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florence

by Petriform

supported by
Sheridan
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Sheridan This pushes all my musical buttons in exactly the right way. It has:
1.chiptune ✅️
2.vocoder vocals ✅️
3.depression ✅️
4.metal ✅️
(in no specific order) Favorite track: vector control.
Lavender
Lavender thumbnail
Lavender When I first heard this album I knew it was something I'd wanted for a LONG time, I'm extremely happy it exists and fuckin rules. I think my favourite song changes every time I listen to it 'cause the whole album's incredibly my thing. Favorite track: a dagger shone faintly.
WheatleyMF
WheatleyMF thumbnail
WheatleyMF Quite dark, but full of powerful and unique chiptune metal sound. If you were looking for an exceptionally well-executed chiptune, you have found a right album. Probably Petriform's finest work so far.

It's hard to point out which track is the best one, 'known peace' and 'a dagger shone faintly' for sure, it's up to you. Favorite track: known peace.
c h point
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c h point holy flip this is heckin awesome Favorite track: scanners.
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1.
2.
it's their job to keep you happy it's my job to keep you safe odds are you won't be hurt badly there are precautions you can take but you're so fucking afraid of pestilence you're so fucking afraid of everything you paid for everything and chose to look away i can tell that you're not listening and that really is a shame there's no more use for cautious whispering if i can't ever hit a vein 'cause you're so fucking afraid and petulant you're so fucking afraid of everything a change in anything would push you in the grave if i can't tell you then i can't help you well along like i so wish i could trust in what we do we care about you can't you care, then, too?
3.
say 05:12
there's something not quite right that much i have surmised i stare across for miles but you can't meet my eyes i needed this so bad but now i'm being excised and i feel undone so get on with it say what you wanna say i know you'll push me right out of your way and do what you gotta do go on, ambush me you've got no regard for what we go through misfortunes thus accrue compounding toward a fate that i can't outrun so put me under and say what you wanna say you protocol me, you can't disobey yeah do what you gotta do you extricate me as it suits your convenient display i thought i was doing okay, i did that which was asked of me but now i sit and hear denials guarantees of destitution patronized, not pitied it's not lost on me that this whole thing is predicated on that you're just not allowed to care say what you wanna say you really pushed me right out of your way you did what you had to do you went and shook me down with no regard for what i'll go through
4.
no rx 03:29
here i am, in the flesh doing absolutely none of what i know i do best, 'cause i i slipped through the cracks; the impact retracts all opportunities to ever come back in a world that draws dividends from doubt, eminence from clout, lined with grifts throughout complete with razor-thin margins keeping shit from going south are you really that surprised when the razors come out? fuck it i tried to bide my time i now am too hardened to pine i've seen how it goes about and it's your right to sit it out if you want to what is a glass half-full to a broken glass spilt when the weight of the world comes down, it's full-tilt 'cause all i know is guilt-flavored hope and hope-flavored guilt that's how i was built i'm left to wonder what i could have done better, but the better would've never surrendered me unfettered the only thing my education let me measure is the viable sharpness of the edges of acceptance letters i sympathize i hate to see one left behind if it's hostile to your health you needn't suffer by yourself if you don't want to let me help you
5.
6.
underwrite 02:45
arriving with fervor i come to you because i must go further i murmur forget me, know me only by my burner i'm sterner tell temperance i did not mean to unnerve her observe her she knows as well as i do that you'd blown it you stowed it you fucked it up i know it yes i know it emboldened i'll ask this favor so that i can do good like you would if not for pesky oaths, they're so old-fashioned compassion is lacking; that's what i'm attacking helping well along i bought it you sold it objective in this moment is to hold it control it without suspicion; i can get around it they doubt it deniability, i'm all about it stay clouded behind my fostered shroud is what i do now it's true how i guess i've really gotta follow through now renew now a purpose on this plane of cruelty strewn out eternal i'll wield this punctuation thought infernal subdermal i'll be remembered merciful helping well along
7.
scanners 02:57
dire now is the circumstance that saw you ask for me my reputation thus precedes worry not, i'm qualified as much as one can be do you believe in destiny? that's a question, the wrong question i'm so sorry, what was i thinking? please excuse my indiscretion my concession, forgive me if you're sure, then let's move on you've got it in your mind to make these earthly pains unbind so here's your chance to catch the void not often comes it by don't worry, i'll be by your side no more waiting, more placating pulse is fading, mine is racing close your eyes, now, gentle patient, liberation's to find you
8.
made 02:27
absolved yourself, you did, all of a sudden how could you leave me staring at the button alone i'm so scared you burdened that upon a grieving child i grew to understand and now revile alone i'm so scared
9.
i need some help i think that this might do but it might not what have i got into might not get the chance chance to back down anymore as a last resort place my trust here faintly it's very sharp as sharp as i am scared i used to think i never would have dared but i feel outright backed into the corner now as my grip holds tight i fear you might make me
10.
known peace 05:47

about

(be warned: this album conceptually alludes to sensitive subjects such as trauma related to medical settings, self-harm, death, suicide, and voluntary euthanasia.)

if this turns out to be my magnum opus i'm gonna be pissed!

it was meant to be both less than this and more than this. "florence" was originally conceptualized in 2014 as the back half of a double EP - the first half being a project i intended to call "don't worry, you're great!" of course, as time went on, that half outgrew its scope, monopolized my focus, and became a full-fledged album. "florence," then, was left lingering -- maybe for the better at that time.

in 2014 and 2015, i felt like i had a lot to say. a lot was wrong with the world. through famitracker and a vocoder, i wanted to address the rotten concept of civil forfeiture. i wanted to address the burgeoning surveillance state; the military-industrial complex; the perpetual war machine. i wanted to address the war on drugs; the hellscape of american healthcare; the opioid crisis. i wanted to address the ever-tightening death grip of capitalism, the intersection of all these things.

but then 2016 happened, and suddenly the lens zoomed way the hell out from all of that. and 2020 happened after that. do you believe me when i say i wrote "vector control," lyrics and all, _at minimum_ four years before the pandemic? i understand if you don't. that's why i've long wanted to be done with this project - the world in which "florence" was envisioned and contextulized has been so thoroughly jettisoned into deep space by the exponentially more hellish reality of the world that really came to be that i can't justify or explain it in a way that makes sense or matters.

so i gave up. as a concept, "florence" has been dead on arrival for the better part of five years.

but damn it, the songs themselves are still good! they deserve to be heard, and i deserve to shed them from my backlog after all these years.

there's not a lot of "good" in "florence." it is a dull litany of sharp tragedies. in expressing the concept, i don't think i did a great job. things aren't always clear, and more room for interpretation remains than i'd like (and i intended to leave a lot of it). there will forever be a disconnect between me having lived the experiences that planted the seeds of the concept in my mind and having my emotional maturity in scoring it lag six or seven years behind its completion.

but it was always going to be this photo of the dilapidated staircase i took in 2014. it was always going to be an anthropomorphic bird sitting on that step. it was always going to be "florence." and now, it is.

credits

released December 1, 2021

cover illustration by zangen (zangen.neocities.org)

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Petriform

Across California and beyond, Petriform has brought energetic NES chipmusic to the table for years. Get ready for a chipstyle experience drawn unapologetically from the realms of bubblegum pop, VGM, prog metal, third-wave ska, happy hardcore, turn-of-the-millenium pop punk, and more. ... more

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