Silent Confidant Notes:

After Subterranean Entity, We got asked if we wanted to do a tape release for Industrial Coast, a UK label that has an amazing lineup of experimental musicians. We said absolutely!

Initial Concept:

Record in one day, wanted to mix and master but we decided against that, too much work. No food breaks, occasional smoke breaks. The aim was to see if we could capture how the mind deteriorates after constant focus. We recorded in 10 hours if my memory serves. I blew up my BF-22 sallen key module right before we recorded Merger. In the remix process, I realized I have absolutely no idea how I did my parts in this. This album still blows my mind to this day.

After recording, we had listened back and we were talking over cigarettes about life and about the hiatus. Anonymous mentioned these dreams he had been having, 4 in particular, dreams about a shadow figure. I realized this lined up to dream interpretation and probably Carl Jung (we are both a fan). When Anonymous agreed we looked up the shadow, and saw there were 4 stages of the shadow, we listed again and again over the next little bit and realized it fit. Silent Confidant was born. We collaborated on the painting and sent it off. At the time it was the fastest selling tape for Industrial Coast next to Leather Parisi, a much more established and popular artist than us. We were still pretty unknown.

In remixing and remastering this, I was really worried. Honestly, I accidentally produced this to be as great as it is. It turns out that until this point, I had no idea how to master, or stack plugins. This album was mixed, and the master pass was a limiter to volume and that’s it. This album is the one that scared me to touch again.

I did the usual remix, eq, pan, etc. I realized that this is pretty much the album where we were just in the zone the whole time, it was tough to do it right. For mastering, I did full passes, set the stereo image pretty wide because it has to do with dreams. I did mix it differently so its going to be a little different here and there I wanted to bury some stuff a little as more of a whisper than a scream. I also didn’t know about volume matching then and made sure to do it here.

On the tape release, we sent interlude cut in half as the end of Side A and the Beginning of Side B. There is actually a mistake on the run and its only the first half at the end of A. I released Interlude as the full original recording.

Personally, after everything we and I have done, Silent Confidant is my favorite release. From start to end its haunting, its brutal, and it’s the most in tune we have been as a group until The Mirror redo we just released, that recording process was the most insane thing we have ever done, and really shows how we work as a unit. This includes a story of Anonymous coming over to record with me napping and 6 patch cables in my synth and blowing his mind with the patch. I digress, we are talking about Confidant, not The Mirror. I love this album and I really just hope that my work here shows everyone what I hear when I listen to it.

-Aurick Leere



This album was a nightmare for me, quite literally. I had been having this recurring dream of some haunting shadow figure for a few months. Typically, in dreams, you’ll be familiar with your surroundings but upon awakening you realize that where you were looked nothing like what it does in real life. You’ll be in your house but it looks nothing like your house. You’ll be at work but it looks nothing like it. However, in these dreams everything was spot on down to the smallest details. I would be lying in bed and everything down to a sock left on the floor that night would be present. In each dream the shadow figure came closer and closer. It started by walking down the hallway. The next time it was standing in the doorway. Then it was standing over me in bed. Finally, it appeared next to me in bed. It never spoke but it communicated a very strong sense of fear and doom to me. I would wake up panicked and often flailing in bed.

As Aurick said, we recorded this album intentionally putting ourselves in progressive duress as we fasted and took minimal breaks. We planned on doing four 15-minute tracks, then last minute decided to do a brief interlude track. Our process has always been to record first, let it sit for a day or two, then listen back and interpret the meaning of the song and title it as such. After recording, I told Aurick about the dreams and we thought, “well we have four untitled tracks, that might be the content we just recorded.” As we listened through, we realized that is exactly what we had just recorded.

Carl Jung was an inspiration to us in the intent of this project from the beginning so as we looked into dream and subconscious interpretation, we of course looked into some of his work and found the progressive psychological projection of the shadow archetype: Appearance, Encountering, Merging, and Assimilation. Upon further research and listening, we had our titles and concept for the album.

This quartet of dreams started about four months prior to recording this album. I do not know exactly how much time passed in between each dream but I do know that the last of them occurred about a week before we recorded this album. In talking with people close to me, including Aurick, I now know what this shadow figure was telling me. I know what undesirable part of my psyche and subconscious it was presenting me with. Without ever speaking a word it told me a lot of things that I couldn’t dig up myself. It was my Silent Confidant. The figure has not returned since recording this album.

-Anonymous Bosch