My favorite beat on 7 Solemn Rites, hands down, is "Summit."

It was easily the most fun I had on the production side of the entire project, mostly because the song was completely bare-bones when I recorded the template verse.

When I'm building a track, I like to use an in-the-moment freestyle to lay out the cadence, lyric structure, and sometimes the overall topic. When I sat down with "Summit," all I had running was a very basic drum pattern. I’m talking damn near a straight-up metronome—just like the minimal vibe on the album cover art.

Having that blank canvas gave me a wide-open lane to run down inside LMMS. I got to craft the entire beat around my flow, as opposed to doing what most people do and letting the instrumental lead the way.

I’ve always believed that the best music creates a distinct atmosphere around the vocals.

There are no top lists here, no competing, and none of that childish ranking nonsense. There's just the moment we have right now.

For the whole 7 Solemn Rites project, I was chasing a specific speakeasy or Def Poetry vibe, and I feel like the beat for "Summit" nailed that target dead-on. It has this deeply organic atmosphere—like standing in a dense forest at night, hearing the cold wind blow through the trees, with the subtle sounds of shadowy creatures peering over at you from the dark.

Reversing the order of operations like that opened up a whole new world. I definitely want to experiment with shifting the production sequence depending on the specific mood or feel of whatever project I tackle next.