Song pages
Side 1
A La Cara Amarilla
Sandbags on the Flood of My Insecurities
Polliwog 1 & 6 7 8
Gedenkwald
Flawed Soteriology
Side 2
Multicam Behavioral Health
Alone for 10 Minutes
V of Mood
Shadwan
Overview
The feedback I’d gotten from There’s Much Left to Explore included a note from Elli Moore of Lyre that she couldn’t think of another artist who was both mysterious and fun. And the title track was the best example of that. So I decided to double down on both qualities and see where it took me. I also wanted to learn how to slow the tempo down so that I wasn’t stuck making 140 bpm as the only way I could be exciting. I needed to learn some more songcraft.
So this album averages 10 bpm less than the first one, by design. But it worked out. Generally, people have been able to tell that there’s just a bit more to this one – more well-rounded, more detailed, or something like that.
All the instrumentals made it into Thematic’s audio library, and especially off the back of YouTube influencer Zoeunlimited using my songs in multiple videos, “Gedenkwald,” “V of Mood,” and “Shadwan” have all been heard over a million times. “V of Mood” saw a lot of traction in lo-fi/chillout videos, while “Shadwan” was in the most videos by a long shot and used in a variety of settings.
The album art is one of my Excel mosaics, using a random number generator and conditional formatting (with a picture overlay for some shimmer). The album name is a reference to the Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator (MBTI), since my vocalists were both YouTubers in that space, but it’s also for Me, Brandon Terrell Isleib, since that’s my name (don’t wear it out?).
Some press about it
“Restless Mosaic is my kind of weirdo.” – thepaintedman, The Farsighted
“Made By Thawing Ice further proves Brandon Isleib[‘s] aptitude for crafting pieces that passively captivate. It’s like he is tapping directly into the subconscious mind. He embraces the possibilities of ambient music while still giving the songs a pulse and rhythm to latch onto.” – Jon Ireson, music-news.com
“A killer LP with more perfectly apt titles than you can shake a stick at, and, potentially, a world of organized chaos behind the bits of glass that does help heal some [of] the emotions around being human, even when they don’t make sense. That’s really all anyone can ask of a piece of art, and Restless Mosaic has accomplished it in his second album. Pretty decent progress in a year.” – Layla Marino, YourEDM (this is the most effusive review of either album)
““Made By Thawing Ice” is an album you do not want to miss out on, it’s an album that is surely to change your life. Restless Mosaic will become your favorite if they aren’t already.” – Jaye Maverick, Rising Artists
“Incidentally, it’s quite difficult to label a record as incredible as “Made By Thawing Ice”, with its essential set of nine songs. In fact, we highlight tracks but leave an essential message: it is an album that makes complete immersion inevitable, it is an impossible task to skip something in this experience.” – Alessandro Iglesias, roadie-music.com
EPK excerpts (co-written by James Moore, Independent Music Promotions)
Seattle-based Experimental Electronic Musician and Producer Restless Mosaic defies convention and expectation with a smile on his far-reaching new album “Made By Thawing Ice”, out on May 13, 2022. Jon Ireson of Music-News.com aptly described his previous album as ‘a boon for your neuroplasticity’, and the new album finds Restless Mosaic totally comfortable expanding at lightning speed in all directions.
After the success of Restless Mosaic‘s debut There’s Much Left to Explore – the moody, atmospheric title track has been heard over 180,000 times – new album Made By Thawing Ice doubles down on the mystery and constant genre-morphing loved from the first album, while expanding the project’s scope to include vocal collaborations even more leftfield than the instrumentals. Both vocalists are popular content creators in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) YouTube community – the initials of the album are MBTI not only for that, but for Brandon Terrell Isleib, the brain behind Restless Mosaic.
Chilean Lili Aqvq sings in Spanish about her love for the Minesweeper happy face in the dark cinematic tango of “A La Cara Amarilla,” while Australian Dear Kristin plays an actor fighting the song’s genre (1970s game show jazz/funk) for space in “Multicam Behavioral Health.” Elsewhere, “Sandbags on the Flood of My Insecurities” is an experimental neoclassical piece that refuses to stay in its lane, “Polliwog 1 & 6 7 8” meshes tribal trance with hammered dulcimers, “V of Mood” is public television music made cool, and “Shadwan” smears psytrance over new age and ambient house music to make something that’s none of them. Reviews of There’s Much Left to Explore constantly cite how surprising the music was; Made By Thawing Ice stacks surprises on surprises.
When you listen to Restless Mosaic‘s music, you can intrinsically sense this is an artist wholly excited about the creative process, employing multiple genres in order to find the best sounds for the job and having a blast doing it. Fans of artists as varied as Future Sound of London, Underworld, Aphex Twin, Oneohtrix Point Never, Four Tet, and Psychick Warriors ov Gaia should enjoy this truly adventurous new release.
Producer Name(s): Brandon Isleib
Similar/RIYL: Plaid, Underworld, Future Sound of London, Ultramarine, Psychick Warriors ov Gaia, Susumu Yokota
Genre(s): Electronica, IDM, Experimental Electronic, Multi-Genre
First song: A La Cara Amarilla
restlessmosaic.com 