We are still waiting on a couple art pieces from Rick (he is still catching up on work while caring for his kids' recovery) but everything else is complete. We'll be sending off the deck in February for a proof, make sure it looks good, then hit that production button! Ditto on the art prints.

So brace yourselves, we shall be charging cards for the add-ons soon! Probably on the 1st of February.

But in the meantime, the album is complete and ready for you all! I'll be dropping the Google Folder link below for backers to download, but anyone can listen free online on Bandcamp, or just search "troubleseekers Downupright" on any major service!

We are also toying with the idea of doing a limited run of physical CDs for the album. Is this something folks might be interested in? Let us know in the poll below, or in the comments!



And here's some words from Downupright - the composer themself:


The vibrant writing of the stories in the *Troubleseekers* rulebook just leapt into my mind like a riveting movie, and it was a thrilling challenge to write what I saw as the soundtrack to that movie. The evocative track names combined with the foley storytelling at the start of every track should be able to help all of you visualize the mood and action as you read the rulebook, if I did my job right. :)

Musically, I set out to design a very specific "sound palette" that I could apply to the whole album so that everything sounded like part of the same family. Outside of the O Fortuna cover, harsh and aggressive sounds are not present in most tracks, and drum kit sample selection and synth sound design is on the softer side. (But how was I ever going to pass up the chance to dubstep-cover O Fortuna in a soundtrack literally about Fortuna?!) Degradation is the name of the game, with every track as well as most buses and masters being run through several layers of tape for "softening", and many passages degraded further through tinny speakers or VHS, for an overall sense of nostalgia. In arrangement, every track follows a pattern of foley storytelling -> beat influenced by an electronica great -> compositional passage influenced by a postmodern composer great, before it all comes together at the end. On the hardware side, I had a fantastic time more deeply exploring the Ableton Push 3, where I made heavy use of the MPE support to create synths where every note captures 3 additional points of performance, creating much more dramatic performances. These are especially audible in the later half of the album.

I had a wonderful experience making this album throughout 2025 and I hope you get a lot of joy listening to it, either in tandem with your other *Troubleseekers* experiences or as a standalone.

And folks, if you like what they've done with this, you should absolutely check out their latest project! As a backer, you contribute to the narrative - they use your contributions in the lyrics! Wild! It just launched this week, so go give it a look here.