Here I wanted to realize the idea to produce a track that keeps a constantly high energy level with neither longer breaks nor ever getting tiring or boring. I wanted to symbolize in it my fight against the demons in me, which I have to lead every day in order not to sink into harmful ways of thinking and behaving. In the course of life you have to learn the ability to become master of your emotions and to analyze your own feelings and those of the people around you with some emotional distance in order to be able to weigh up how bad a situation really is and what is the most sensible way of behaving in any situation. That’s what this track is about, so to speak, symbolizing in the first part and the two drops the drivenness and restlessness due to the inability to sufficiently control my emotions, and in the last part the liberating feeling of slowly acquiring just this ability due to all the difficult and stressful situations that you have experienced and that have brought you to the edge of the abyss several times. Only in this way can you take your life in your hands and overcome your own shadows. That’s what the track should be about.

Therefore, although I used exactly the same wild drum pattern in the first and last part of the song, a mixture of orchestral and electronic percussion that builds up and gets faster and wilder, I built up a very dark atmosphere in the first part by using different vocal textures, classical instruments and a saturated, aggressive driving sub bass. In the last part I then created the opposite mood accordingly, more about that later. With this I wanted to leave open the interpretation possibility that, although the circumstances (symbolized by tempo and drum patterns) do not change, one can turn much from the bad, oppressive to the good, feeling free, by actively controlling one’s own interpretation of these and modifying one’s own attitude and way of thinking. Of course, one can also understand it in such a way that the depressions devour one little by little and one seeks “liberation” from this situation through suicide. To be honest, I originally based my conception of this track on the latter interpretation, since this theme plays a big role for me. Also this is why “Leavin My Shadow Behind” is a well-fitting name since its a double entendre. It could mean that you are actually getting better OR that you leave your physical body behind by committing suicide. After a failed suicide attempt, you feel completely empty, because you have already finished with life. In the best case, you perceive this emptiness as a second chance to fill your existence with meaning, as i am trying to do with this music project here.

After the first dark energetic part follows a very atmospheric buildup, in which I created some mysterious dark noises, which in combination sound as if you are surrounded by strange beings in the shadows, whose breath and indefinable sounds you hear in the darkness. The sound becomes denser and slowly an unusual strange rhythmic sound stands out in the background, approaching and then revealing itself as the main element of the drop. For this I warped percussion elements and processed them with a complex automated Spectral Resonator, as whose midi input I chose the subbass, so from the actual percussion elements I generated a rhythmically very complex bass-like sound, whose parameters are constantly changing. This is joined in the first drop by vocal plucks as a second main element and some other sounds in the background. The drop has a strange rhythm, seems gloomy and driving. In the second part, the style element of morphing atmospheres already known from “Souls Tango In Dead Cities” comes into the song again, replacing the percussion “basses”. This sound has a disorienting effect. I wanted to use it to represent the feeling of hopelessness from the struggle with one’s self.

After the first drop comes – not, as you would expect – a chill intermediate section, but directly the second drop, which is a variation of the first but rhythmically it’s even more complex. With this I wanted to symbolize the mercilessness of depression, which can always catch up with you and the emotional exhaustion that comes with it. It also has smacking, gnarling demonic sounds woven into it, so I was trying to express how depression saps one’s energy.

Already during the second drop, however, new orchestral elements build up in the background, until at the end there is the change in the track already mentioned at the beginning, which hints at the way out of the depression. The rhythm from the first part starts again, but this time accompanied by piano, strings, especially a violin stands out here with a beautiful uplifting melody, and finally a whole orchestra.

Some nasty demonic bass glitches from the drop break through the drum pattern, but these are swallowed up by the orchestras, which continue to rise in volume and tone, in a climax of energy and confidence that is the most acoustically dense part of the entire album. (I used so many layers and automations for this track that my CPU of 12 x 3.8 GHz, is running at about 150% capacity each time here. At a certain point, I couldn’t get the project to play anymore, so when I wanted to make changes to this project, I had to make the changes virtually numb and then bounce the whole song to hear how it sounded. Working on this brought me to the brink of a nervous breakdown several times…). At the end, piano, strings and a few other orchestral elements remain for the outro at first, slowly dissolving, again with a successive tempo reduction, before the main theme at the end of the track is repeated by an angelic, stretched boy’s choir vocal texture as a symbol of spirituality and purification. Here I was inspired by tracks like “Atlas Song” and “Indian Summer” by Jonsi & Alex.