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sapient

@sapient
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Songs

22

Joined

2008

My name is sapient (he/him), and I'm 90% metalhead.

I've started taking singing lessons, so maybe things will be different this time around...
Ah, who am I kidding... I'm just going to yell all month again, aren't I? 🤣

Let's do this.

Songs

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12
Cosmic Time Machine by @sapient +1 more #space #space_rock #bridge11
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29
You Were Wrong by @sapient #metal #skirmish #grindcore

Soundboard

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Thanks for the comments (on Faithless); that made my day. Gotta love FAWM's positivity ✊
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Hey, thanks for comment and solid feedback on Every Day! Luckily, the joy of creating a longer form work is enough encouragement to me. I just feel like a good story needs time to breath and grow. I'm still enjoying hearing this one 2 weeks later, so yeah, I think I'm proud of it!

I try to play as many as my drum parts as I can, but I'm a really mediocre drummer, so I record on an electronic kit and fix all my timings in post 😅. This song was even a bit too tough for that and needed to record it around 60% speed. But yeah, the synths these days are very good.
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Thanks for your comment on Cryptonite. So happy you enjoyed. Its such an important message. Let's hope the NFTs disappear as quickly as they popped up!
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Many thanks for the kind words about Too Bourgeois For Me. I take credit for a good chunk of it, but that nice picking is all just some stuff from Band In A Box that follows the little chord progression and structure I came up with to fit the lyrics and vocal melody.
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It might be worth driving the extra kilomile then, stuff is 20% cheaper right now, :)
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Thanks for your comment on "I’m Not a Ghost" -- I like the idea of those being Doctor Who titles!
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Thank you very much for the comments and listens! I may be a bit embarrassed to share my equipment list with you because I don't really have one! At least physically. I rely on the virtual pedals of my recording software. Just for funsies, I will look to see what effects I used on the guitars in "The Story the Spider Weaves". I've got a chorus/vibrato "pedal", Flang guitar with some sort of asteroids effects, and Rotor "pedal" paired with other effects and chorus pedals. It is really a mad scientist experiment in this song haha.
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Thanks for the comments! I should probably put this in the liner notes on "Banned By DistroKid" but they basically said they rejected my submission for "editorial reasons" and that stores would no longer accept content from me via DistroKid. So that was me told. No refund though, obviously.
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Thanks for the feedback on Something’s Burning. Funnily enough, it’s one of the songs that I can hear developing into something more rather than keeping it just stripped back to the uke. Half an idea of taking inspiration from Eddie Vedder and building guitars from the acoustic start, although not sure my capabilities stretch that far!
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I enjoy your amazing work. Sorry we couldn't do one together this year. Maybe next year if I'm still around.
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And I look forward to our ukulele collab next FAWM! 😉
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Sapient singing jazz. Now I know I am living in an alternate Universe. 😉
I thought it hysterical when we did our jazz metal collab years ago.
Hahaha. Now it could become a thing!
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they were tears of joy, yes, but also of hope and certainty that, despite a handful of assholes and bigots, this community is bigger and bolder than that.

(the timing in which I listened to it was... delicate, considering what happened in the forums earlier today, so thank you for the huge comfort your little outro piece gave me.)
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Thank you kindly for your comments and support, and wow you've been really productive on here. Congrats on your FAWMing!
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It's all good. I'm lightyears behind in my listening this year. Gonna try & catch up now that it's March. My Concept Album songs are interesting, but any you care to listen to, I'd be honoured.

See You In The Shadows…
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Thanks again! If you ever do happen to pop by Helsinki, the first beer's on me!
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Cheers for the comment on "Blood of the Witches" and all the compliments!

And hahah, that's REALLY pulling it close! But gotta respect how fast you can work! :D
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Great to see you here!! And thanks for finding me. I knew Max was here but haven't found any others of from the old Amsterdam crowd. How long's it been since we saw each other last .... 10 years? More? Seems like you're very much a FAWM veteran/member of the old guard. Me I'm just a FAWMling, you can tell me by the way walk :). Just been listening to a couple of your songs... intimidatingly good... stupendous stuff.
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Thank you for your comment on Heavy Club
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Just resent you the files!
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Thank you for the comment on "Spiritual Weaponry"! Always a pleasure to brutalise you, hahah!
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Just sent you scratch tracks and lyrics. Happy to do a Zoom call tomorrow to explain my thoughts.
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Ave for the comment on "Nightside Necromancy"! Yeah I admit it has things in there that might be up your ally, heh ;) And no, no HM-2, actually! Just like with the previous ones, I've used pedals made by friends, Shivver by Unsound Circuitry (https://unsoundcircuitry.bigcartel.com/product/shivver) on the right and on the left Frank's Spaghetti by Frank Caskelot Effects (https://m.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100046967083522), as in mr. @hmorg himself!
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I haven't forgotten you! I'm working on the lyrics to try to make the structure work in both styles. I've got a lot more time this weekend, but I think I've got the start of something. I've had 5 other collabs I've been working on!
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OTT's fab. It's my "secret sauce", particularly when it comes to drums (it's on my drum submix on my default template). Guitars will sound amazing with it. And xFer's version is actually *better* that the "OTT" preset of Ableton's multiband compressor, which it is intended to emulate.
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I seldom add any eq to my synths at all. If I use xFer Audio's OTT (which I usually do) it's a multiband compressor, so that allows me to do a small amount of tone shaping. iZotope's Trash 2 also gets used a lot (it was dropped onto the acid house Pigments sequence in "Your attention..." for example) and that usually brings out the mids nicely. I think the secret is that I have literally thousands of different synth tones available and once I've found something close, some judicious knob-twiddling and filter-wrangling can usually get it sitting comfortably in the mix. I've been messing around with synths for more than forty years now, so I'm just about beginning to understand how to get decent results out of one!
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ACTUALLY... handful of dust might be a fun lyric for you, if you're interested...
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Ok, no problem. I hope you'll find new inspiration.
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Sorry I haven't responded yet. I love what you've done, but this weekend has been full to the brim. I will get on the lyrics!
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Thanks for the comments on Another Time.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you for your kind comment on Misunderstood. I suppose it is a musical meditation when the title is given and I find myself feeling the music and the music leads me into playing something. I often discard what I try, you only hear a very small amount of what I have tried. Thank you again for your kind support.
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a-HA! 😂
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I won’t lie, I’ve had to have a sit down and a cup of tea and re-evaluate everything I thought was real :p But for real, that’s incredible you went so far from your normal zone dude! I look forward to checking out the rest of your songs soon, got some catching up to do! For now I am going to go practice my death growl 😁
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Thanks for listening to my first track and the kind words ! 😀
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Thanks for the comment on my track man! If you ever fancy doing a little ping-pong collab give me a shout!!
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Thank you for your unique feedback on my prog metal exploration.
"ears gently massaged with strange things" is quite a way to describe it. I may quote you on that :)
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Would love to hear your take on Collusion Course if you get the time.
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thanks for this, i just messaged you on messenger :)
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Hails for the comment on "Serpent of the Black Pit"! Yes, I finally found myself again :D If you're here for this, you know I'm here to deliver! ;) I'll just have to see if I'll have the time before next week, as we're leaving for Tallinn on Thursday with Hollow Woods to play a record release show. The event is a three-day black metal fest, so we'll be there for the rest of the week.
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Hello my friend! I hope you don't mind but the peep before you in the morph needed to shift to later. 💜 This means you're up!

https://write.fawm.org/songs/282839
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Thanks for the comments and glad you appreciated my note on your other track. I just dropped another one on Cranesong, if you appreciate the detailed feedback, I'll try to hit as much of your stuff as I can.

A lot of other people I try to just keep things somewhat light and encouraging but if you are up for it, I'll drop in some production notes and thoughts on structure / arrangement. Nothing negative but maybe with a bit more critical eye for what is working and where things could maybe go. That is the stuff that has really been grabbing me as of late when we are in trenches on Archivists stuff.
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Thank you for the comments on "Opening of the Gates" and "Labyrintin varjoista"! After black and death metal, this kind of gothic post-punk, like The Cure and Joy Division, is probably my most listened genre. Simply love that kind of stuff, it often conveys darkness in ways metal can't reach. Like The Cure's "One Hundred Years". Oh my, I feel like my soul shatters every time listening to that track.

And yeah, it was a bit difficult to come up with tags for "Opening...", but I feel that it has some folk-y vibes, heheh! Maybe neofolk could've been a better tag? I dunno.
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... also, the twisty riff? You'd have laughed at watching me playing with the MS on the delay.

'Little more ... little less ... nope, a little more'.
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Thanks! Those zecoop drums were already pretty punchy, my only edit was to align them to the grid to make the sequenced instruments easier.
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2:56 on "Automatic"? That's the Zoom G6 on its "ArpMachine" setting, but the input signal's boosted with my DigiTech "Bad Monkey" overdrive.
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Thank you kindly for the comment on Unstoppable! Glad you liked it!
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Thanks man. I can see you've been killing it as well, everything's sounding brutal.

Guitar tone wise, I'm not too proud to admit that I tried to look up Wes Borland's rig from roughly 1999-2000, and emulate it as closely as possible. Thank the heavens for the Audio Assault Re-Amp plugin.
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You're right, and this is what I *love* about this community. You always try something new and end with unexpected and great results. Now I'm even more curious for your in the style challenge...
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"I particularly enjoyed trying to work out where the breathing happens in each of the choruses" - yeah, I had a similar question, especially when I decided to do a double chorus at the end. Quite surprised I got through that, frankly.
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Thank you so much! I'm happy you enjoyed my little trip hop song. Funny enough, I barely listen to this genre but it comes whenever I try something electronic...
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Just sent you an email with my basic outline for the song. Check it out.
We got cut off but I think we covered everything.
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Try this instead: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/5721677104?pwd=NitpVlJvLzZYbm9jeThFekRVQW12UT09

I've got that and the Kumospace rooms open so show up in one if them
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Saw you were in but had problems. Want to try it agaun or head to Zoom?
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Cool. I'm available now if you are. You can just meet me in my Kumospace at www.kumospace.com/beacon. I'll just go in there and wait for you
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Awesome. Looks like we both could be challenged. Maybe we could do something something like your Wobbie collab where you're singing all bubblegum and I am screaming.

Want to do a video chat to talk through ideas? I'm available today.
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Hi Sapient,

Thank you for your feedback on "A creature has many but offers nothing" :)
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I have the "In the Style of" Challenge and more than a handful have said that we should do a collab, as you're style is so different and will stretch me in directions I've never gone.
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Thanks🫡
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Thanks for the listen! The tremolo guitars in the right channel of the mix CLEARLY make it blacked DM, MAYBE you could convince me to go blackend symphonic DM 😄

(I kid)
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Hey Pete, I'll tell you a little story about that Gretsch which makes it slightly more special. A certain Johnny Marr (you might have heard of him 😁) happened to wander into the shop just after I'd bought it. Being a massive Smiths fan, I of course had to chat to him and he was a real gent. I asked him if he would kindly pose with the guitar and he was happy to oblige...

[...]
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Re: ducks. I mentioned in my liner notes for the original lyrics that you can find YouTube videos of all the details. It is all true.
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Ta for the kind words. The low bass hit is NI's "Action Strikes" - the cinematic hits samples, IIRC. As for the mix; one thing I've noticed that makes things clearer is running each track much quieter than I used to. Some tracks on my stuff these days have the gain knocked down by 20dB or more, and yet they still cut through the mix once it's been mastered. And I'm still using Ozone 9 for that. Tried Ozone 10 and hated it—what are they on now, like 12 or something? It looks more like a video game these days...
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Stoked for the prospect of collab!
Man, maybe I have to backtrack to Toontrack's stuff. I got so fed up with drumkit from hell back in the day, especially the snare sounds. I used AD2 for a long while but it's kind of shit as well (the metal stuff at least): D
Now I'm using Bogren's KRIMH, which is awesome but kinda too polished for a lot of the grimier stuff. But the metal machine seems very nice.
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Cheers for the comment on "Five Angles"! Yeah, you're allowed to mention Burzum. While I echo your feelings about Varg being an utter scumbag, I feel he has created art which transcends his mere persona. I, too, worship Filosofem, so that is a huge compliment indeed!
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To be fair, Frodo was pretty introverted. His approach to being the Chosen One was basically, "Well, if I MUST." *Tries something hard once* "I have failed!" *Gives up*
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But what's the other 10%, cheese? Spandex? Ground down guitar picks and spare electronics? Regardless, glad to see you back to melt the faces of the usual suspects and the unsuspecting.
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Aww. Ta. 😊
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Yay, let's go
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Heyyy your stuff has been top FAWM content each year for me, so if you have any interest in collabs I would like to do some ugly noises and maybe even pretty ones
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Awesome to connect Sapient! I'm going to ease myself in since this is my first FAWM, but I'd be up for seeing if we can get a collab in later in the month 🙌
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Sapient! The BEST of FAWM to you - look forward to hearing your tracks!!!
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Good to see you back! Let's make some noise... and call it music. ;)
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Hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi! Hi. 🩵 😊
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Happy FAWMing!
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Here we go again! Have yourself a great FAWM.
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Hey Pete, have a blast or two
Hell, have three
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Oooh yes please! Happy FAWMing!
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If it's tingling, that means it's working.

Hope all is well with you and yours, and that you have the most fabulous February!
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Welcome back 🤘🏻
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Sapient - Ya, just keep yelling!
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Ah so you record behind a sofa, that’s the secret of the Sapient sound. And I thought it was behind the Gates of Hell 😄
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😂 of course beer counts 😂
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yelling is kinda like screaming which is kinda like singing. RIGHT?
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singing or yelling… it’s still vocal chords so I say all is good ! Looking forward to your love songs ❤️
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HELL YES.
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Hey! You too! Let's bring on the mayhem! >:)
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Looking forward to 100% of your output this year!
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Hey Sapient! Always a pleasure to see and hear you around here. I'm fascinated to hear what comes of your vocal lessons! You always surprise and amaze, though.....Best wishes and happy FAWM to you!
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Sapient 🤘🤘🤘 will we get another chance to turn a spam post into two absolute bangers this year?? I'm hoping yes
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Hey, we're all back at it again. Having fun and looking forward to the Groove
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woohoo sapient!!!! RAWK!!!!!
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Hi Peter and welcome back!
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Eeeeee! The gates are open! Of COURSE we’re all gonna have a good one this year, it’s 2024, woooop!
(Ask me again in a week once I’ve moved onto the pulling my hair out stage)
I will try tempt her to the mic for sure but she’s not the most vocal of pusses - might be a quiet one!
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Getting closer to my metal therapy, good to see ya back
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Can we write a duet called "Mildly Disreputable"?
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Hail, noble Lord Sapient, Prince of Loud Harbinger of Shred.
The denizens of Upper Trendleby Down send greetings and are busily fashioning listening bunkers as I sit dictating this missive.
Good to see you here again, bro. 😎
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Very much looking forward to hearing you bring the noise once again.
Time for another collab?
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Happy FAWM!!!
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Sure you’re ready, sure you’re steady ………….. only a few days to ……. GO! Have a blast and FAWM on!
Singing lessons eh? hmmmm
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You're heeeeeeere! Hooray!

Yes yes yes, bring on the chills, let's do this thing.
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