Deep Dive - "stuck in a dream"

"stuck in a dream" by somewhere, somehow. Collaborating with like-minded creatives is amazing. Seeing how you can combine multiple styles and skillsets leads to some of the most amazing and content. This is why myself and a friend, Canadian producer Brainfreeze Music, started a duo alias to create and release music on. "Somewhere, Somehow" started in late 2022 after we had collaborated on other songs using our solo aliases such as "Celeste."

Our first collaborative project was a 5 track EP titled "interstellar", which was an experimental LoFi and Ambient project. We spent around two months on the project, and we were beginning to develop our own style. The vibe can be described as sleepy, soothing, or spacey. We used distant, calming, melodic sounds to create our own soundscape. This was an early version of this style, however, and we continued to tinker with and improve our style after the release of "interstellar."

After interstellar released, we began to concept out our next major project. We wanted to create our debut album. We came up with a few different concepts for the album. One idea was to release one long album in 2 parts, releasing a few months apart from each other, another was a short 7 track album comprised of long ambient songs, another idea was a longer album, around 16 tracks, of short LoFi songs, and various other ideas on the drawing board. What we eventually released was a hybrid of many of the ideas we originally had.

"stuck in a dream" released on March 1st, 2023. The album is comprised of 13 songs, and it features both LoFi and Ambient, as well as some more experimental songs that blend genres. The album took around 6 months to make from concept to final product, and we created and eventually cut many different songs and ideas for the project before finalizing the album's tracklist. The creation of this album was an incredibly fun and challenging period of my life.

Let's take a second here to look under the hood, so to speak. I want to share my creative process and show how something simple can be turned into an entire piece of art. The video below is a stem from my song "broken promises." Watch the video below, I'll explain in the next paragraph.

This was the original sample that my friend sent me, which started off an entire song. Something as simple as a 12 second piano loop can spark creativity and led to something beautiful. Everything has to start somewhere. This is the foundation, this is the beginnings of something new. We just have to build upon it.

In the video above, I began to add more instruments to the song. Steadily building upon the foundation of the short 12 second piano loop that I was sent. Now we have the basis, the instruments. Now we keep building. Lets add some drums and atmosphere next.

Simple, yet fitting. We're going for a calm, sleepy vibe. No need to overdo the drums. Now, lets add a guitar and a another small melody to round it out.

And finally, lets round it all out, and play everything together.

From a simple 12 second loop, we've built a full song now. This embodies the project as a whole. It shows how simplicity can be built upon to make something complex. stuck in a dream is a project full of songs like this, and the creativity of building upon a base element is an incredibly fun and rewarding process.