Why these songs matter

Content note: this essay discusses bullying, physical violence, depression, and the loss of a friend to suicide.

Where the songs come from

I write these songs because there are things in my life that I find difficult to talk about. Putting them into lyrics gives me a way to say what I mean, even when I can't tell the whole story.

Some come from family, others from being bullied at school or from relationships that went wrong. Some are about people I've lost. A few of the details need to stay private, especially where other people are involved. So I use metaphors. There is a real memory behind them, even if the song doesn't describe exactly what happened.

I can still hear those memories when I listen back. Some make me sad. Others remind me how much has changed and how much I have to be grateful for now. All of them helped make me who I am.

I wanted to write a little more about that here. If you've spent time with these songs, I'd like you to know why I made them.

Gravity: pulled into another fight

Gravity comes from a relationship where I felt I was being pulled into a fight whatever I did.

I tried to stay stoic and neutral. I thought that if I didn't react, or didn't give the argument anything else to feed on, I could avoid making things worse. But staying quiet could become a problem too. There always seemed to be another reason to fight.

That's what I was remembering when I wrote the song: trying to stay out of a conflict and finding myself back in it with someone I'd been close to. It still makes me sad.

I'm writing about how that relationship felt to me. I don't want to turn this into a public account of someone else's faults.

No One Moved: when nobody made room

No One Moved comes from being bullied at school.

I was left out, and sometimes I was beaten. People around me saw what was happening and looked away. I remember feeling that there wasn't any space for me and that nobody cared enough to help.

Being hurt was bad enough. Knowing that other people could watch and do nothing stayed with me too. That's where the title comes from.

I don't want to go through every incident here. I've carried those memories for a long time, and writing the song helped me express how it felt.

The Future Never Came: an unanswered email

The Future Never Came is about a friend I lost to suicide. He had depression. We'd made music together before, and he was a really good singer.

While I was abroad studying, he emailed me about doing another gig together. I didn't answer straight away. I thought we were good and that there would be plenty of time to reply, come home, and make music again.

When I got back, I learned that he had died.

I still think about that email. He was asking about something I wanted to do too, and I'd assumed it could wait. I had imagined us playing together again. There were things I thought we still had ahead of us, and suddenly he wasn't there.

His depression and his death can't be reduced to an unanswered email. But that is part of my memory of losing him: expecting more time with a friend and finding out there wouldn't be any.

The song comes from that sadness. Writing it doesn't settle anything for me. It gives me a way to remember him and the future I thought we'd have.

The music that kept me going

When I was younger, music helped me through some very sad periods. Linkin Park was a huge part of that.

I heard something genuine in those songs. The lyrics and the sound made me feel that somebody understood a kind of pain I recognized. I could spend time in that music, imagine a different life, and believe things might get better.

It helped me cope when I didn't know what else to do. I still remember how much that meant to me.

That's why I say Linkin Park is in the DNA of Graviton Theory. I care about the connection I felt as a listener, and I hope I can offer something of that to someone else through my own songs.

I did get through those years. Some of the negative thoughts and memories still come back, but I have a life with my family now. I've accomplished things I'm proud of. There is a lot I enjoy about being here, and music helped me reach a point where I could see that.

The sound is part of who I am

The music also says something about what I enjoy now. I love this combination of sounds, and making Graviton Theory lets me do something with all the things I've spent years listening to.

Linkin Park was my gateway to hip-hop, electronics, rock, and metal coming together. Later I got into Breaking Benjamin, Static-X, and System of a Down. They all helped shape my taste. I hear those influences in what I'm drawn to, even though I want the songs I make to have their own identity.

I like rap against heavy guitars, the energy of nu-metal, and the way electronics can change the feel of a song. Dubstep is part of that too. I enjoy its aggression and the sudden changes in energy. I want the music to be able to move between those sounds.

Those choices come from listening to music I love and thinking about what I'd like to hear next.

Japan, America, and the voices in the songs

I've been drawn to Japan and Japanese culture since I was a kid. I also grew up loving the idea of America and wanting to visit. I've now been to both countries, and I still love them.

That interest has stayed with me as I've grown older. It affects what I listen to and what I want to make, so it felt natural to bring it into Graviton Theory.

I wanted a Japanese-speaking female voice alongside the English-language voices. I liked the idea of that energy meeting the hip-hop and nu-metal parts, with electronics adding some aggression around it. This is how I've shaped the vocals in the productions; it doesn't mean a Japanese vocalist has joined the band.

Using both languages is a personal choice, connected to places and music I care about. I'm speaking from my own experience of those influences.

You can hear Japanese verses in Fake and When the Last Bell Rings. That mix is something I want to keep exploring.

Why I call it Cyber Nu-Metal

I also love cyberpunk: the imagined futures, the dystopian worlds, and the music that helps give them their atmosphere. Games such as Cyberpunk 2077 have been an influence.

I wanted some of that atmosphere in the music, together with the nu-metal, rap-rock, hip-hop, and electronics I already loved. The Japanese and English vocals are part of the same idea.

Cyber Nu-Metal is the closest name I've found for it. I don't know if every song gets there, or if one label can describe everything I'm trying to bring together. But it gives me a direction to work in.

That's an important part of this project for me. Alongside the difficult memories, there's a lot of enjoyment in it. The music reflects the places I've been, the things I love, and the person I am today.

Making music again

I made music long before Graviton Theory. I played guitar and was in a band with Mike and some other friends. I used Fruity Loops, made remixes, and experimented with techno.

I was never an excellent guitarist or a particularly gifted performer, but I loved doing it. Then I had to study, go abroad, and work. Being in a band became something I couldn't keep up.

I still had sounds in my head and things I wanted to express. For a long time, I didn't have a way to make them sound how I imagined.

After finishing my PhD and building my expertise in AI, I started to see a way back into making music. I knew how to work with these tools, and I wanted to find out what I could do with them.

Graviton Theory started as an experiment. I was curious and wasn't sure where it would go. Then I got caught up in making the songs. I made the first album, then the second, and kept going.

It meant a lot to be able to listen back to something I'd wanted to express for years. I could hear the feeling, think about the memory behind it, and decide what I wanted to make next. I still don't know where this will lead, but I want to keep doing it.

What is mine, and what AI does

AI plays a big part in how I make these recordings. I can't sing these songs or play them as you hear them on the albums, and I want to be clear about that.

I think of myself as an AI expert and a producer of music. I respect the skill it takes to perform and don't want to claim abilities I haven't developed myself.

I write the lyrics. The memories and feelings behind them are mine, and I make the decisions about style, influences, and what fits the project. Working with AI lets me turn those decisions into recordings I can listen to and work on.

I know that some people won't want to listen because of the tools I use. I understand that they have their own feelings about it. For me, being honest about the process matters, as does making something that means something to me.

The question I keep coming back to is whether I can communicate what I'm feeling. Can somebody else hear these songs and recognize something of their own life in them?

Something I enjoy now

Making music is joyful for me now. I want to say that because I've written a lot here about painful things, and there's more to my life than those memories.

Work has been difficult too. A professional falling-out left me feeling betrayed and pushed out. There are still things to sort out, and work and goals I want to pursue. I don't want to name the people or the company involved.

Alongside all of that, making music helps me keep my equilibrium. I enjoy spending time on it. It gives me something to look forward to and a way to work through what's on my mind.

I also miss making music with other people. I've met with Matt at his studio, and we're working toward a real band that can play these songs. I'd love to have that experience again.

What I hope you hear

I hope someone listening feels a connection like the one I felt when I was younger.

Maybe you're being hurt, or you feel left out. Maybe you're stuck in a situation you don't know how to explain. If you hear something familiar in these songs, I hope it helps to know that someone else has felt it too.

Music helped me imagine that my life could be different. I couldn't see how to get there at the time, but it gave me enough hope to keep going.

I have things in my life now that I couldn't have imagined back then. I still carry difficult memories, and some days they're harder to live with than others. But I'm glad I got to see what came after them.

I'd like these songs to give somebody else a little of that hope. That's why I keep making them, and why I wanted to share these stories with you.