Ghostown - Shanksville - Numbered edition

It's been a long time coming! But finally a new album!
Mostly written and created between 2016 and 2018, previous songs were either scrapped or released on Soundcloud
Written, performed, mixed and produced by Rael
Mastered by Baronsamedizombi
Photo by Mon Declic - Ju Lie

The idea for Shanksville took hold with the songs Hermitage and Shanksville, both of which feature the character "Shanks", the original title for the album was going to be Hermitage Shanks as a play on words, but unfortunately someone had already done that.
Shanks was a small hamlet near where I grew up, and Shanksville also represents the political and social commentary in some of the album, I've seen quite a few conspiracy theory videos (Love them, especially lizard people, but I don't always buy into them) and Shanksville has a connection to the 9/11 attacks.

The album oscillates between ...humorous tracks like Wound Up Dead, which I started on a piano at my brother's house in Newcastle, and then went on to write lyrics inspired by the public information films we were shown as kids, and films like Final destination, and basically being afraid of everything, so many dangers! Hermitage is also somewhat humorous in the music but his tale is kind of tragic, Hermitage started out on the OP1 but then I redid it in Logic. ... and Social commentary tracks like Who's That which talks about hypocrisy of colonial powers among other things, and Hollow which talks about the eternal rat race of capitalism.
Hollow was mostly written sitting in traffic jams on the way to work or on the way home.
the music was originally a break for Who's That, but then it mutated into its own song, I had the instrumental beat in my car for months and I would make up lyrics whenever I could.

Hold Up brings something completely different, a track based on Rembetica folk music and telling a tale of robbing a bank, loosely inspired by La Casa de Papel.
Merlot is one of those ambient type tracks that I love to do from time to time, I made this in the summer of 2017 and just zoned out listening to it for two days in a haze!

Tumbling' Towers is more of a classic hip hop joint, taking it back to the new school of the old school!
Flight 120 was written.... on the plane, well actually I made the music on the plane on my OP1, then I wrote the lyrics when I got home, I hate flying, and making the music actually calmed me down.
I'd've is a personal song, slightly autobiographical but talking about thinks I would have changed,
musically I just tripped out with the piano, I was playing something for another song, then all of a sudden this riff just came out of no where and I made the whole song in a few hours, the lyrics I'd written in the summer of 2017 and they just somehow magically fit right over the beat!