Vane: This one is my baby. You can tell because I mention the stars constantly #astrology #space #iloveconstellations.

Human is probably the most vulnerable song I've ever presented to the other foleys, and in general the most vulnurable song I've ever put out. I started writing it in 2019 and tried over to finish it multiple times over the course of five years. There's genuinely so many scraped versions of this song sitting around in my harddrive, I honestly had resigned myself to leaving it to collect dust because I couldn't get the song to feel Right. But one day I sheepishly showed it to the foleys, and both of them really wanted to see the song through to completion! I'm really glad both of them saw the potential in it, because in the end it turned a really beautiful song.

I often struggled with feeling like I was "human."  I remember describing myself as feeling kind of like a malfunctioning automaton, like I was just built wrong on a fundamental and core level. I think in alot of ways that's why I struggled with finishing the song until I presented it to the foleys. When I tried finishing it before, I wasn't at a point in my life where I genuinely did feel human. I think it took me getting to a place in life where I could accept myself as I am so I could write the song from a genuine and true place.

Though the above sentiment was something I knew I wanted to convey, Rice was actually the one to suggest the robot/artifice route as the main aesthetic for the song along with the new narrative direction. The new direction we settled on was:

• very old, ~100 year old android that's kind of breaking down, in need of updates
• kokoro (iconic must listen by Toraboruta-P) but instead of the scientist lovingly making the heart for the robot but never giving it to it out of concern for its safety, the scientist tell the robot about the heart only to talk about how they don't want the robot to use it because the scientist has been hurt by it before
• towards the end of its life cycle it is regretting only living the life the long-gone scientist wanted for it and yearning the other life it never got to live

This direction choice was also made to transition into the next song smoothly in the context of the album narrative ("android realizes at the end of its life that it still has life to live" -> "len mourning for his old life already lived and gone"). Again this was rice’s thought process. Rice is kind of a brain genius.

rice: human da best song ever made human #1 human numero uno. also i love you vane mwmwmwwmwmah

we used that direction for the initial lyric rewriting but i would say that the concept really evolved and changed as the MV took shape, so i wouldn't really say that it's fully accurate anymore…. it's just one extra interpretation you can take into consideration if you want!!!!

RUNNING BACK ALSO IN THE KOKORO COMPARISON WAS JUST FOR THE CONCEPT OF THE LONG-GONE SCIENTIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AFTER THE END OF HUMAN MIKI CONTINUES TO LIVE A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE'S FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE'S NOT IN DANGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the vocalist we cast for this song is "SF-A2 miki"! (WHO IS ALIVE AND WELL)

it was between her and kiyoteru for a while (his rock vocal mode sounded really good) but we ended up going with miki for reasons as follows: 1. bobot 2. she sounded cute on the track 3. we love her

(we like kiyoteru too) (that's why he got a little cameo) (did we ever confirm that) (the other voice during the human bridge is kiyoteru) (#confirmed)

Miki came out for Vocaloid 2 back in 2009, so she's been around for quite a while. the most striking thing about her original design was how android-like it was, with cybernetic limbs!

we lost them for a little bit during her vocaloid4 era BUT THEN THEY CAME BACK FOR SYNTHV WE CHEERED!!!!!!

the final character design for "Human" ended up borrowing from all three of her designs!! beacuse we love her and we love her and we love her and we love her and we love her

she has always been quite beloved- you may know her from "iNSaNiTY". she's also where the "miki" in "Mikito-P" (1 2 Fanclub, Shoujorei, etc) comes from!! he used to make Miki songs back in the day! so we were really really excited when she came out for SynthV with its beautiful crosslingual abilities that would make it easy for her to sing in English so we really wanted to put her on a song!!! and we love her and we love her and we love her and we love her and we lov

by the way!! people picked up on her tuning becoming more human over the course of the song, but did you ALSO know that her tuning was done in SynthV1 for most of the song, and then switches to SynthV 2 for the final chorus!

art from after we decided on miki, but before we brought on insertdisc5 as the artist (rice)

i've been following insertdisc5's art for a long, long time, way before they became an incredibly successful and acclaimed indie game dev. it's still such an incredible blessing that we were able to get them for the video!! she did such an amazing job, and really went above and beyond- you can read a little more about their behind the scenes process on their bsky thread!

Vane: Human went through a lot of changes, but there were a couple of things that were always musically in my vision. I knew from the jump that I wanted the song to be j-rock and orchestral, and that's not without reason! The song is deeply inspired by Hated by Life itself by Iori Kanzaki (Oktavia's English cover in particular was on constant loop, shoutouts Oktavia!!!). I think the intensity of the guitars and the sweetness of the orchestral instruments just does such a really good job at capturing emotion in a tangible audible form. I feel like I sound like such a cornball but to me this sort of soundscape is just what the human spirit sounds like.

There are a few things that I was very particular about keeping as it become a FLAVOR FOLEY work.

1. "Human" has been the title since the conception of this song and it was deeply important for me to keep that.

2. I wrote what would become the woodwind intro back in 2019 and was deadset on that melody being kept.

3. The prechorus melody has also been the same since 2019!! Originally, it was a much more intense string line, but we ended up changing the arrangement direction of the prechorus to be a bit more minimalistic for better structure. I am quite happy with how the string line sounds recontextualized as a flute line in the final version!

4. I wanted to keep the bridge topline and lyrics as close to the original lyrics as we could. The topline essentially stayed intact, but the lyrics went under a pretty sizeable rehaul in order to fit the new song direction. While I'm much happier with the new lyrics, I still wanted to share the old lyrics. I think it's nice to see how much more hopeful the final bridge and song is in comparison

There's also this awesome touhou ass piano line I wrote that I'm super proud of that I just wanted to point out because I think it's really fun :)

Jamie: being handed this song really felt like something hallowed, and i wanted to do it as much justice as i could manage. the only concrete topline that existed at that point was the bridge, and so i wrote a chorus that was sort of a shuffled-around version of it, tying it off with a little synth reprise of the opening motif.

i can only speak for myself here, but i've struggled with a lot of the same feelings vane wrote this song about. feeling like a real, honest, fleshed-out human wasn't always something i knew.

that being said, probably the proudest, most gratifying moment of my entire career as a musician was when we first played this song live for Digital Stars, and i got to hear a whole room of fellow humans screaming those words we wrote back to us.

Vane: Me too, genuinely. I think in alot of ways it made the part of me that needed to be heard back then finally feel heard. I think

Back in 2021, I wrote a description for the song. Not because it was anywhere near completion, but because I knew the message I wanted to convey to the people who listened. Although the direction of the song has shifted a little (and although I feel kind of corny reading it back) I still think the message is something I want to share since it's something I can say with much more confidence now. Plus, I think it's something my younger self would have wanted to be heard.

"I was always human.

PTSD recovery is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, and I’m still not 100% there yet, but things have gotten better. If you’re on a similar journey and feel too broken to be fixed: remember you’re not broken, just wounded. Wounds take time to heal. You can do it. I believe in you."

the problems prothers.png (rice)

song art by abi | Return?