Studio Report: The Shadow Presence
Written on 6 Apr 2025
The songwriting for what would eventually become The Shadow Presence started all the way back in February 2015, although it was not originally about writing songs for the new album. This was the first time I started to participate in February Album Writing Month, which has since become a tradition and the source for the majority of new Vortech songs (most of which are not yet released, but will be!). During FAWM 2015, the song Aural Disconnect launched the participation, and ended up being included in The Shadow Presence almost as-is, 7 long years later! The following year, in February 2016 FAWM event, another two songs were written that would be on the album: From Biodeath to Persistence and Photon City. The first one would still change some before the album, but it was fairly close to the final result as well, as was Photon City. But while these songs were written, it wasn't still entirely the actual songwriting for this album. That finally started in the summer of 2016, when a large number of songs were written for the purpose of being on the album. This songwriting process was so active, that we eventually had 24 songs demoed by the end of the year 2016. All songs were posted to our Youtube channel, where we allowed fans to vote for their favourite songs to be included on the album. You can still find the original demos there, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1gg-FuPM1o&list=PLjP_hwyQP5M5IhhvwZA5LuOVas2pShcal&pp=gAQB0gcJCV8EOCosWNin - The results of that vote were 9 clear stand-out songs (at that time) that finally ended up on the album. However, as the process took unexpectedly long, a further 6 more songs were written before the album was released in early 2022. The work towards the lyrics had started in bits and pieces here and there, but the core work was done and completed in May 2018, where all the songs had their initial lyrics completed. The finalization took place later on, while preparing them for the session vocals a few years later. More on that below. Interestingly enough, all the final guitars for the album were fully recorded all the way back in August-September 2018, many years before the album finally came out. All bass tracks were also finished during that session, with the goal being a release in 2019. Right after the recording was finished, the work towards the demo vocals themselves started, and were completed in October 2018. At this point, we were still planning for Mikko to record vocals like on the previous album, but unfortunately the schedules could not meet up and eventually a session vocalist was brought in. During the downtime around that time, the EP Impenitence was finished. But as time went on, in another first, this time it was a professional session vocalist from the UK that did the vocals for the album: ICanBeFree. He recorded the final vocals near the end of 2021 and these are the vocals you hear on the final album. As time went on and on while waiting for vocals before ICanBeFree joined in, the time was spent in trying out yet another different method for the programmed drums. And this is the method we use to day, as it is extremely efficient and sounds as great as it is simple - using a MIDI drum beat library recorded by an actual drummer. So we simply take the programmed drum lines, and replace the notes with the ones from the actual drummer's recorded MIDI with all different additional notes placed in by hand. So essentially what you hear is a real drummer. And finally, when it was clear the original vocal plan wouldn't work out, the search for a session vocalist started in summer 2021, and that's how ICanBeFree got the assignment, and finished it in record-time! And we could finally release the album in January 2022. == Equipment Guitars - LTD SC-607B - Kemper Profiling Amp (for DI recording) - Toontrack EzMix (for the guitar tone) Bass - Ibanez BTB 555 - Kemper Profiling Amp (for DI recording) - Tech21 Bass Driver DI VST plugin for the bass tone Drums - Addictive Drums 2.0 - Ugritone drum beats library for the actual drums Vocals are unknown though...