Artwork: Mark Cooper

About the Project:

Every Vain Human is the solo project of Sound Designer, Composer and Multi-Instrumentalist ARKANE. On his debut album, Mourning Person, Every Vain Human aims to merge the heaviness and macabre of Metal and Goth, with the composition and intricate sound design of film scores and electronic music. “I wanted to fully capture the feeling of dread, anxiety and impending doom I’ve been feeling the past couple of years about aging, mortality and the world as a whole.”

ARKANE: Guitar, Bass, Piano and Analog Synths, Production, Sound Design, String Arrangements, Drum Programming, Vocals, Special FX and Mixing.

Inspirations:
DJ Shadow, Kevin Shields, Justin Broadrick, Johnny Jewel, Tangerine Dream, Noah James Shebib, Graeme Revell, Aphex Twin, William Bevan, Gregg Araki, Vincent Gallo, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, John Carpenter, Trent Reznor, Robert Smith, Geoff Barrows Twitter feed, Stephen O Malley, and all the sound sorcerers and equilibrium disrupters out there.

About the Artist:
ARKANE was born in Providence, Rhode Island. When he was six years old he heard Eddie Van Halen and then told his grandpa that he wanted to conquer the world with righteous riffs. So Gramps, a jazz bassist, sprung for guitar lessons. By age 13 he was ducking past bouncers to play with college rock and punk bands around Boston. He later attended the Berklee College of Music where he honed his composition and production chops. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.

Recording Process:
All instruments were recorded live and heavily edited and treated.

Guitar:
Each note of every guitar chord was tracked separately so that each note of the chord could be treated and panned differently and then layered to infinity. The goal was to get the guitars to sound like giant sonic disturbances that were disorienting like an image coming in and out of focus. The track “Ocean of Drown” is comprised of more than 100 guitar tracks.

Strings and Synthesizers:
I notated and composed the string arrangements and then transposed them for synth and was painstakingly working towards achieving something akin to the old Mellotron string sound Led Zeppelin had on “Kashmir.” Various analog synths and guitar pedals were used to create the sound.

Drums:
At times I wanted the drums to be really mechanical, rigid like old industrial records. But at the same time, I wanted them to have ghost hits, dynamics, tempo and signature shifts like a live drummer.