it may not seem like it from the way i so often aim to distinctly categorize things, but i am sincerely drawn to The Space Between, and its mysterious ability to enter the forefront without warning. however much i may think i have my vision completely figured out, there is always a chance that some hidden aspect within has yet to make itself apparent, which can range from frustrating to strangely comforting. thus, i would like to make a more direct peace offering to this Space Between. i've certainly never forgotten the value to be found in that which cannot be described, but there is still room for me to improve my relationship with it, and create even more opportunities for that appreciation to be expressed. the high-concept may give me life, but so does the unbridled nonsense. two things can be true at once. many things can be true at once.

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a (likely incomplete) list of people & projects whose artistic DNA had some noticeable influence on this album's creation, or at least crossed my mind during it:

Airospace, Boards of Canada, Cities Aviv, .cutspace, Doseone, [Facy], Impossible Nothing, JAK3, Joeyy, Ka, Marlon DuBois, MIKE, Odd Nosdam, Outside House, Ricky Chix, Ryoji Ikeda, Steel Tipped Dove, V.O.S., Woody, Yoni Wolf

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all material realized within the following Transitional Time Between:
OCT 21 2024 - OCT 31 2024
existing Between [finishing lp Laurel] & [finishing lp VIRLGOID]
existing Between [gf meeting other gf irl] & [gf meeting me irl]
existing Between [pre-election] & [post-election]
etc.
this period feel so strange and dreadful...

{...and remastered multiple times throughout 2025. was an interesting experience sitting on a 'finished' album for over a year, being able to make tweaks to its final sound using all i've learned since its initial production. but for all intents and purposes, the actual contents of this album formed solely within that 10-day period.}

• This album's title, along with most of its track titles, formed much the same way Stayyuiesdfe~====~~'s title did, i.e closing my eyes and watching a sequence of symbols unfold before me.

Also, I didn't find out until the day of release that "kismet" is an actual word. My deliberately nonsensical album title turned out to appear moderately less nonsensical than intended. "Thenkismet" is just a word I made up from scratch!! This is so fucked up!! I can only hope none of the made-up words in the lyrics also turn out to contain real words.

• My initial vision(s) for the cover art had the complete opposite vibe of what we actually ended up with. It was imagined as rather murky & desaturated, conveying a bleaker kind of brain fuzz than what the music would suggest. Here's some notes from that time:

light grayish background, sketchy sona bust portrait, overlay moldy vignette etc // possibly try to have the drawing be in various stages of completion at different spots? like all still bnw sketch style but some regions messier than others // eyes no pupils

sona 3/4 headshot from slight left angle, she faces toward our right, looking down a little, mouth slightly agape, she has no eyes and the right eye (our left) portion would be completely cut out with a white box (cuz Missing Something)

I even attempted making the cover all by myself at one point, editing an unrelated drawing from earlier this year.

Also, this marks only the second ever time in my entire discography (aliases and all) where I truly had zero involvement in creating the final cover art. The first release to hold that title was the @Jhxy #4 album "Shop in Store". Unless I'm forgetting something else, which is entirely possible. We're long past the point of any reasonable person being able to keep track of such things. Either way though, the point remains that this is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

• Every track's vocal stem was recorded in one take, performed alongside the entire instrumental in real time, with varying degrees of improvisation involved. Anything not specifically written in the lyrics was freestyled.

• Beyond the whole Between Space concept, my motivation for the abstract lyricism here was also to demonstrate an extreme approach to Anticon-esque complexity without any underlying pretense of somehow being Real Hip Hop. It just is what it is. Oblique for its own sake, existing in its own little corner. Nothing more, nothing less.

• This passage in TRACK 4's lyrics...

hear my top nine hell-ready recipes, bummer one:
the sess recipe is ice, the thing you need is ice, and we're dumb
climb, one, one [...]

...references this part of the Danfango700 YTP "Our Little Mac Is Back!", a longtime source of vocal stims for me.

• TRACK 5 samples one of my favorite Ryoji Ikeda tracks, "Space".

• The second halves of TRACK 6 & TRACK 7 quickly became some of my favorite moments in the entire Roxy Radclyffe discography, which made it all the more agonizing to keep this album in the vault for over a year. I already considered those sections Iconic and nobody had any idea. I've listened to them more times pre-release than anyone probably ever will.

Also, if I wanted to, I could totally convince you that the capitalized "NS" in TRACK 6's title stands for "NO SEX". It doesn't stand for anything, though. Just an accidental layer of potential meaning I only now realized.

Also also, maybe this is a bit of retroactive narrativizing on my part, but TRACK 7 reads to me like a breaking point of sorts, where I could no longer fully maintain the degree of abstraction necessitated by this album's premise. It wasn't Supposed to be like this; an emotional climax simply willed itself into existence. I'm glad it did, though.

• TRACK 8 makes this LP the third in a row to contain at least one Homestuck reference. IT KEEPS HAPPENING

Also, the lyric "in her house like carpet" references "Burning Men's Soul" from Persona Trinity Soul, known for its use of a bizarre stock rap that famously begins with "Check it out, I'm in the house like carpet". You might know this from a series of shitposts Toby Fox made sampling it. My awareness of it predates that, though. Please clap.