the self-defeating "i’m just not 'stable enough'" realisation hits, the tension of the orchestral composition that's been rising for the last minute or so hits its high point, before the track scales itself back to the barest minimum, lingering on this depressing thought of "what if I can't do this anymore?".

7. Bleep

We've arrived at the first single of the album, Bleep! Talking about internet/smartphone addiction is always a little tricky, at least if you don't want to come off as a condescending technology=bad boomer. By making his own experiences with those little notification bleeps the central point of discussion on here though, he managed to pull it off effortlessly. Whether it's waiting for likes on your latest SoundCloud mix to get that sweet sweet validation, congratulatory messages on your birthday or a response from your crush after you told them you liked them, it's safe to say these notifications or the anxiety-inducing lack thereof can have a lot of power over us. Even Tom, who turns his phone on silent most of the time, is waiting for these damned bleeps every now and then.

To capture this depressing mood, Tom went down the route of lo-fi DnB beats to feel nothing and stare at the ceiling to. There's audio crackles, the drums are very relaxing, the softest guitar you'll ever hear makes an appearance, even the synth melodies are very mellow, almost underwater-y, everything just fits together into one perfectly fitting mood. The only thing peaking through this bubble are the bleeps, briefly awaking us from our open-eyed slumber, before going right back to our uncomfortable comfort zone. In the second half there's another short moment of realisation that this is going nowhere, when Tom throws his phone into the abyss, underlined with slightly heavier, bouncier drums and a general sense of high energy, relatively speaking. Soon enough, however, he reaches back for his phone and the cycle begins anew.

8. Little Circles (feat. HANNY)

This theme of addiction is continued on Little Circles, featuring the only collaborator on the album: HANNY, who you might remember from Donkong's Binary. It's about the classic excuses that anyone who has experienced addiction in themselves or close friends will be familiar with. I'll stop tomorrow. Just one, so I can sleep. It was such a bad day today, I need this now. While it's more literally about pills and drugs in general, these little circles can be any self-destructive repetitive behaviours that you can't get out of. Fittingly, the track itself is more melancholic and low-energy than anything that came before it. Mostly completely drum-less, with only a mechanical rhythm going on in the background, and with a huge focus on the piano. Especially the chorus, consisting of HANNY's and Tom's vocals layered on top of eachother, is just gorgeous.

9. Stuck On Repeat

Speaking of repetition, next up we've got Stuck On Repeat. As the very straight-forward lyrics tell us, Tom is stuck in his repetitive cycles. Not necessarily of addictive behaviour, just in general. I know this isn't necessarily a Covid album, but this one in particular just fits too well not to mention it. I mean, who hasn't felt like they were always doing the same things for days on end, while we were all cooped up at home, unable to do things outside? Days blurred into weeks, weeks blurred into months, suddenly it's been a year and you can barely think of anything you did during that time. While we couldn't really do much to get out of that cycle during the lockdowns, except for maybe going for walks or phoning a friend, in other cases realising you are stuck in an unhealthy routine is always a good step towards changing things for the better. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Get out of your comfort zone every now and then y'all, I guess.

Instrumentally, we are treated to a truly wonderful piano performance, on top of a unique DnB rhythm, with minimal, vibey basses filling out the atmosphere. Ironically, not a whole lot really repeats itself here: The pianos go through multiple different phases, each more beautiful than the other, the rhythm drops into Half-Time halfway through the first drop and there's this great orchestral melody coming in during the breakdown, right before the tape is inserted back again and a slightly different version of the first drop is played. That's because it's not just about repetition, it's about breaking out of it, too.

10. Understand It All

Getting darker and darker over here, on our next stop Understand It All. Our protagonist is defeated. They have completely lost any positive outlook they might have had before. No better day is going to come, this is only going to get worse and worse, once they fall, they are down. Nothing makes sense to them anymore. The only way out? "Maybe another life". If you're optimistic while interpreting this, it might be about moving somewhere else and starting completely anew. However, considering the mood and atmosphere of this track, I assume it's a bit darker than that. We start off with Tom configuring a heavy auto-tune modulator for his voice, which will keep us company throughout the track. While it could always just be a stylistic choice, to spice up the voice a bit after 10 tracks, I understood it to be a thematic choice, to make his voice feel different from what we're used to. This is a distorted version of ourselves talking here, one that's trying to convince us that there's only one, grim way out of this situation. Especially when the "I will understand it all" line is doubled with another take, processed to be a couple of octaves deeper, this becomes most apparent.

Similarly, the instrumental stays relatively innocent at the beginning, but the corrupting influence drills itself into the mix, slowly but surely. Sure, it seems to fade away as soon as the voice goes, with only fluttery synths and soft basses remaining. Even the first time the drums come in, things seem light-hearted enough, but you can already hear the darkness creeping right back in. Soon enough, another wall of synth starts looming over you and before you know it, it turns into a nasty version of itself, driving you insane. Things calm down afterwards, but the thoughts return in full force. Scarily beautiful.

11. Last Year I Died

Slowly but surely approaching the end here, with the third single Last Year I Died. Tom wastes no time on this one and nearly instantly goes into the shuffly, wobbly drop, with wonderful windchime-like background melodies as the cherry on top. After a bit of this, Tom's very direct vocals come in. Last year was horrible, but this year is different, is the hopeful gist of it. In other words, we have now officially returned from our "downer phase" of the album. Sure, there were some hopeful elements before, but this is as hopeful as it gets. This time around we will get that happy ending we deserve! We won't let ourselves be dragged down by our inner, self-critical voices, hell no, this is our year! The year of us!

The track follows this sheer never-ending climb on the ladder of euphoria, delivering levels of beauty I didn't think were possible, ultimately culminating in a truly outstanding second drop. The vocal's melody is mirrored by heavy yet inherently uplifting synths, the drums speed up to a whole 'nother level and a fast-paced flurry of enchanting 16ths rounds the whole thing up into one of my favourite moments on the album. We end on a piano version of the main theme of the song so far, before fading into a recording of a japanese train announcement at the very end. More on that in the booklet! Buy it!

12. Balance (Skit)

Alright, before we go on one last ride here, we've got a short little skit ahead of us to help us center ourselves again. To regain our Balance with nature.

13. Night On Earth

Last but most definitely not least, the second album single, Night On Earth! We've talked a lot about repeating things of life on this review, especially towards the middle of it all, but considering the references to the concept of rebirth and the day/night cycle, plus the fact that it loops back around to the beginning of the album, this one surely takes the cake when it comes to cyclical imagery. Had a bad day? Go to sleep and start over tomorrow. Even a whole bad year, like on Last Year I Died, is survivable and who knows, maybe the following one is completely different? Our protagonist is hungry for life, he is ready for this change, for this do-over. Heavy, almost Trap-y basses are shaking the ground below, while charming synths really sell us on the nocturnal feeling of it all. Then, the drop. BWAAM, BWAAM, BWAAM. These three descending, larger-than-life alarm sirens composed of signature Tom Finster bass are just so satisfying on their own already, but made even better by positioning them in a call and response with these dynamic and dark flashes of fast-paced madness.

These aren't just any ordinary BWAAM's though, no no, these were gunshots! If we are to believe the excellent music video for this one, he actually shot himself. Not as you might imagine it, it's more of a doppelganger kind of situation. I mean, if we trust the famous psychiatrist saying, we are often responsible for change in ourselves. And if we do, we are leaving behind our own self, and since we can't have two of us running around, we shoot the old one. After all, we don't care if they kill us, remember? From the intro? No? Ah goddamnit. Go listen again, then! Anyway. After getting rid of our old behaviours, with one final set of gunshots, the charming xylophone-esque melodies from the beginning overgrow everything else, resulting in one incredibly beautiful bed of flowers, as the rising sun heralds a new day.

Conclusion

I love most albums I review on here, but none of them have been as special as this one in my eyes. Not only is it an incredibly personal album, chock-full of raw emotions and poetic imagery, its overarching main theme of repetition and breaking out of it is also just so well-executed. Not only is every single idea immaculately crafted on its own, everything is also seamlessly weaved together into one amazing emotional experience. The most important part of this perfect intricate piece of art, the one piece that makes everything fall into place for me, has got to be Tom's vocals. I'm not saying the instrumentals are bad, in fact they are quite extraordinary on their own already, but using his own vocals for all of the tracks makes everything feel much more complete and cohesive. I'm very much in love with the wonderful performance part of vocal, but it has to be mentioned that the songwriting is on another level here, with lines foreshadowing and back-referencing each other throughout the album, while maintaining that balance of being direct yet still staying vague enough for me to find my own meanings in it. Even if you ignore all that - it's all so insanely well produced too! It's not really news that Tom is a master at this, but the technical side is just stunning, man. Nothing will be able to top this for me personally. This is my album of the year.

My favourites have got to be Will To Power, for its incredibly satisfying payoff to a long but worthwhile buildup, Sinner, for being a straight-up banger with one of my favourite vocals on the album, Bleep, for the unique combination of sheer comfort and relatability I'm experiencing while listening to it, and Last Year I Died, because it's just such a well-crafted journey of a track.

TL;DR: Remarkable production, outstanding emotional vocal work, deeply personal yet expertly-crafted themes. Simply breathtaking.