First Steps

First Steps is a Bandcamp exclusive (pay what you want) album of 10 previously unreleased tracks, originally recorded in 2003-2004, at the beginning of the subtractiveLAD project. The release is a companion to the 2014 subtractiveLAD album, entitled Wilderness, and celebrates the first ten years of subtractiveLAD music. First Steps also includes two rare remixes of tracks from the first subtractiveLAD release, entitled Giving Up the Ghost (released via n5MD in 2005). At the beginning of 2014, while putting the finishing touches on what would become the Wilderness album, Stephen Hummel realized that the year would mark an anniversary of sorts for his subtractiveLAD project. The sessions that produced the tracks for the first subtractiveLAD album occurred in 2003-2004, over a decade before the most recent subtractiveLAD release. Those early sessions produced a large amount of material as Hummel experimented with the musical style that would eventually evolve into the first few subtractiveLAD albums. Curated personally by Hummel, the 10 previously unreleased tracks were selected from over 20 tracks from the time period. The tracks have been carefully edited, mastered and sequenced into an album that stands on its own in the subtractiveLAD catalogue.