New song "K432 - Inward Journey" is ready! Watch Music Video on YouTube, + other important updates.
Message from Jeff, June 2024
Greetings again!
We’re now in June already, and this new platform on Substack for monthly Kekal e-Newsletter has been running with 4 posts since March. I’d like to extend my sincerest gratitude for all of you who subscribed to Kekal Updates + Messages and continue tuning in regarding activities around Kekal and other messages. Aside from direct subscribe to Substack, your email address is also added to here when you entered it on Bandcamp. Email open rate is still relatively low (around 20% to 25%), it seems people don’t really check emails nowadays 🤷. However, because Substack has a reliable web-based layout which can be viewed across social media apps as well as its own dedicated app on mobile, every post gets a relatively decent amount of views despite the low email open rate. This is the only platform where you can get updates from Kekal that are free from unnecessary suppression or censorship. I will be taking care of this newsletter myself, and will also post more info than those being shared via social media.
New Song “K432 - Inward Journey” is ready!
The main message for June is about the new song “K432 - Inward Journey”. This is the 2nd song from Kekal's sub-unit K432, and it is a more straightforward, acoustic-guitar rendition and re-interpretation of Kekal’s song “Inward Journey” from the 2020 album “Quantum Resolution”. This song will be released as a digital single across the mainstream platforms on July 12th, 2024. But just like the first song, the music video has already been posted a month earlier on YouTube before the official release date of the single (scroll down and click video thumbnail or button below to watch the music video). The reason is to get cleared of the annoying “copyright issue” tagging by YouTube. How come?, you may ask. Kekal has been unable to receive verification from YouTube for an artist/musician channel to be officially recognized on the platform. They rejected it without any explanation. Because our Kekal Official Channel is still not being treated as a recognized artist channel by YouTube, it means every time there’s a new release, the annoying “Kekal - Topic” auto-generated pseudo-account on YouTube (created because of YouTube Music thing as part of the digital distribution package) will handle the audio content “officially” in terms of copyright. Not only we cannot bring over and manage all those videos posted under “Kekal - Topic” into our channel, if we upload any new video on our channel after the audio of the song on “Kekal - Topic” is processed from the digital distributor, they will tag it as “breaching” such copyright. Yes, the artist breaches its own copyright by using its own song for official music video posted on the artist’s official channel. YouTube won't remove the video on copyright grounds because no one will claim the copyright other than Kekal (and Kekal has its own official channel that YouTube doesn't want to consider it as official), but however they will have “extra reason” to suppress both the video and Kekal channel even further. This copyright system is part of the broken system based on greed, control, and fear. Kekal no longer use that outside of the mainstream digital distribution that requires copyrighted music (they don’t recognize alternative licensing such as Creative Commons, which we use on physical releases and on Bandcamp).
On Bandcamp, the song “K432 - Inward Journey” will be made available along with other K432 songs that will have been ready by then (July 12, if not earlier), not separately as individual singles but as an “upcoming album” with material that is still updating, and you will be able to download available songs through download codes. At least 3 songs should be available by then! That also means album title for the project will be announced too at that time. It will be announced here on next month's newsletter as well, so please stay tuned on this! This is one of the benefits of using Bandcamp. They allow artists to publish material that is still updating, and listeners can have an option to donate a little by paying to download the yet unfinished album, basically to help funding the artist to finish the album. This is a new way of sharing the music openly without barrier between the artists and the listeners, and hope it will be embraced by more listeners of independent music. By the way, let’s watch the music video for now, see below to watch on YouTube.
Personally, I feel that “K432 - Inward Journey” has the closest musical representation of the lyrics, more than the original Kekal version. As part of “Quantum Resolution” album, this song had to be arranged and packaged a certain way in order to fit with the album’s general concept so that it doesn’t feel disjointed when being listened as part of the album. But lyrically, “Inward Journey” speaks about my own spiritual journey. I always wanted to do a version of this song that has a more intimate feel to me personally, kind of singer-songwriter approach if you will, with musical arrangement that really represents the lyrics even it’s not really fitting within Kekal’s canvas. This is where K432 rendition of the song with acoustic guitar finally solves one thing that kept bugging me since it was first recorded in 2019. Here’s the lyrics of the song:
it is a lonely but beautiful journey
walking down the narrowest path
treading on the unfathomable
through the dark night of the soul
past convictions are falling apart
escaping the web of illusory matrix
perforate its sheath layer by layer
as self-structures slowly dissolve
in this present moment of being
surrender to the presence of love
make peace with self and the spirit
letting go all remnants of karmic past
declare soundly that i am here
the kingdom of god that dwells within
taking us to the journey of discovery
and co-create the future of humanity
K432 is a low-profile acoustic guitar music project that I don’t have any expectation in terms of how much it’s going to be accepted and enjoyed by Kekal’s faithful listeners. I don’t make music as a commodity nor to please the masses. I make music for myself first then share it to anyone willing to listen, and it doesn’t matter how many. To me, music is personal self-expression that can be used as a method of healing. I prefer to do the kind of music which resonates the most with my current state of being because I’ve always wanted to be fully honest with myself when it comes to expressing what’s inside of me. Although I will not abandon electric guitar, but at this moment I feel the nudge to use acoustic guitar in a more organic setting and to openly sing in improvised melodies. Acoustic guitar has its body-resonance when played (even mine is a plug-able/electrified version), and I can feel it in my gut from the vibrations of the guitar itself. So, it may be because we can feel the instrument’s vibrations transferred directly through our body, it becomes more intimate and less-mechanical in communicating what we feel.
Restarting Inward Journey Video Podcast
Speaking of “Inward Journey”, I will also be restarting the Inward Journey video podcast. As some of you already know, although it has been suppressed on social media (again - due to the nature of the content, including YouTube for the view counts and video visibility), I have already posted 6 episodes of Inward Journey back in 2023, originally as a monthly podcast series. But I had to take an indefinite pause last year and since then I haven’t had a chance to continue with the new episode. However, thanks to Substack platform where I can put both the written transcript of each episode and embed the video, I will be restarting this video podcast again soon although no more as a monthly podcast. The podcast is listed on Kekal’s main author profile, but published under its own sub-blog/sub-stack: inwardjourney23.substack.com, not under Kekal Updates + Messages. All past episodes will also be re-posted there as well along with transcripts, some have already been posted as you read this message. You will need to subscribe to the podcast to receive updates of new posts even you have already subscribed to this Kekal Updates + Messages, because it has a separate subscribers list. So, please subscribe below if you are interested with Inward Journey podcast.
Below is the Playlist of the first 6 episodes already posted on YouTube in 2023. We live in a time where suppressed knowledge regarding our reality needs to be shared to everyone willing to listen (as in the famous quote: “those who have ears let them hear”), because who knows, it may help to re-adjust how we see ourselves, others, and eventually help choosing our path in the world that is currently transitioning and splitting into 2 separate collective pathways. The time is getting short.
The Relevance of K432 Project to Kekal’s Future
Last but not least, let me share something here: Throughout the band’s almost 29 years of musical journey since 1995, Kekal has reached certain milestones in terms of exploring the unknown even to such extremes (at the expense of losing so many fans multiple times in the process), but with the road Kekal was taking in the past few years I can see the dead-end looming on the horizon. The decision to focus more on the lyrics by writing all the lyrics before thinking about the music was because I felt that the music had to be placed as a secondary element. The latest 2 albums “Quantum Resolution” and “Envisaged”, lyrics are the most important aspects. Musically, the songs are just there as a vehicle to carry the important message of the lyrics, but they are not strong enough to walk on their own. It’s not because I was lazy or becoming stupid, but my interest had already shifted. Since over 10 years ago I've no longer actively listened to any metal and other types of aggressive music. I just lost interest in that. Metal music no longer move me the way it moved me back in the 80s and 90s when I was young and restless. Even when Kekal came out with some fast, blasting extreme metal songs again like on 2018 album “Deeper Underground” and perhaps a bit on “Quantum Resolution”, I was only using my emotional memory to recall how I felt when recording albums such as “1000 Thoughts of Violence” or “The Painful Experience” in the early 2000s just because some of the lyrics demanded the music to be like that. But that ended up taking my creative energy away. I felt weary, bruised, and could not fully recover during recording the 2022 album “Envisaged” where I struggled to find the right sound and have it mixed properly. I found myself stuck between the two worlds that I could not reconcile: The world of familiar Kekal music with its loud and intense sound, and fully expressing my own personal journey which is becoming more and more removed from such world.
After taking a short break last year where I contemplated on how much my music can honestly and authentically represent my current journey and to also become a channel for personal healing, now I feel that it’s time to move on, and my work for Kekal needs to be put on hold until the time is right for me to jump in again when everything is in alignment. Kekal is purely independent, not bound in any legal agreement regarding schedules for the new material, so this K432 project can be seen as myself taking the much needed retreat from the fatigue and disorientation of doing music for Kekal with all the metallic wall of sound and distorted guitars that I can no longer fully enjoy (perhaps plus the agitation-inducing frequencies of notes produced from the 440 Hz reference tuning). I’m in the midst of a spiritual journey of awakening and transformation, and much healing still needs to be done within me at the cellular level. Doing music authentically from the heart is the only way for me in facing my “inner demons” and to transmute the negative/destructive energy into the positive/creative one; the one that brings joy and fulfillment to my inner self. During this process of healing I’m beginning to be able to appreciate beauty, but still need to learn how to express it musically. Only through this K432 acoustic guitar project with the harmonic resonance produced from 432 Hz tuning, this process of healing can hopefully be done more effectively. Fingers (and toes) crossed!
Thank you for reading (I know, the message is getting too long 😬). Feel free to share this post to your friends as you see fit. You can also read past months’ messages posted on Substack (May, April, March) if you haven’t yet. See you again next month.
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