A tale of voluntary homogenisation

Exuvia's narrative is an observation of human behaviour: where the desire to belong drives the adoption of a prefab identity, leading individuals to appropriate uniform traits that ultimately render them indistinguishable from one another.

As the albums theme is a story, Exuvia is the first Drosophelia release to feature multiple songs as actually half of the tracks contain lyrical content.

Production notes

Unlike predecessor Imago, the sound design is much more geared towards the futuristic and features less intercultural pieces. In part this can be attributed to the extensive use of modular synthesis* though there are more fragile, organic moments to be found. It does end on an oddly ironic bossa nova, after all.

As a result the vocal performance is stylistically varied and features anything from shouting to crooning, as long as your definition of crooning resembles that of a fractured ransom note built out of cut up letters.

Because Exuvia was written mostly during COVID-19 lockdowns, the production benefited from uninterrupted focus, allowing for a more elaborate mixing and mastering process than before.

*The sonic signature of the album was provided by certain well-known modules from Mutable Instruments, while the record also embraces multi-channel FM synthesis provided by an old Yamaha TX-802 unit.

Plugins built for the occasion

As before, the albums production also employs hand-written utilities available on this site. For this release the newly created plugin was:

• HomeCorrupter which featured more or less on every track to degrade a sound in several levels of prominence. In fact, the recurring reprises of Auto-Iconoclasm are nothing but a live manipulation of this plugin processing the original song.

Exuvia is available for streaming and download on all major services. You can also follow Drosophelia on Instagram.