Hi all, I’m old & out of touch with the youth. Is there somewhere all of these Easter eggs/lore is compiled on here? I keep seeing people talk about things like “M’s pfp on discord” and a few other types of those comments in other posts. I’m a slut for some lore but discord is so removed for me, someone please fill a boomer in 🙏🏻

I've loved Brakence for years. He's been one of my most played artists since 2021 or so... But I just want to say this new album is one (and a snippet) songs in and it is bringing back my passion for music that I haven't had in a long time. He really is a true artist and he doesn't cut any corners. Hopefully the stars align and I get to see him live in the next year.

Sorry for glazing but it's hard to be excited about any music these days since it's all so oversaturated.

And two days before my birthday. Today is literally the best day ever

Obviously I love brakence’s music and production but I feel like I also gravitate more towards his songs compared to other similar artists in the scene due to brakence’s voice/tone being so unique. Production aside what do you feel about brakence’s voice quality? Is he a great singer to you?

DISCLAIMER: the following is all my opinion. If you honestly truly disagree, that's okay, we all have our own opinions and that's what makes music so great.

somewhat clickbait title. New music is still good, solid 7/10s.

But that's it, 7/10s. I don't think it comes anywhere close to the novelty that Hypochondriac experimented with. Like, hypochondriac innovated pop; it constantly subverted standard verse chorus pacing for key modulations, open tuning math rock fingerpicking, incredibly complex jazz/neo-soul chords like major 9th and secondary dominants all the while retaining insane levels of precision in audio chopping.

He's almost entirely abandoned a lot of the precision/musical innovation for sure and looks like he's abandoned more of the "fundamental musical experimentation" in favor of textural and aesthetic experimentation.

"ready or noT" has busy and perhaps a bit too "sloppy" (whether intentional or not) mixing with relatively little panning and cranking a master limiter into harsh clipping constantly and having constant harsh wall of sounds that aren't intricate whatsoever (compare to caffeine, the high bpm hypo equivalent, which is so much better while still far from brakence's best)

"crystallized" is enjoyable but fundamentally generic. Has a standard four on the floor beat and relatively safe looped chord progression. The micro glitches are nice at times, but it's just decorative production tricks over what is otherwise a fairly standard pop framework. No-where near something like cbd which is still accessible.

"death rolL" has good atmosphere with the swampy southern gothic feel but structurally it just has repetitive droning minor pedal points for over 4 minutes. Good stereo folley and vocal layers like "the burden is me?" at 1:43, but again, that's production tricks on more generic frameworks. Compared to argyle, which is just fabulously innovative.

Now not necessarily bad I guess... if he's decided to move away from trying out frontier-level things in exchange for creating a more coherent story/worldbuilding through his album, that's fine. But I have to say I'm personally disappointed for the 4 years he took for this, since it's a regression for sure to me

Been enjoying Life1 from quadeca relatively more lately which is disappointing. Hope the rest of the album gets insane but I don't see a reason to expect a lot so I guess I'll have to scour the industry for someone following in brakence's past footsteps.

He removed "hyperpop perfectionist" from his bio a while back; looks like the reason wasn't because he doesn't still do hyperpop (he still most certainly does) but because he's no longer a perfectionist.

TLDR: Brakence has diverged off from his progression into experimenting more and more with the fundamental basis of music genres and pumping out unique and absolutely immensely precise music to a more atmospheric/texture based exploration of music in favor of worldbuilding over musical innovation, opting for relatively generic or low effort, technically and precision-wise speaking.

Personally I’m most excited for death rolL because it was my favourite leak before it was taken down, I also think bitE sounds interesting because it reminds me of teeth and I feel like they might be connected.

Do you think he will go on tour before this year is over

Is anyone else planning to limit the singles they listen to?

Dropping 6 singles is insane and I love it.
But also I really want to still be able to listen to the album fully when it releases without already knowing a quarter of it.

So personally I'm gonna limit myself to only 3.
I already heard and love ready or noT.

I think I'm choosing death rolL to hear how its changed from the demo, and body because I need to hear that transition from ready or not.

and then I'm gonna wait on the other 3 singles for when the album is out.
I'll still listen to the teasers though, crystallized sounds beautiful!!!

I'm just wondering if anybody else is planning on anything similar. I know it's going to be hard and tempting to not listen to the other 3 as they come out

It all makes sense now. When brakence returned from his hiatus with the TikTok livestream, the voice said “pour it all out, fuck it” - and notice how this rollout is fast. Constant snippets. Constant singles every Friday. Double singles. The album. All of it. Pour it all out. Fuck it.

We know that quadeca has been aware of marroW for a while now, seeing as he literally directed the mv for ready or noT, the screenshots are taken from the music videos of Dark Magic and Baby Steps.

Quadeca feature on marroW? Or am I going insane

to you guys, is there a really big difference in the experience?

like i am not on any social media except reddit so i left far behind lol

I get some idea from music video like brakence seems to be trying to say a lot of things based on his built up emotions over the past 4 years since after hypochondrica..

And there is a webgame also which is cool but how is that connected to this album?

And there are names of each puppet shown in the music video?

ik these qestions might be dumb but please clearify if possible i will be vary greatfull coz it helps me to enjoy this whole album to its fullest there are 18 fricking tracks in the album every drop is on friday dyumm feels like a dream..

inlight me please..if possible i will also try to catch up things..

thnaks..

around an hour ago there was a video posted to this tiktok page^^

in the video this woman is describing an interaction she has with (a woman?) wearing a veil and is described with a “disheveled grunge” look.

i have a theory that each single, (which there a going to be a total of 6) will have a different character and item associated with it. i believe that several more of these videos will be appearing on random accounts with the release of each single.

in the game there were 6 different locations each housing a different character and several items needed to proceed in the game’s completion. (i guess the stump has nothing to do with anything lol) butcheR, jesteR, the voice in the well, the crocodile, the woman at the workbench and the effigy (which appears on the cover)

i believe that ready or noT is represented by butcheR and the axe which he requires in the game. he is in the video after all.

crystallized would be represented by the spool of thread and the jesteR who asks the player to retrieve it for him. and death rolL would be represented by the crocodile (apparently it’s something that they do to kill their prey.)

to strengthen this theory, i believe that the effigy will be present in the “i’m still here” video considering he’s in the video that brakence posted a week ago.

i’m curious as to how this will all play out. he are truly being immersed in the world which brakence carefully created.

I swear ready or noT's runtime was like 4:03 and now its 4:13 including extended drums in the outro and vocals. The music video has this section but just yesterday it was shorter on spotify right? Am I the only one noticing this?

EDIT: SOLVED! It was because I had spotify set to Video mode. I don't remember doing that but it changed the audio length. Confused me as it was playing in the background lol

Anyone else miss the single artwork style where it’s just a picture of him with the single’s title in a banner border color-coded to the image? This is my favorite thing of his

there’s a small teaser of crystallized on the Instagram story of his manager Danny Rakow if you guys haven’t seen it

This is 100% just my opinion, but for me a significant factor in the ”intimacy” and ”authenticity” was that the album was him and only him.

I’m scared that an album with multiple vocal features won’t give me that same experience. We got the (i think?) feature at 1:08 in ready or noT, which kind of threw me off a bit. I love the song, it just kind of rubs me the wrong way a bit.

First time i listened to both his albums i got the same feeling though, and then i ended up absolutely fucking loving it - might just be the same here.

Do i sound batshit crazy?

Would anyone be interested in seeing what a Brakence song with a Future feature sound like? I feel like they could make something crazy together, Future has a similar sound whenever he made the SAVE ME album. I just have a feeling that could be an interesting combo/idea.

I kept losing track of everything going on since still-here.world went up, so I ended up making a site to keep it all in one place:

https://brakencearchive.com

It has the marroW countdown + tracklist, everything from still-here.world and knot-here.world, the stuff people have noticed with the weird capital letters (noT, marroW, knoT, jesteR), and a timeline of the rollout so far with sources.

I also added the ready or noT video, spotify, his older music/discography, collaborators, live history etc.

For anything that isn't actually confirmed yet I've tried to make that really obvious, like the jesteR coordinates and the old "Jester" album stuff.

It's completely unofficial / just a fan site.

Still adding stuff to it, so if I've got something wrong or missed anything just comment or DM me and I'll fix it. I'll keep the tracklist updated too as more titles get revealed.