Arum Online's Bonus Newsletter - 6-Month Anniversary

Well, it’s that time of year again that comes by every so often - it’s been 6 months since I ended my hiatus and released my first single in 4 years. I wanted to write a short newsletter giving an update on my music before the long-awaited Arum Spring Newsletter drops on ███████, 2024! Stick by ‘til the end to read a (short) update on my first comeback live show and to give this newsletter’s playlist track recommendations a listen. First, I want to answer a fan question that I got in response to the last newsletter:

the sicilian simpleton asks - can you post the newsletter daily or, preferably, minutely?

Nope! On to the newsletter:

Speaking of the Past 6 Months…

Since releasing Startup Sounds on August 25, 2023, I’ve released 6 singles, gotten over 20,000 streams on Spotify (and over 2k on Apple Music as a nice lil’ bonus), sold exactly one song on Bandcamp (shout-out to that one fan for rounding out my 401k), and played 0 live shows. All in all, a pretty solid 6 months! I genuinely want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me and listened to my music, whether it was one stream or a hundred streams. Any amount of time spent listening to my music is really meaningful to me.

Not getting much love from Chicago on Apple Music, but hey, I can sell out stadiums in Mexico City, baby

Speaking of Artwork…

I just released my latest single, CTRL. It’s a rhythmic, dystopian dance track that has an unrelenting, deep bass that was really fun to make (bonus points if someone can listen to the track and guess which WWII-era speech is sampled) (also don’t report the song for a copyright strike). The track itself has gotten a pretty good reception so far, but I really want to take a deeper look at the artwork, made by my lovely assistant, who can be found @prushman on Instagram:

Wild, right? I think this artwork really encompasses the stand-out aspects of CTRL - the ominous, vague political speech, the feeling of an unrelenting force, and, most importantly, the weird other-worldly orb.

One of the reasons I really dig this artwork is because it’s a reminder of the role that album covers used to play before streaming. When browsing record stores, it was a coin flip whether you had the opportunity to hear a record before buying it. Sometimes the clerk would be able to recommend something, but sometimes you’d have to take a chance and you’d end up with Weezer’s Raditude.

Listening to this album as a young, idealistic, bright-eyed Salvadoran from St. Louis really solidified my transition from rock into electronic music, so thank Weezer and this awful album if you’ve listened to Love Has Come Around in the past month.

Before streaming, album covers were sometimes the only thing a listener had to go off of to decide whether they wanted to the take the chance on buying a record. Hell, one of the most influential electronic albums for me was Digitalism’s Idealism, which I purchased on a whim after seeing the cover:

Just weird enough to be a dance record, just subdued enough to avoid being a David Guetta record. In short, a perfect mid-2000’s electronic music cover.

This is all to say, the art for CTRL is eye-catching, unique, and just crazy enough for me to confidently say that seeing the art for the record would make me pick it up, beckon a friend over, and say, “what the hell? this looks crazy. I hope there’s a Winston Churchill sample in there somewhere” before promptly shoplifting it. Shout-out to Prushman for making a killer cover - he’s also making the art for my next single, LSW, so keep an eye out for that.

Speaking of Playlist Recommendations…

Here are just a couple additions to the ever-expanding Spotify Newsletter playlist that you can listen to here:

• SF4AM - Haight Street Stroll:

  • The Ridge Racer soundtrack meets a jazz organ in this complex, hype-inducing track. Their Spotify profile picture has (what I assume to be) the band dressed up as pseudo-power rangers, which really fires a lot of neurons for me

• Digitalism -

  • Writing about Digitalism has me thinking about Digitalism, which has me listening to Digitalism. Here’s a Digitalism track if you’re curious about what the hell I’m talking about

Speaking of Future Music…

Here’s my release schedule for the next couple months:

• LSW: 03/29/2024 - “House Edit of a Classic City-Pop Track”

• Neon Vinyl: 04/26/2024 - “Warm, Danceable Synthwave Track Featuring Half of Cymatica on Vocals”

• .beyond_____(ECSTASY) ALBUM: 05/31/2024 - “Arum’s First Album - Will Probably Be Good”

One last update - I’m currently setting up the live album release party for .beyond_____(ECSTASY) and shooting for late May/early June. I’d love to see you there :)

and that’ll do it for this bonus newsletter! Remember that you can submit questions by responding to this email that I might answer in future newsletters. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in ███████, 2024 :)

gato de relajacion