CALIPHATE

Several years ago now, I released a few bits of music as CALIPHATE. I honestly can't remember where I got the name from, and in truth I don't really like it that much. If/when I release any more music as a solo artist it will probably be under a different name. Back then I listened to a LOT of electronic music - The Prodigy, Orbital, Carpenter Brut, The Algorithm - and that definitely influenced what I wrote. I never got very good, mainly because my laptop would start to choke once I got to 4 or 5 synthesisers and some processing, so I could never really do anything advanced. I did actually release some more music before Unstoppable Force, but it really wasn't very good, so you can't find it any more.

Years and years ago - well before Unstoppable Force - I worked in LMMS, which is possibly the most polished turd I've ever seen. Having hung around in the Discord server in the years since, I've gained an insight into how terrible the code is. It's remarkable that the program runs at all. In late 2021 or early 2022, I can't remember which, I jumped ship to Ardour. Ardour is a pretty transparent Pro Tools clone, but it's honestly better in some areas. For example, it doesn't cost hundreds of pounds for a license, there's no artificial limitations on track and channel count, the routing system is miles ahead, it has a snapshot feature so you don't need to copy the entire project on every revision, etc etc.

I haven't really had the creative energy to make music by myself since starting uni, probably because I've been making music for uni quite a lot. I also kept running into compute limitations pretty much every time I tried to write something, so more solo music will have to wait until I get a better computer.