~ mid-2020's super future panic-c-c!!!!! ~

11.01.2024

(published to youtube at 11:11, NZ daylight time)

"a winding and conflicting journey through cyberspace and how our collective view of the internet has been changing ever since the first person logged on. 'mid-2020's super future panic-c-c!!!!!' is optimistic as much as it is terrified by each minute that passes, ephemeral yet everlasting, so you, the user, are free to interpret it however you please. as for me, cydthezombie☆, i think it's rather nice :)"

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#	Title	Length	File Size	Link
1	Magnify Our Dreams	01:01	1.4 MB	Audio
2	Summer In The Pool	03:28	5.8 MB	Audio
3	ヒステリー	01:05	1.6 MB	Audio
4	Intermission 1 ~ UFO Girlfriend	00:36	0.9 MB	Audio
5	Can You Feel The Sunshine?	03:23	4.7 MB	Audio
6	OPEN	02:24	3.3 MB	Audio
7	Ultra Future Secret Admirer	02:14	3.1 MB	Audio
8	Intermission 2 ~ .BMP Of A Dolphin	00:12	0.3 MB	Audio
9	Central City	05:21	7.4 MB	Audio
10	That's What Big Kids Do	02:09	3 MB	Audio
11	Sweet Sugar Song	02:19	3.2 MB	Audio
12	Old Web Revivalism	02:03	2.9 MB	Audio
13	Intermission 3 ~ 白色金魚	00:17	0.4 MB	Audio
14	ヒステリー (Metronome Mix)	01:09	1.6 MB	Audio
15	Summer In The Pool (Chiptune Version)	03:33	4.9 MB	Audio
16	Summer In The Pool (Instrumental)	03:27	4.8 MB	Audio

Exclusive Trivia!!

"Mid-2020's Super Future Panic-c-c!!!!!" began production after I made the cover of "Summer In The Pool". It's mostly inspired by Sonic Coaster Pop, CAPSULE, and Strawberry Machine, three Shibuya-Kei artists that I really love, and, of course, Kidorikko, like all of my music.
The cover artwork includes background images found on TextureTown, with said images laid out in a way that I thought was reminiscent of science textbooks or old websites. The illustration of the girl in the centre was inspired by imagery found in Serial Experiments Lain, and the font used on the cover was the standard font used in Space Channel 5, simply called "Ulala".
"Magnify Our Dreams" was a phrase in what I believed to be a line of dialogue in Sonic Frontiers, however I am too lazy to redownload that game and check, so you might have to just take my word for it. This song was specifically inspired by a few songs in CAPSULE's album "Lounge Designers Killer", and I leaned into that with the detuning of almost all of the instruments in this song.
"Summer In The Pool" is, indeed, a cover of a song by Cyclon86, though the cover of it done by Sonic Coaster Pop is far more well-known, and was the version I based my cover off of. With my Iphone, I recorded myself singing while listening to the song with earbuds on, (twice, so I could have the cool vocal bit at the end,) so that, and the fact that I edited the vocals over top of the instrumental in a *video editing program* caused the timing of the vocals to definitely sound a little off. There's also a bit at 2:53 where you can hear my chair making a weird noise, and for a while I thought about editing it out, since that would be pretty easy, but I left it in, as well as all of the noise that Iphones can pick up in recordings. It's just fun!
"ヒステリー", translating to "Hysteria", is one big Kidorikko Reference once again! I used instruments and weird melodies that I thought were reminiscent of their style, and matched the main drum beat of their song "METRONOSE" pretty much one-to-one for use in a few sections. My song is, however, in 4/4 instead of 3/4.
"Intermission 1 ~ UFO Girlfriend" was meant to be a part of a much longer song, but I never really figured out how to make any progress with it. I started working on this right as I began work on the album as a whole, and it was sorta inspired by the Hazel Nuts Chocolate song "Future☆Popp".
My version of "Can You Feel The Sunshine?" was based on a MIDI file found on a Geocities Sonic fansite called "Sonic Elite". The creator of the site said that no MIDI files found on the site were made by them, however they did not so much as credit the original creator, nor link the original site they were from, so I have no clue who made the MIDI file before I used it. Anyway, it's a cute fansite, but very poorly archived on the Wayback Machine. Would've loved to see what was up with the fanart, fanfiction, or fan hoaxes pages, but they weren't archived properly...
I also really love Sonic R. Very fun game!
"OPEN"'s title was indeed hinted at in the order of songs 6 through 9 in "Afternoon Tea With Teddy Bears". The song was originally in 3/4 (or maybe 6/4 technically?), but was changed to 5/4, so that's why parts of it sound sort of cut off. This was entirely intentional.
"Ultra Future Secret Admirer" came to me on the spot while naming this song. It follows in the SOCOPO tradition of naming a song something similar to the album's title, including one word from it, then using other words instead. Examples include "Swinging Circuit" from the album "Super Miracle Circuit", and "Future Electric Machine" from "Future Electro Star".
It uses the "Past" and "Future" samples from Sonic CD, (which is one of my favourite games ever!) a slot-machine sound effect, because why not, and the "Perfect Techno" sample is from Sonic Adventure, I think. That, or it's from Sonic CD as well. I took a bit of inspiration for the structure of the song from "Summer In The Pool".
"Intermission 2 ~ .BMP Of A Dolphin" also suffered from the same issues as "UFO Girlfriend". I was really proud of the low-pitched instrument heard in the song, and the main melody, but didn't know how to progress with it. The name was inspired by the obsession people had with dolphins in the 90's, and how .BMP files are a rather outdated format that were also used around that time.
"Central City" is, of course, a cover of the infamous song from "Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood". I was just listening to the original one day and figured that I would be able to add a lot to it in order to make it sound less... Empty? I also really enjoy the original song, though, don't get it twisted.
It's also based on a MIDI file, but heavily modified. For one, because the original drums were really loud by default, I just used some snare and hi-hat samples to make my own drum patterns for it, and I think it sounds a lot nicer! I think all of the other instruments are basic chip waves, to give off that classic DS feeling, so in some roundabout way, Ultrabox's sample-loading mechanic made it so that every instrument in this song is a chip wave. Huh.
Also I know that Central City's theme is based on the theme for Diamond Dust: Act 1 in the Mega Drive version of Sonic 3D blast, but I think it's just funnier to call it "Central City" on this album rather than "Diamond Dust"!
"That's What Big Kids Do" is named after a line of dialogue in the *fictional* creepypasta "Gather Rabbits: Games For Big Kids" (if you know, you know). I utilised Ultrabox's weird looping system to make most of the intruments used in this song sound strange and thin, and I think it's a cool effect I might use some other time.
Though I only realised it after the fact, the name "Sweet Sugar Song" is absolutely a reference to the Strawberry Machine song "Sweet Cake Song", though the two songs don't sound very similar at all. The first third of this song was made pretty early on, before I decided to add more to it to make it a fully fleshed-out song.
"Old-Web Revivalism" was named after the term used by Neocities user melonking, and it describes what is basically Neocities' whole message! I suggest you check it out if you haven't already, it's very good!
It's the final song (before the remixes and instruments section anyway) so I wanted it so have a feeling of finality, like we've reached the present, where there are efforts being made to revive the old internet. I'm also very proud of the sounds I used in this song.
"Intermission 3 ~ 白色金魚", translating to "White-Coloured Goldfish" and read aloud as "Shiroiro Kingyo" is another Kidorikko reference, what a surprise! I tried my best to copy the first few measures of their song "Momoiro Kingyo" and turn it into a super short chiptune song. The bass definitely isn't correct, but whatever. I had the title in mind for a while because "Shiroiro Kingyo" is just fun to say, so I'm glad I got to finally use it.
The "Metronome Mix" part of "ヒステリー (Metronome Mix)" is, again, another reference to Kidorikko's "METRONOSE". This was more or less the original version of "ヒステリー", (as I took parts out to make the "normal" version,) minus the weird sine waves heard all the way to the left, which were the result of sloppily converting another song I made to a MIDI file, then importing it to Ultrabox. I thought they sounded weird and cool :)
"Summer In The Pool (Chiptune Version)" was inspired by CMYK's chiptune version of SOCOPO's "SOCOPOGOGO". It's kinda funny, though, because most instruments used in my cover of Summer In The Pool were already chip waves, just modified a bit, so I had to try to make them sound even more primitive!
Fun fact: I actually missed out two measures in the normal version, which have been added in this version. It's VERY clear when I had to move around the vocals to accomodate for it if you've listened to the original song a lot!
I figured that "Summer In The Pool (Instrumental Version)" would be a nice way to close out the album. I was tempted to include a version that's JUST vocals, but the recordings I have of the vocals, as stated before, include a lot of noise out of virtue of having been recorded using an Iphone, so maybe not...

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