Every Vain Human is the solo project of sound designer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Arkane, who provided guitar, bass, piano and analog synths, production, sound design, string arrangements, drum programming, vocals, special FX and mixing. Here he aims to merge the heaviness and macabre of Metal and Goth, with the composition and intricate sound design of film scores and electronic music. “I wanted to fully capture the feeling of dread, anxiety and impending doom I’ve been feeling the past couple of years about aging, mortality and the world as a whole.”
A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, where he honed his composition and production chops, he has taken an interesting approach to the recording of the music where recorded all the instruments and then treated them heavily. For example, each note of every guitar chord was tracked separately so that each note of the chord could be treated and panned differently and then layered so that they sounded like giant sonic disturbances that were disorienting like an image coming in and out of focus.
The result is an electronic album that at times is quite disturbing, especially on song such as “Scarcity” where a repeated piano motif is accompanied at times by breakbeats that are intense and in your face. Available digitally, this album has also been released on cassette (what year are we in again?) by Eternally InDEADed. The jury is out for me, but for those into music at the edge of electronica then this may be of interest.
