Looking back, 2019 was the year when I firmed up ‘my own style’ as Arctic Plant and moved into a very serious direction with it, mostly driven by the new orchestral sounds. It was clear to me that my second album was going to be a concept album just like its predecessor – so I also had reinforced my artistic identity in ‘the big idea’. The concept behind ‘The Black Riders’, though was very late to that party. After all the music was finished, I found out that the Nazgûl from Lord of the Rings would make a perfect fit with the dark atmosphere of the songs (please find more about the making of this album on its individual page!). So once again, ironically, I had a concept fit on top of existing music instead of music that was composed to bring a concept to live.

Besides the music itself, I also wanted to improve my overall sound and the production. So I bought a book about music mixing and mastering which I studied up until a point where I felt like I made a big step – and I did. ‘The Black Riders’ is a whole new world of sound compared to ‘The Lake of Time’ (those two albums kind of have a relationship similar to ‘When Dream and Day Unite’ and ‘Images and Words’ by Dream Theater). Every once in a while, I thought about remixing and / or remastering my old albums. But for now, I won’t do it for two reasons. First, I want to spend my time on creating something new instead of messing with existing material. Second and more important to me, I like to hear the development as I go through my musical history. Every individual album is a statement of the maximum I could do at the time of its making. And I don’t want to rewrite my own history but rather learn from it – and that’s what I keep doing every day.

The album then was released on christmas eve of 2019, only two years after the first one. Not only on bandcamp but also on all the streaming platforms, which – sadly – are an important part of getting recognition as an artist in today’s times. The echo was overwhelming. I had a small amount of actual people from around the world listen to my music without me advertising. After a few weeks – of course – that curve flattened, but it made me feel like all the efforts I had put into the new album had earned me a little audience. At this point I have to note that I’m making this music for myself and I’m not desperately striving for attention but still, it is a nice extra motivation for me and gives me a feeling of some professionalism to have an actual audience!

After all, the work on this album was so intense that I didn’t write any new songs for a potential follow up. Looking back, this focus surely helped ‘The Black Riders’ become such a huge step forward for me. The funny thing is that on the exact day after the release, I sat down writing about 80 % of a new song that was going to be named ‘Brothers and Sisters’ for that exact potential future album. And here we go again! I kept riding that wave of productivity with the attention for ‘The Black Riders’ acting as a big boost.

Then COVID happened…

tbc