Email: thegoldenproof@gmail.com
Discord: @fenekhu
I will also respond to DM's on social media.
I'm happy to collab or do a commission or answer a question or whatever else it is you need (well... that I can do).
Hello, I'm Phoenix Johnson (aka TheGoldenProof), a musician and programmer.
This site is primarily for my music, but I may add other professional work I'm proud of.
The short story:
I've been playing instruments since I was a toddler, starting with the Ukelele and a Casio 100-sound keyboard. In middle school I played the clarinet. I got my first DAW, Ableton, on my 15th birthday in 2018. Nowadays I make VGM-style music, stuff great for boss-fights and themes. My favorite genre is synthwave (specifically darksynth and cyberpunk) -- both to make and to listen to. I'm trying to bring the world of Touhou and synthwave together.
The LONG story:
The first album I ever purchased was the TRON Legacy soundtrack by Daft Punk, and the second was the Portal/Portal 2 soundtrack. I listened to those until around 7th grade.
My first exposure to EDM was Geometry Dash in 6th grade. I loved it, and F-777 (Deadlocked, GD Meltdown) became my favorite musician. I almost exclusively listened to him until my sophomore year of highschool.
It was 6th grade band class, and we had just been given one of our next pieces. It was harder than other songs we'd had so far, and it came up in conversation "I wonder what the hardest piece of sheet music is..."
I pulled out my phone and a quick search lead me to "Faeries Aire and Death Waltz" by John Stump, which looked short and utterly unplayable. It was more or less unplayable (though people have still tried) but there was multiple youtube videos showing it being played on piano software. The song these video's played was indeed chaotic, but it didn't take long to realize that they were too long and sounded too good.
That night, I went home and found more videos of piano software playing increasingly impossible songs, called 'impossible mix' and 'black MIDI'. They were amazing works of art. Eventually I found a video explaining the history of black MIDIs and the Death Waltz confusion. Black MIDIs were mostly piano arranges of songs from the soundtrack of a game series called Touhou Project, and some re-upload and translation confusion between NicoNicoDouga and YouTube associated the "impossible song" by John Stump with an "impossible" arrange of 'Last Brutal Sister, Flandre S.', a song by COOL&CREATE, which was itself an arrange of 'U.N. Owen was her?', the extra stage boss theme from Touhou 6. I listened to 'U.N. Owen was her?' and could barely hear the resemblance, and I didn't particularly like it either.
Hearing so much about this 'Touhou Project', I decided to try the games. They were kindof fun, but I could hardly make it to stage 2 most of the time. I think I settled on Touhou 13 being the easiest.
I left Touhou alone for a long time after that. I wouldn't be particularly into anime or video games that weren't Minecraft or Dota 2 for another 3 years.
Freshamn year of highschool. I had grown thoroughly tired of F-777 and other Geometry Dash artists, and I refused to use Spotify to discover new ones. I had been trying to produce electronic music, but middle school music theory and one great artist isn't enough to go on. I needed something fresh. One day, bored at my computer, I stumbled across the Touhou folder and remembered that it was well-known for its soundtracks. I listened to them and was honestly amazed by how unique they were. I quickly came to love them, and before long, I tried arranging one. That one was Lunatic Eyes, and I thought it turned out really well at the time. So did a lot of other people. To this day, I'm still surprized by its numbers.
I continued to make arranges that were more like glorified covers. They sounded good, but I felt dishonest because I was always starting with the MIDIs, chopping them up and putting some cool sounds to it. The exception to this was Demystify Feast, which I think is one of my better arranges from this time period. Once again, I was getting bored of listening to the same music for almost 2 years, and it was showing in my music as I strayed away from Touhou and wasn't able to produce much. And something new did come.
Based on what I wrote on Newgrounds in Jar of Magic Sand, it would have been someday near the beginning of June, maybe the end of May 2020, right after school ended. Something unusual showed up in my YouTube feed, and I can still remember the exact spot it was in. The video had a very saturated, chaotic image of an anime girl as a thumbnail, and it was titled 'ShibayanRecords - Retro Future Girls (FULL ALBUM)'. I stared at it for a couple seconds. I wasn't sure why it was in my feed or what it was. I was mildly intrigued and curious, but was still a little put off by the aesthetic. My curiosity and need for some new music just barely won, and I clicked on it. That was one of the most important decisions I have ever made.
I loved that album, and clicked on everything by ShibayanRecords that was recommended to me. I quickly discovered I didn't like bossa nova, but everything else was amazing. His music changed the way I approached remixes, but most importantly, it showed me the existence of the world of Touhou circles.
I was vaguely aware that I wasn't the only one making arranges of Touhou tracks, but I was completely cut off from that world. When I discovered ShibayanRecords, I truly became a Touhou fan. Before, I only listened to the music and very rarely played the games (because I was terrible. Still am, but I have 1cc'ed Ten Desires). After, I was actively seeking out Touhou communities and fans, and was playing the games a little more.
When I had exhausted ShibayanRecords for music, I started searching for something similar. I loved Shibayan's gritty basses and nothing else seemed to be close. Totally by chance, I listened to Bad Apple!! for the first time since middle school, and it was exactly what I had been looking for. Alstroemeria Records became part of my playlist. I still listen to Shibayan's non-bossa nova and pre-2011 Alstroemeria.
While listening to Big Bunny Boom by ShibayanRecords, I saw someone asking 'who else came here from the radio' in the comments. I had to know what this 'radio' that played Touhou music was, and found Gensokyo Radio, which exposed me to so much. Before I tell the most important thing to come from listening to Gensokyo Radio, I need to go back in time.
October 31st 2020. I released a double-feature Halloween special. One of the songs, The Call, is to this day one of the best songs I have ever made, and it was just something I threw together under a crunch to finish. After proudly showing it to my dad, he mentioned that I should check out this artist Carpenter Brut, that I might like some of his stuff. I asked what kind of music it was, but my dad wasn't able to describe it very well. I pulled it up on my phone and listened to something by him on low volume as I walked out the door. It wasn't loud enough for me to hear how good it was. I forgot about it, but the name stuck.
Okay, back to the future. Once again, it was around the end of May or beginning of June. I heard something on Gensokyo Radio that I loved. As impressive as my memory has been so far, I can't remember the exact song, but I know it was from the album Gensokyo Midnight Drive Vol. 1 by Violet Delta. It caught my attention. I had never heard real synthwave before, and once again, I loved it. I listened to that album on repeat for a few weeks before getting bored and remembering Carpenter Brut. Turbo Killer and Roller Mobster went hard.
For the first time in almost 4 years, I started listening to something that wasn't Touhou. It was almost scary at first. Someone had made a graphic of essential albums from each major synthwave subgenre, and I compiled them into Spotify playlists. This was also my first time using Spotify and now I've fully switched over. I listened to "Synthwave Essentials" and soon I was trying to make it myself. I started growing my playlist too.
That brings me to the end of my story -- or at least just the music part of it. I'll spare you the rest, you've done well if you read this entire autobiography.
Now here I am, trying to bring my love for Touhou and my love for darksynth and cyberpunk together, to fill a surprizingly large void in the extremely saturated world of doujin music.