@Gummy Dewitt jeez, he didn't even try and make the story somehow different from what he used for GB. Also according to the video's timeline, when he says Dennis was on tour in Europe, GB was touring in Europe. This is starting to make sense
It took me only about 30 seconds to find that Geometric Lullaby is owned by Dennis Mikula who has a degree in psych from Minot State University who played with the moderately successful band Ghost Bath and posts pictures of graveyards and stuff. It really is a mystery who Begotten was...
Well, anonymous artists are a thing: it wouldn't be odd if it's just a person who wants to make music but also to keep their normal life, if they are suffering from mental problems is really less of a mystery and more of a thing-we're-not-certain-off-and-should-really-just-respect-their-boundaries kind-of deal.
@@vicenteisaaclopezvaldez2450 Nah, I highly suppose Dennis is just a hoax at this point. When he started Ghost Bath at the time he did it as a joke, basically, rather than just a "I have mental issues which have to be released somehow. But then if he has issues under that spectrum it is not my business, of course. The thing is: you have Ghost Bath, you have Geometric Lullaby, huge record deals behind you (GB is under Nuclear Blast), and then you want to use the same trick you've used with your main project and expect people to fall for it? This video sets this clear when you look at it in its entirety. So many things are off in this whole situation. He might have issues, but this looks more like a play rather than just a "I have to release some band thoughts somehow". I don't get the whole "Talking to myself" kind of vibe with the whole concept built to be someone else. You want to put material out? Cool! Do it, nameless, but do it. Don't build shit up like that if you're trying to get sales and that's it. Hope this whole comment makes sense lol
@@francescochissale idk, i feel like story telling is story telling. Many people do crazy album rollouts where they try to create a different universe to get people more invested in the music, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I wouldn't scrutinize anyone for trying.
Begotten is just denis creating a fake facade to seem interesting. Just look at his Blackgaze band, Ghost Bath, he originally claimed to be from China and went under and chinse moniker, and then the entire black metal community figured it out. He's known for using poor google translate to Chinese text to create some illusion and mysticism. I'm so glad this video was in my recommendations lol. Y'all should know begotten isn't some super cryptic and mysterious artist. It's just another one of Denis's personas he's using to exploit your guy's interest. I guess he couldn't do it in black metal so he's doing it to the vaporwave scene lol.
This is fascinating but the part about the black car and the graveyard was a bit too much. It's absolutely bullshit and unfortunately that makes the entire story much less believable
yeah this is absolutely fake i can't believe pad would actually dedicate 50 minutes to this and not display any level of scrutiny to these events and take it all at face value, i feel like this deserves to have the sponsored video card at the bottom
And the final reply from Denis was telegraphed from a mile away. It’s like he took all of his ARG queues from any shitposter on Reddit... Not a bad artist to cover, I guess, but I wish more of the video was dedicated to the music and less to the urban legend.
The “‘weird, masked figure” in the insomnia vid is Kazuo Ono, a practitioner of a type of Japanese experimental dance theatre called ‘butoh’, for anyone interested.
This story is so based on reality. Record labels always work like this, Secret hand written letters are way better than contracts and payment. Start pressing albums, we got another anonymous letter!
@@Feversome Smaller labels do that. You send the address, they send the physical copies, you store the physical copies in your house, and you ship the albums to buyers.
@@jenjes5802 Sure, all that without even verifying the music was written by the person who claims to have written it. Seems a bit too easy. Let's print up the expensive special editions!!!!
Ngl, if Dennis just left it at the mysterious email and didn't include any of the graveyard stuff, the story would have been fine. The music seems good on its own. It doesn't need the narrative at all.
An interesting point I just thought about: Dennis is a member of the black metal band Ghost Bath, which originally claimed to be a band based in China. Which turned out to be untrue as they were in fact an american band. This and the fact that one of the emails from begotten contained excerpts from Dead's (vocalist of black metal band, Mayhem) suicide note, make me believe that this whole persona may be Dennis himself. I could be completely wrong, I'm just speculating, but nonetheless, this is quite an interesting and mysterious story with some fantastic music! Great work Pad!
I made the exact same connection when I realised who Dennis was and what band he was touring with. The guy loves the theatre and mystery that black metal and vaporwave share, and even if the music is, say, made by a friend of his or an artistic collaborator, the whole story feels like something he'd be in on for precisely that reason, especially the really outlandish elements.
@@ieatmemeswithoutmilk1337 The words were almost the same as Dead's suicide letter (Per Yngve Ohlin from Mayhem). When I ran it through Google translate I recognised the wording almost immediately.
tldw: Some guy made up a spooky creepypasta story with stupid tropes like mental hospitals and blacks cars and shit to market his vaporwave album. No mystery, not even a fulfilling story.
I thought something was fishy with this story about 15 minutes in. Glad I scrolled down to the comments before watching any further. It doesn't make any sense that an artist would send their work to a label, and then the label just releases the artist's work without ANY further communication, no contracts or anything! I'm no expert, but I'm pretty certain that that is not how record labels work lol
Dangit. I knew it. I should have learned by now to watch the video before reading comments at least I would have been able to enjoy the first half or so
Dennis dropped a ball here. The invitation to the cemetery really looks like the start of an ARG, and the game was cut short because Dennis' friend couldn't find the clue in the cemetery or on the black car. The mental institution portion of the ARG was never followed up on before or after the hurricane, either. So the ARG ended prematurely, fine, but to not ask begotten "what was the deal with the invitation" at all is perplexing. Surely begotten could have revealed what that was about once all six albums were released ? EDIT: SPOILER ALERT HERE. Apparently Discogs lists Dennis himself as begotten. Welp! so much for all of that.
It gives off a mid/late 2000s fan-made ARG vibes. Very Wyoming Incident. Where you'd have an interesting set up/premise that would never go anywhere because the creators either didn't know themselves or simply lost interest.
@@JASSIEL617 That doesn't make sense. It's like you're arguing that Richard Branson made every Daft Punk album just cause they were signed to his record label Virgin. Branson had zilch to do with DP. Dennis actually is begotten in this case.
@@JASSIEL617 Begotten is just denis creating a fake facade to seem interesting. Just look at his Blackgaze band, Ghost Bath, he originally claimed to be from China and went under and chinse moniker, and then the entire black metal community figured it out. He's known for using poor google translate to Chinese text to create some illusion and mysticism. I'm so glad this video was in my recommendations lol. Y'all should know begotten isn't some super cryptic and mysterious artist. It's just another one of Denis's personas he's using to exploit your guy's interest. I guess he couldn't do it in black metal so he's doing it to the vaporwave scene lol.
You know, the story may be a marketing thing, but it’s still a pretty interesting story, and I love the music anyways. A good creepypasta to go with a good album if nothing else.
I think it would work much better if it was some unknown person behind a reddit handle or something, and not someone representing their own label, and is previously established within another obscure genre of music.
I'm gonna be honest:Tthe story is not good, but I like the energy the music has, it's very melancholic, like a busy mind in a lonely tiny apartment in the middle of a damp urban city where the sun never rises or sets, if I wasn't sick of that feeling I'd be into it. but kudos to whoever wrote this, they did their best and deserve some grapes.
I feel like Dennis has to be begotten entirely because whenever he talks about the possibilities of what’s going on he never mentions the idea of it just being performance art to add to the records and there’s no way he wouldn’t have considered that
37:26 I took the chinese text and ran it through Google translate, and I recognised the translation immediately. It's the first few sentences of Dead's suicide note, the lead vocalist and lyric writer of the black metal band Mayhem. I also havent finished the video yet, or did any digging to see if anyone else figured this out, so forgive me if this was already known, but I just wanted to point it out. Still, creepy as fuck.
This has to be one of the more disappointing music stories I’ve learnt about. Vaporware pretty much has never been about the artist to begin with. So why make a whole story so centralized on who this mystery artist is, only to drill in a message almost everyone knows already? I mean maybe that message will be needed in the future. Idk, I think the whole narrative could’ve been done better. I don’t know how tho. The whole graveyard scene was unnecessary and just dumbly thought out, the bloody fingerprint could’ve been used better as a plot device (P.s Dennis, blood on most paper actually turns brown after drying out. I learnt this the hard way) With the way it is right now, it feels like Dennis was giving himself a secretive ego stroke all this time. Which I KNOW that was NOT intended at ALL. That’s not the point of the story. It’s kinda ironic, I enjoy begotten way more when I ignore the whole narrative that’s connected with it. For anyone who wants to do a narrative/ARG like this, GET INTO CREATIVE WRITING. It doesn’t have to be anything bombastic, it’s just to give you the gists of creating something like this. Also get an outside party(like a writer/forum/friend) to proofread your idea. That way you can get a general feel of how it might be perceived by the audience and if there are any details that need polishing.
I think if he had been more conscious of unfiction tropes, and had taken a few more creative liberties with the story instead of keeping it as "realistic" as possible, it would have been a lot more successful. At the moment it feels half-assed and generic from an unfiction perspective and too much for a regular mysterious backstory. At that point the only impression left to give is that of an awkward ad campaign. Anyway, the guy should have at the very least binge watched Night Mind before getting started.
@@isweartofuckinggod I agree with you! NightMind has some really good vids on how to do unfiction too! Also another comment here mentioned how unprofessional his conversations with begotten were, which really leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you realize he’s using someone potentially mentally unwell for monetary gain. Which is baffling, he should already have knowledge for that as a record label owner. Also it’s such a wasted opportunity, you don’t get a lot of stories from that perspective. I would have loved if this was actually like a metaphorical narrative(like about his own struggles with mental health and how it affects being a creator, expecially when you have a higher ranking position in the industry) framed like the interactions between a label owner and an artist
from what I could gather, this seems like one of three options. This could all be real as Dennis has presented, an elaborate arg by b e g o t t e n (meaning that the artist is real but doesn't ensure that this is one person with one alias), or this was a masterful advertising campaign by Dennis to boost his label's popularity. I think that option three is the most probable because of the timing of when the first release came out around when the label first popped up.
here is a tip: when paraphrasing, make it obvious that you are not reciting your own original words. you paraphrase too frequently with too many small details that confuse the listener on who the original creator is. to avoid plagiarism, simply use direct quotes when the small details are important (you already do this several times in this video) or just paraphrase much more loosely from the original words of the artist.
Your tip is garbage. This video was perfect just the way it is. Stop acting like your subjectivity is objective throughout all minds and learn when to shut the Hell up.
@@DMTInfinity That comment had nothing to do with anything subjective, he *is* paraphrasing too much. It's a perfectly valid criticism. Your attitude allows for no actual improvement.
I can't decide which is worse: this being an ad for a series of years-too-late-to-the-punch vapor trap tracks bundled with Google Translate text and high school sophomore tier sad boy poetry, or someone really buying into all of this being 100% genuine. The moment you look at even one of the separate pieces of this story from an angle it falls apart *immediately.* If the vaporwave scene wanted to convince everyone they're not leveraging depression and mental illness to create this weird, borderline harmful personality of Guys Who Are Just Too Fucked Up To Be Understood, they're gonna have to try harder than this
I’m only halfway through but the shift between horror novel and music review is jarring in a way that really fits the subject material. Really love this so far.
If this person had the music, music videos, album inserts, and everything finished already, why would they seek a label? It seems like the label would have little to nothing to offer aside from perhaps publicity, but that can be generated without a label. I don't doubt the distinct possibility this is just Dennis doing a setup to make his own music seem more interesting.
Yeah, this is definitely baby's first dark mystery. Even if I didn't gleam the comments prior to watching, I could tell this was fake. The graveyard scene is not only dumb and immersion-breaking, but a plothole, too. Dennis' "friend" was put into potential harm and memory wiped, and Dennis' response is to never bring up his friend again, nor seek begotten's true identity to put the law on him... he just says it's about the music and thanks him for it. Right. There's other plotholes, but that's the big one. Aside from that, there's just a lot of tropes Dennis does & in general that aren't based in any sensible logic, and mental illness/suicide is a common go-to for a dark topic. The fact that the subject of mental illness/suicide is used for an egotistical publicity stunt is a level of offensive that deserves its own conversation, but I won't get into that. All I'm gonna say is that it's really poor taste and self-serving, made the worse by how begotten is Dennis in a fake persona. Someone with a psych major should know better, and I say that as someone mid-Bachelor's for psych right now. The music is neat, but if you ask me, knowing the narrative Dennis made for it just sours the pleasure of the experience heavily. These pieces would've avoided that altogether if there was a far more vague story instead to keep it mysterious, or removing it altogether. As it stands, it's overexplained and buckles under its own weight.
It’s like you think this story was ever supposed to be anything but marketing or something. It’s not supposed to be a pulitzer prize-winning journalistic exposé, it’s a creepypasta. Don’t take it too seriously.
@@SnailHatan It's the poor use of the topic of suicide that made me write all that up, since it really rubs me the wrong way. I would've given it the slack you're advising if it weren't for that.
the morbid email that you left out of the video is the suicide note of Dead from Mayhem, the lines are directly taken except leaving a few lines about dying in a forest in between and the latter half of the suicide note where Dead discusses his songs and whatnot
I watched this a couple days ago then was listening to a begotten album and reading the comments. One of the comments was talking about how after doing research he found out it was just Dennis the whole time and he made up the story. Now that I think about it it makes sense. I watched this entire video thinking it was really true, and even went a couple days thinking it too. It kinda make me angry that you spend all this time making and editing an hour long video for a made up story.
That’s basically what most Lo-FI, vapor wave, and relaxing/sad/creepy aesthetic music is. If anybody has any actually unique lo-FI/vaporwave aesthetic music then let me know.
Begotten is just denis creating a fake facade to seem interesting. Just look at his Blackgaze band, Ghost Bath, he originally claimed to be from China and went under and chinse moniker, and then the entire black metal community figured it out. He's known for using poor google translate to Chinese text to create some illusion and mysticism. I'm so glad this video was in my recommendations lol. Y'all should know begotten isn't some super cryptic and mysterious artist. It's just another one of Denis's personas he's using to exploit your guy's interest. I guess he couldn't do it in black metal so he's doing it to the vaporwave scene lol.
@@noahdiemler5047 lol meant nothing by it, it must be so random getting a reply about a half year old comment from such a random corner of the internet. Have a good day wherever you are!
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this: (from begotten's discogs profile) b e g o t t e n 自杀 Real Name: Dennis Mikula Sites: Bandcamp Aliases: Dissociate: 解離, Electric Specter 電妖怪, Nameless (49), runescape斯凱利, 疑心暗鬼 It literally says that he's Dennis in his profile
Man you saved me. The lore terrified me, at the pinnacle of my anxiety where sleep paralysis was about to kick in, I saw this comment and it plucked up my courage to finish the whole video. Thanks
@@unnamedindividual8835 I know many are saying that Dennis is a terrible man to make up this story as a publicity stunt, I believe it has some problems ( especially with the translated Chinese ) but I think overall it is a cool project nevertheless
@@timefragment5387 Yeah exactly I don't even care that this is lied about because it's really just all about creating entertainment in the end. The whole begotten project may have been hoaxed but the music was great
For anyone wondering the email was in Chinese so I translated it. I’m not sure if it is entirely correct but the translated email reads: “Excuse my blood, but I have cut my wrist and neck. Anyway, no one will understand why. To give some explanations, I'm not human. It's just a dream, and I'll wake up soon. It's too cold, the blood has been coagulating, and my new knife is too blunt. If I don't succeed in killing the knife, I'll blow all the dung off my skull." This was very disturbing to read.
It’s rather similar to the suicide note by Pelle Ohlin of the band Mayhem. “Excuse the blood, but I have slit my wrists and neck. It was the intention that I would die in the woods so that it would take a few days before I was possibly found. I belong in the woods and have always done so. No one will understand the reason for this anyway. To give some semblance of an explanation I'm not a human, this is just a dream and soon I will wake. It was too cold and the blood kept clotting, plus my new knife is too dull. If I don't succeed dying to the knife I will blow all the shit out of my skull. Yet I do not know. I left all my lyrics by "Let the good times roll"-plus the rest of the money. Whoever finds it gets the fucking thing. As a last salutation may I present "Life Eternal". Do whatever you want with the fucking thing. / Pelle. I didn't come up with this now, but seventeen years ago.”
This series really puttin me in the B̴̡̢̨̝̪̳̳͓̗̠͎̞̩̩̮͇̦̞͇̝͇̯͖̣̹̥̋̀͐̇̃̍͗̄̏̈́̈́͋͋͜͜͜͝ͅȩ̵̨̙͇̼̣̗͚̺̰͖̼̩̜͔̞̟̠̦̻͚̥̖̬͉̜̹̻̐̔̄͂g̴̻̼̭̓́͆̿̅̿̋͗͒͊͒̈́́̅̓̈́̂͐̽͘͜ͅo̷̺̦͎̹̞͇̭̭̟̻̞̪̦͔͔͚̫̗̫̭͒̆͋̽̍̑͊̓̉͐̂̍̄̔̔͋̏͘̚͘͝t̶̝͇̊͐́́͛͐̕ẗ̸̙͚̺͙͕̣̹̙̲̭̩͎̙̦̹́̇̓̈́̈́͋̒̔͊̉̆̿̊̒̑͐̿̊͗̕͠͝͠ͅé̴̜̝͚͕͍͚̪͎͍̩̫̜͐̽̍̿̉̓̋̍̄̔̅̅͂͊̑́̐̕̚̚͠͠͝ͅn̶̢̡̳̞̬̜̬̬̱̮̬̠̗͈͇̘̬̱̹̘̥̦̹͕̠̲̖̦͍̈́̋̓̈́̆͂̈̈́́̐̀̄̌̑̽͗̿̆̓͗͊̈́͗́̽̋̉͝ mood
IMPORTANT: The song (unknown) on Phantom Psalms album is LITERALLY Genesis by Grimes, just slowed down and processed through filters. Completely stolen song. I wager others have picked up on this (and other songs being just stolen and reshaped through filters)...
This is one of your best projects yet, i’m so excited for the one you’ve been working on. I feel like longer projects in the future would be definitely worth it, even if they’re not split up and take a bit longer to produce. Keep it up man, we love ya
Honestly, I think the biggest giveaway to this all being a marketing scheme is the fact that the homie already had the super special edition limited cassettes on deck for the first album's release
One of the songs in Psalms (Sagittarius) is literally just the song Water me by FKA Twigs Another one, Calming, is a song called Chapel by Nicole Dollanganger The others are pretty much all samples too. This music is only creepy if you don't know what wave and lofi music is. As an actual creation of music, it's pretty lazy. It's so echoed and overlayered that little to no effort has been put into it. Another reason why this music sounds the way it does is because all the sampled tracks are singers with an extreme pitch in their sounds.. So lowering the pitch and tempo creates that creepy ethereal sound, but also still an audible sound because of the levels in which the pitch started at. This whole video is probably why this music is hitting the way it does and why it might reach people. Because the story is more interesting then the music. AS for the music itself... It's not even a notch the likes of God Body Disconnect, Ugasanie, Northumbria and other such artists create. Although these aren't Wave artists, they have a much better way of creating the desired creepy and lonely sound. Dark Vapourwave simply just creates this uncertainty in your head because low pitch music sounds wrong and your brain just feels uncomfortable.
420 is pretty much a Diana Ross song slowed down, overall. That doesn't mean I don't like it, I just take it for what it is. So, maybe it's not morally right to deliberately take someone else's work. People have been doing it since music was a thing. It's just way easier to spot now
begotten definitely has to be his friend that was walking thru the graveyard. Clues: 1) Dennis of all people get chosen to drop the discography 2) His friend lives in the same area of the address from georgia 3) His friend disappearing right after insisting that somebody was just messing with and the car shows up 4) “Do you really want to know who I am?” maybe it’s just me, but that sounds like something a friend who was hiding something would ask
dang i really just watched this whole vid thinking id watch a piece of it. your channel is criminally underrated, ive been watching for about a year now i came back after taking a break from the internet. i assumed you hade millions of subs by now😭 nevertheless the quality of your videos are S tier my man, thank you for showing me the wonderful world of vaporwave.
Really an incredible artist. It inspired me to create my own vaporwave songs (even if i didn't released them yet) and the whole project just sounds awesome. Thank you Begotten and thank you Pad who made me discover this artist
Awesome that you found joy in making Music! It's really one of the best things I've discovered in my life, braking the language barrier and showing a part of urself, that you can't really put into words.
Hey guys, Begotten here, just wanted to say thanks for enjoying my music. I really enjoy chopping up samples and putting reverb on them so that was my inspiration
The way you narrated this made me feel like I was in a listening to a goosebumps audiobook (in a good way!). Have you done a video on P-Model or Susumu Hirasawa? I don’t think there’s any videos made of him or his bands in English yet so that could be a cool undertaking! I cannot even begin to explain what this man’s music sounds like. He’s made songs for Berserk and almost every Satoshi Kon movie/show. He’s in his 60’s now and still absolutely killing it. I’d love to get your take on him.
Honestly it all just kind of seems like something the mind of a typical 19 year old male redditor who loves horror and anime would conjure. Probably does have depression but like in the way almost everyone his age does.
This reminds me of my edgy teen years. I wrote shit like this all the time. Within 15 min the story started to fall apart and makes less sense the longer the story goes.
I personally think the story is whatever, an interesting idea, but the music is so good. Some of the best vaporwave released in recent years, wish there was more from this alias bc this hazy and foggy sound is so good.
To add on to what I said, I feel as if the story tried really hard at one point and Dennis realized it was too much, I feel like if they omitted the graveyard and instead Dennis just focused on how this person themselves were doing then it would have been much cooler. Maybe if he had just listed and explained these albums and stopped there, then the story would've been much more believable. Like just imagine he uploads all 6 of the albums and everyone asks who begotten is and dennis is just like "idk some dude from azerbaijan". Would've actually presented the idea of vaporwave and anonymity that he was going for I feel.
The sad thing is there are probably real artists like this fictional character out there but they don't make music in popular genres. What a waste of time believing this was real.
I hate to be an asshole about a fun campfire story with a surprisingly optimistic conclusion, but I don't believe any of Dennis's side of this (and, by matter of course, the entire story). This reads like a cliched creepypasta, and I don't mean the so-called "Begotten" side of this as much as Dennis's behavior throughout. There's just some issues with his story that make it feel this way: 1. He's representing a label which produces music and remix tracks with collaborating artists yet doesn't know anything about the identity of the person he's representing. The label is making money from it yet he has no way of establishing a payment or distribution deal. I can believe this part of the story if we presume that the common anonymity in these genres prevents this label from recognizing the potential legal quagmire they're constantly wading through. Any contract they sign could be nullified if a legitimate name isn't used on the signature and all of the correspondence which establishes Geometric Lullaby's right to sell begotten's work can be invalidated as there is no evidence that the anonymous sender represents the intellectual property owners of said work. Maybe "underground" labels like Geometric Lullaby shoots from the hip like this all the time, but it's already putting them on shaky ground for the next points I'm bringing up. 2. Dennis's entire correspondence with begotten is weirdly unprofessional and impersonal, yet emotional and invested and trusting as though this was dialogue written for a creepypasta and not the way any actual adult person would establish a business relationship with a potentially unstable artist. This could just be that Dennis was interacting with what he believed to be an ARG strategy by the artist, but the way the story is presented places a lot of seriousness and over-reactionary emotions onto Dennis as a character than if he were just treating this as a game. Dennis is being painted like the character in story whose reactions to everything Begotten gives over is meant to manipulate his (Dennis's) audience into taking Begotten's poetry and mystique as seriously as Dennis does. 3. The entire graveyard scene was a sequence of events that I find really hard to believe happened. Tons of coincidence, a cell phone feed seems to glitch out right as something interesting might be happening, the fact that Dennis seems to be the only person in his friend's life who is talking online about this guy's sudden uprooting and disappearance all while one of the missing person's friends is talking about it parallel to marketing hit "begotten" albums. This part of the story is silly, doesn't go anywhere, and strikes me as part of the story author writing themselves into a corner before realizing that they don't want to write just a ghost story but maybe something that's more of a statement on accepting art without a prodding need to analyze the artist alongside it. This part would make me groan and think it made too little sense in a story clearly aiming to be fiction. The best possible defense for Dennis here is if his friend deleted his Facebook and went on radio silence for an extended period of time just to play a prank on the cartoonishly gullible Dennis character. 4. I think this is most damning of all, but it's even more greatly enhanced by the three points above: Dennis keeps the marketing campaign and album releases going in the face of what he is describing as mounting disturbing occurrences and mysteries around this artist whom he supposedly knows nothing about and is immediately 100% invested in. These are situations wherein he worries for the mental health and well being of the artist, supposedly was sent blood in the mail, that their friend could seemingly go missing after investigating the artist and seemingly being ambushed by somebody in a black vehicle, and yet he's still droppin' albums online (for sale) with the full texts of what's going on including what are written as direct quotes and correspondence with the artist and his own seemingly missing friend, complete with all of the trappings of any standard release by a label looking to get people clicking through their catalog. I don't buy it. I don't buy at all that in the face of the intense things that supposedly happened Dennis or anyone else at the label would feel comfortable releasing the albums, and if they were then they're calling themselves out as horrific irresponsibility with how they handled all of this. Continuing to humor an artist you truly believe could be mentally unstable and slipping deeper into clearly dangerous ways of thinking is bad form, and I almost hate this story because it so encourages this reckless behavior. I've been working in mental health for, well, too long frankly. I'd like to say that I don't believe Dennis would go through with this because of the understanding of how harmful this behavior could be, but given that apparently whoever wrote this tale doesn't realize that issue then I would hope instead that Dennis would recognize the possible legal issues he could get in by not only passing off notes of suicidal ideation from someone he believes to be mentally unwell, but PROFITING off of it as well. I wouldn't be quite as critical of it, but given how many people have discussed this story with me like it's 100% truth I can't help but treat it like it needs to be verified against being a hoax. Nowhere do I see that it's untrue in any way, which means if it isn't true then it really is a hoax designed to push selling albums and that's... a lot less fun to me than a campy backstory for an art project. And, like I mentioned, I don't believe any of it to be true. It especially rubs me the wrong way that, with the context and phrasing, the happy ending seems to imply it's a good thing to engage with (and profit off of) the delusions and suicidal ideations of the mentally unwell. I figure it's just a collaborative ARG-ish backstory that Dennis and the true artist (or himself, if he secretly actually is Begotten) developed together as a marketing ploy, and I don't think they had any ill intentions in its creation, but I still can't help but to be rubbed the wrong way by how it was executed and delivered.
your second point is the one that really struck me throughout this whole thing. i don't like the message or how it was portrayed, but that constant lack of believable human communication just made me want to roll my eyes. it felt like at any moment he was going to see hyperrealistic blood and vomit.
Interesting because to me that seems like something someone lazy and talentless would do. You're probably doing good as you are, being like this dennis guy is not really an achievement.
@@512TheWolf512 knowledge and proficiency. If you learn something you will have what you need to do something. Regardless, I wasn't trying to argue on the nature of "talent", rather just say even a lot of people "without talent" and who are lazy can do something artistic. Will just have different outcomes depending on the commitment.
Yeah, it started to lose me after _"He opened the letter to find....ANOTHER LETTER!! His hands were shaking from the discovery!!"_ Everything after that just fell into the cliche edgy creepypasta tropes, and took me out of it
No matter how this came to be, you cannot deny this music is damn near genius. I can’t believe someone could make one let alone six just like that and keep that same energy
Stumbled upon this video & watched it in its entirety, really wanted the music to be something special but unfortunately it & the poems are something I would have made in art college when I was somewhat naive & suffering from angst.
One of your best documentaries thus far! An extremely interesting and mysterious story about one of the best artists to come out on Geometric Lullaby. Absolute vaporwave gold! Well done Pad.
so what i'm hearing is that this is an overdone, overly dramatic story meant to market some albums that, from tons of comments here, seem to have multiple songs that are just other songs slowed and reverbed. all created by the owner of the record label. and this video functions as an attempt to advertise it further. it's so utterly lame i dont even know what to say lol
I just subscribed! And I’m only on the third album!! My only question: what about the money? All the album sales and whatnot? What about a festival tour or anything? Crazy thing I like actually remember a friend of mine talking about this and I remember the skeletons like that’s what I saw it immediately brought me back to that I remembered that me and I was in college and I remember I may be wrong but isn’t this about the time when the binaural beats thing was was really certain buzz I don’t mean a national level but I mean it was being spoken about in like a certain forms in New Age forums and whatnot. Okay well I was just curious I should probably finish the video before I ask but whatever I’m already this far. Well done sir, can’t wait to see what else you have to offer.
Interesting how the "unmentionable" Chinese text loosely translates to a similar rendition of Dead's (Per Yngve Ohlin), suicide note. Perhaps this reference to Mayhem could tie in with another commenter's theory about Begotten being Dennis, as his band is Ghost Bath. As the music uses themes from black metal, it could potentially link to the usage of a Mayhem reference.
Pad Chennington, you'll probably never see this but can you do a video on Power Electronics? There's a great deal of experimental artists out there for you to discover (people like Sutcliffe Jügend, Whitehouse, Ramleh...)
A little bit, but Jandek is a lot more protective with their identity and it doesn't feel like a marketing stunt. Pad should definitely check out Jandek though.
For me, that was the first thing that made it obvious that Dennis was behind it all. If he had given the music away Dennis would have mentioned it in the marketing because it would add to the mystery to have an artist not care about the money. If Dennis was paying the guy then people would obviously ask why he didn't try to trace the guy via his payment details.
A Disturbing Music Mystery Returns: ruclips.net/video/A6vB0rv0IN8/видео.html
as a native speaker I can confirm that the Chinese text is generated from Google translate
I don’t speak a word of Chinese and I could feel it too. Thank you for confirming!
@Pope Francis Who asked?
@Pope Francis ???
あっっっっhÑくださいかな下さい下さいかな下さい。かな→下さいくださいう。haha right
I don't know what I put just tipped random shjt
@@roach7404 k
Fun fact you cant mistake blood with red ink coz when it dries it becomes brown
lol.
also, when blood is watered down its actually more orange- not pink.
edit: this actually makes it a nice pigment, shame its, yknow, blood.
That’s what I was thinking!
Which is "it"?
8u
This feels more like a marketing strategy then a real thing that happened tbh
Not gonna lie, that was also on my mind. Maybe it's just advertising on Dennis' part. But maybe that doubt is what makes this special
Even if, regardless of music they created a very interesting story
@Gummy Dewitt You mean Dennis from Ghost Bath?
@Gummy Dewitt jeez, he didn't even try and make the story somehow different from what he used for GB. Also according to the video's timeline, when he says Dennis was on tour in Europe, GB was touring in Europe. This is starting to make sense
@@vincysoft In the end, music is a storytelling medium and stories never had to be true to be entertaining.
It took me only about 30 seconds to find that Geometric Lullaby is owned by Dennis Mikula who has a degree in psych from Minot State University who played with the moderately successful band Ghost Bath and posts pictures of graveyards and stuff. It really is a mystery who Begotten was...
That's my thought too. The guy used the same strategy with Ghost Bath as well, by saying the band was chinese.
Well, anonymous artists are a thing: it wouldn't be odd if it's just a person who wants to make music but also to keep their normal life, if they are suffering from mental problems is really less of a mystery and more of a thing-we're-not-certain-off-and-should-really-just-respect-their-boundaries kind-of deal.
@@vicenteisaaclopezvaldez2450 Nah, I highly suppose Dennis is just a hoax at this point. When he started Ghost Bath at the time he did it as a joke, basically, rather than just a "I have mental issues which have to be released somehow. But then if he has issues under that spectrum it is not my business, of course. The thing is: you have Ghost Bath, you have Geometric Lullaby, huge record deals behind you (GB is under Nuclear Blast), and then you want to use the same trick you've used with your main project and expect people to fall for it?
This video sets this clear when you look at it in its entirety. So many things are off in this whole situation.
He might have issues, but this looks more like a play rather than just a "I have to release some band thoughts somehow". I don't get the whole "Talking to myself" kind of vibe with the whole concept built to be someone else. You want to put material out?
Cool! Do it, nameless, but do it. Don't build shit up like that if you're trying to get sales and that's it.
Hope this whole comment makes sense lol
@@francescochissale idk, i feel like story telling is story telling. Many people do crazy album rollouts where they try to create a different universe to get people more invested in the music, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I wouldn't scrutinize anyone for trying.
Begotten is just denis creating a fake facade to seem interesting. Just look at his Blackgaze band, Ghost Bath, he originally claimed to be from China and went under and chinse moniker, and then the entire black metal community figured it out. He's known for using poor google translate to Chinese text to create some illusion and mysticism. I'm so glad this video was in my recommendations lol. Y'all should know begotten isn't some super cryptic and mysterious artist. It's just another one of Denis's personas he's using to exploit your guy's interest. I guess he couldn't do it in black metal so he's doing it to the vaporwave scene lol.
This is fascinating but the part about the black car and the graveyard was a bit too much. It's absolutely bullshit and unfortunately that makes the entire story much less believable
yeah this is absolutely fake i can't believe pad would actually dedicate 50 minutes to this and not display any level of scrutiny to these events and take it all at face value, i feel like this deserves to have the sponsored video card at the bottom
i would have believed it more if he just said a UFO landed at that point and even that would have been a stretch :P
And the final reply from Denis was telegraphed from a mile away. It’s like he took all of his ARG queues from any shitposter on Reddit...
Not a bad artist to cover, I guess, but I wish more of the video was dedicated to the music and less to the urban legend.
@@xyphoxdemon I think he’s just passing around the myth like a creepy pasta. I think it’s neat
agreed lmao i lost interest in the story at that part
The “‘weird, masked figure” in the insomnia vid is Kazuo Ono, a practitioner of a type of Japanese experimental dance theatre called ‘butoh’, for anyone interested.
i just watched a documentary about Butoh! very dope
Merzbow was actually involved with butoh troupes early on in his career. Fascinating art form.
That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing the information. I’ve heard of that dance style. It’s . . . intense. . . to put it mildly.
Thank you
I actually saw Kazuo Ono preform at my school a few years ago. I brought a girl with me... best date ever
15:53 “the one considered to be the darkest of them all”
*mr. clean ad starts playing*
Truly the darkest of them all
🤣😂🤣😂
This story is so based on reality. Record labels always work like this, Secret hand written letters are way better than contracts and payment. Start pressing albums, we got another anonymous letter!
And lets give them our address too, because nothing bad can come out of that.
@@Feversome Smaller labels do that. You send the address, they send the physical copies, you store the physical copies in your house, and you ship the albums to buyers.
No this is what a bored edgy teen does. I wrote and did dumb nonsense like this week the time
I came to the same conclusion.
@@jenjes5802 Sure, all that without even verifying the music was written by the person who claims to have written it. Seems a bit too easy. Let's print up the expensive special editions!!!!
looks like the real Begotten are the Dennis's we made along the way
lmaoooooooooo
Omfg 😂
Underrated comment
Ngl, if Dennis just left it at the mysterious email and didn't include any of the graveyard stuff, the story would have been fine. The music seems good on its own. It doesn't need the narrative at all.
I highly agree
Is that JPJ as your profile picture?
@@TAMPLAYS Yessirino
@@mothmanghost983 grooovy :D
An interesting point I just thought about: Dennis is a member of the black metal band Ghost Bath, which originally claimed to be a band based in China. Which turned out to be untrue as they were in fact an american band. This and the fact that one of the emails from begotten contained excerpts from Dead's (vocalist of black metal band, Mayhem) suicide note, make me believe that this whole persona may be Dennis himself. I could be completely wrong, I'm just speculating, but nonetheless, this is quite an interesting and mysterious story with some fantastic music! Great work Pad!
Yea I think it's obvious by now. Nonetheless an interesting story and really good Music. I applaud u Dennis if u ever read this.
I made the exact same connection when I realised who Dennis was and what band he was touring with. The guy loves the theatre and mystery that black metal and vaporwave share, and even if the music is, say, made by a friend of his or an artistic collaborator, the whole story feels like something he'd be in on for precisely that reason, especially the really outlandish elements.
Does anybody know what the disturbing email actually said? I found it but it was in Chinese and I'm curious to see what it is
It's 100% him lmao
@@ieatmemeswithoutmilk1337 The words were almost the same as Dead's suicide letter (Per Yngve Ohlin from Mayhem). When I ran it through Google translate I recognised the wording almost immediately.
tldw: Some guy made up a spooky creepypasta story with stupid tropes like mental hospitals and blacks cars and shit to market his vaporwave album. No mystery, not even a fulfilling story.
I honestly feel like I wasted time, no offense to pad, but this story was hollow
I thought something was fishy with this story about 15 minutes in. Glad I scrolled down to the comments before watching any further. It doesn't make any sense that an artist would send their work to a label, and then the label just releases the artist's work without ANY further communication, no contracts or anything! I'm no expert, but I'm pretty certain that that is not how record labels work lol
hokey poems too, just trying to cram as much faux darkness in as possible. good music but tryhard marketing tbh
maybe the story needs more importance
Dangit. I knew it. I should have learned by now to watch the video before reading comments at least I would have been able to enjoy the first half or so
Dennis dropped a ball here. The invitation to the cemetery really looks like the start of an ARG, and the game was cut short because Dennis' friend couldn't find the clue in the cemetery or on the black car. The mental institution portion of the ARG was never followed up on before or after the hurricane, either. So the ARG ended prematurely, fine, but to not ask begotten "what was the deal with the invitation" at all is perplexing. Surely begotten could have revealed what that was about once all six albums were released ?
EDIT: SPOILER ALERT HERE.
Apparently Discogs lists Dennis himself as begotten. Welp! so much for all of that.
It gives off a mid/late 2000s fan-made ARG vibes. Very Wyoming Incident. Where you'd have an interesting set up/premise that would never go anywhere because the creators either didn't know themselves or simply lost interest.
Discogs can be edited by anyone, that proves nothing
It says it’s him because Dennis is the one who released the albums 😭
@@JASSIEL617 That doesn't make sense. It's like you're arguing that Richard Branson made every Daft Punk album just cause they were signed to his record label Virgin. Branson had zilch to do with DP. Dennis actually is begotten in this case.
@@JASSIEL617 Begotten is just denis creating a fake facade to seem interesting. Just look at his Blackgaze band, Ghost Bath, he originally claimed to be from China and went under and chinse moniker, and then the entire black metal community figured it out. He's known for using poor google translate to Chinese text to create some illusion and mysticism. I'm so glad this video was in my recommendations lol. Y'all should know begotten isn't some super cryptic and mysterious artist. It's just another one of Denis's personas he's using to exploit your guy's interest. I guess he couldn't do it in black metal so he's doing it to the vaporwave scene lol.
this is gonna get in everybody's recommended in 10 years
2 days later and here I am from my recommended lol
I fuckin hope youtube is still around in 10 years
It’s already in ma recommended :)
oops I’m subscribed duh
Omen here 👆👆
Maybe flaccid, maybe
You know, the story may be a marketing thing, but it’s still a pretty interesting story, and I love the music anyways. A good creepypasta to go with a good album if nothing else.
I think it would work much better if it was some unknown person behind a reddit handle or something, and not someone representing their own label, and is previously established within another obscure genre of music.
I'm gonna be honest:Tthe story is not good, but I like the energy the music has, it's very melancholic, like a busy mind in a lonely tiny apartment in the middle of a damp urban city where the sun never rises or sets, if I wasn't sick of that feeling I'd be into it. but kudos to whoever wrote this, they did their best and deserve some grapes.
🍇🍇
I feel like Dennis has to be begotten entirely because whenever he talks about the possibilities of what’s going on he never mentions the idea of it just being performance art to add to the records and there’s no way he wouldn’t have considered that
Oh, no, no! It can *never* be that simple! It always MUST be "ooky kooky spooky dooky"! Pfft, making art with dark imagery? Impossible.
37:26
I took the chinese text and ran it through Google translate, and I recognised the translation immediately. It's the first few sentences of Dead's suicide note, the lead vocalist and lyric writer of the black metal band Mayhem.
I also havent finished the video yet, or did any digging to see if anyone else figured this out, so forgive me if this was already known, but I just wanted to point it out.
Still, creepy as fuck.
it's word for word dead's note. i don't think pad mentioned it at all
True Norwegian black metal 😩😩😩✋✋
@@innadesertDOTjpg I'm kinda surprised honestly, but maybe they just don't know black metal that much
yeah they did but hey u got spirit
Rest in peace Dead
that graveyard bit was probably the lamest thing ever tbh
This has to be one of the more disappointing music stories I’ve learnt about.
Vaporware pretty much has never been about the artist to begin with. So why make a whole story so centralized on who this mystery artist is, only to drill in a message almost everyone knows already? I mean maybe that message will be needed in the future.
Idk, I think the whole narrative could’ve been done better. I don’t know how tho. The whole graveyard scene was unnecessary and just dumbly thought out, the bloody fingerprint could’ve been used better as a plot device (P.s Dennis, blood on most paper actually turns brown after drying out. I learnt this the hard way) With the way it is right now, it feels like Dennis was giving himself a secretive ego stroke all this time. Which I KNOW that was NOT intended at ALL. That’s not the point of the story.
It’s kinda ironic, I enjoy begotten way more when I ignore the whole narrative that’s connected with it.
For anyone who wants to do a narrative/ARG like this, GET INTO CREATIVE WRITING. It doesn’t have to be anything bombastic, it’s just to give you the gists of creating something like this. Also get an outside party(like a writer/forum/friend) to proofread your idea. That way you can get a general feel of how it might be perceived by the audience and if there are any details that need polishing.
Ya the whole story is ruined when i imagine that douchey hipster Dennis thinking he's sooo cooool and aesthetic for this arg
i share this exact viewpoint ! the begotten project is amazing music but the story is eh
I think if he had been more conscious of unfiction tropes, and had taken a few more creative liberties with the story instead of keeping it as "realistic" as possible, it would have been a lot more successful. At the moment it feels half-assed and generic from an unfiction perspective and too much for a regular mysterious backstory. At that point the only impression left to give is that of an awkward ad campaign.
Anyway, the guy should have at the very least binge watched Night Mind before getting started.
@@isweartofuckinggod I agree with you! NightMind has some really good vids on how to do unfiction too!
Also another comment here mentioned how unprofessional his conversations with begotten were, which really leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you realize he’s using someone potentially mentally unwell for monetary gain. Which is baffling, he should already have knowledge for that as a record label owner. Also it’s such a wasted opportunity, you don’t get a lot of stories from that perspective.
I would have loved if this was actually like a metaphorical narrative(like about his own struggles with mental health and how it affects being a creator, expecially when you have a higher ranking position in the industry) framed like the interactions between a label owner and an artist
@@vantablack8468 That could have been really interesting
from what I could gather, this seems like one of three options. This could all be real as Dennis has presented, an elaborate arg by b e g o t t e n (meaning that the artist is real but doesn't ensure that this is one person with one alias), or this was a masterful advertising campaign by Dennis to boost his label's popularity. I think that option three is the most probable because of the timing of when the first release came out around when the label first popped up.
dennis accidentally showed some of the begotten project files on stream, thus confirming that begotten was a publicity stunt
As someone who's struggled with depression for many years now, this just annoys me. This romanticised depiction of depression just ain't it bub.
agreed
The poetry is really shallow
@@kevinericsnell4092 very shallow. very simplistic romanticized view of depression youd see in like a pop song or something.
I don’t feel sad. I would love to feel sad... I feel ✨NOTHING✨ 😃
@@sabrinatscha2554 shhhhhh man
At first this sounded like a real internet mystery. By the end it sounds so unrealistic.
here is a tip: when paraphrasing, make it obvious that you are not reciting your own original words. you paraphrase too frequently with too many small details that confuse the listener on who the original creator is. to avoid plagiarism, simply use direct quotes when the small details are important (you already do this several times in this video) or just paraphrase much more loosely from the original words of the artist.
Your tip is garbage.
This video was perfect just the way it is.
Stop acting like your subjectivity is objective throughout all minds and learn when to shut the Hell up.
@@DMTInfinity yo facts
@@DMTInfinity my man, chill lol. It was just constructive criticism. Take your meds or something and relax lol
@@DMTInfinity That comment had nothing to do with anything subjective, he *is* paraphrasing too much. It's a perfectly valid criticism. Your attitude allows for no actual improvement.
@@DMTInfinity Capital H
I can't decide which is worse: this being an ad for a series of years-too-late-to-the-punch vapor trap tracks bundled with Google Translate text and high school sophomore tier sad boy poetry, or someone really buying into all of this being 100% genuine. The moment you look at even one of the separate pieces of this story from an angle it falls apart *immediately.* If the vaporwave scene wanted to convince everyone they're not leveraging depression and mental illness to create this weird, borderline harmful personality of Guys Who Are Just Too Fucked Up To Be Understood, they're gonna have to try harder than this
I’m only halfway through but the shift between horror novel and music review is jarring in a way that really fits the subject material. Really love this so far.
0:35 the second album (skeleton with gun) is a screenshot from JonTron's clocktower video lmao
IVE GOT A BONE TO PICK WITH YOU
Yup, literally 5 seconds in. It's literally a JonTron screenshot that's been tinted blue! XD
ruclips.net/video/SjVKZ0ltJEI/видео.html
BAHAHAHHHA
Lol I was actually vibing with this creepypasta story, saw this, and now this is all one big joke
No fucking way, how did I not notice that? LMAO
If this person had the music, music videos, album inserts, and everything finished already, why would they seek a label? It seems like the label would have little to nothing to offer aside from perhaps publicity, but that can be generated without a label.
I don't doubt the distinct possibility this is just Dennis doing a setup to make his own music seem more interesting.
Yeah, this is definitely baby's first dark mystery. Even if I didn't gleam the comments prior to watching, I could tell this was fake. The graveyard scene is not only dumb and immersion-breaking, but a plothole, too. Dennis' "friend" was put into potential harm and memory wiped, and Dennis' response is to never bring up his friend again, nor seek begotten's true identity to put the law on him... he just says it's about the music and thanks him for it. Right. There's other plotholes, but that's the big one.
Aside from that, there's just a lot of tropes Dennis does & in general that aren't based in any sensible logic, and mental illness/suicide is a common go-to for a dark topic. The fact that the subject of mental illness/suicide is used for an egotistical publicity stunt is a level of offensive that deserves its own conversation, but I won't get into that. All I'm gonna say is that it's really poor taste and self-serving, made the worse by how begotten is Dennis in a fake persona. Someone with a psych major should know better, and I say that as someone mid-Bachelor's for psych right now.
The music is neat, but if you ask me, knowing the narrative Dennis made for it just sours the pleasure of the experience heavily. These pieces would've avoided that altogether if there was a far more vague story instead to keep it mysterious, or removing it altogether. As it stands, it's overexplained and buckles under its own weight.
It’s like you think this story was ever supposed to be anything but marketing or something. It’s not supposed to be a pulitzer prize-winning journalistic exposé, it’s a creepypasta. Don’t take it too seriously.
@@SnailHatan It's the poor use of the topic of suicide that made me write all that up, since it really rubs me the wrong way. I would've given it the slack you're advising if it weren't for that.
So Dennis used the same marketing ploy he used with his old band Ghost Bath (claimed they were a black metal band from China)?
Oh he's from Ghost Bath? That makes way more sense now
what's your next theory? the guy from Deafheaven is telepath? quit using peabrain reddit logic lmao
It was definitely dennis. Which doesn't make it any less interesting and wonderful
the morbid email that you left out of the video is the suicide note of Dead from Mayhem, the lines are directly taken except leaving a few lines about dying in a forest in between and the latter half of the suicide note where Dead discusses his songs and whatnot
I watched this a couple days ago then was listening to a begotten album and reading the comments. One of the comments was talking about how after doing research he found out it was just Dennis the whole time and he made up the story. Now that I think about it it makes sense. I watched this entire video thinking it was really true, and even went a couple days thinking it too. It kinda make me angry that you spend all this time making and editing an hour long video for a made up story.
It’s got 26K views and we all enjoyed it, so it’s not really a loss.
Think of it as extended lore inside one of your favorite universes
Well I was trying to come out of depression but now I have to listen through six albums.
same
6 albums of slowed down samples with reverb, neat
That’s basically what most Lo-FI, vapor wave, and relaxing/sad/creepy aesthetic music is. If anybody has any actually unique lo-FI/vaporwave aesthetic music then let me know.
@@mic_drop6256 Esprit is pretty good, so is Wind96.
Your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels on youtube, keep the amazing work my friend looking forward to the next upload
Begotten is just denis creating a fake facade to seem interesting. Just look at his Blackgaze band, Ghost Bath, he originally claimed to be from China and went under and chinse moniker, and then the entire black metal community figured it out. He's known for using poor google translate to Chinese text to create some illusion and mysticism. I'm so glad this video was in my recommendations lol. Y'all should know begotten isn't some super cryptic and mysterious artist. It's just another one of Denis's personas he's using to exploit your guy's interest. I guess he couldn't do it in black metal so he's doing it to the vaporwave scene lol.
Off-topic and nothing to do with the video or your accurate comment but that's not how you use the word "Mysticism" lol.
@@TAMPLAYS I’m dumb, I’m sorry lol
@@noahdiemler5047 lol meant nothing by it, it must be so random getting a reply about a half year old comment from such a random corner of the internet. Have a good day wherever you are!
@@TAMPLAYS thank you, you too!
Still better than that godawful hipster shoegaze wannabe band called "deafheaven"
…the cemetery story sounds like something I would hear from my friends at elementary school….
I'm surprised nobody mentioned this: (from begotten's discogs profile)
b e g o t t e n 自杀
Real Name:
Dennis Mikula
Sites:
Bandcamp
Aliases:
Dissociate: 解離, Electric Specter 電妖怪, Nameless (49), runescape斯凱利, 疑心暗鬼
It literally says that he's Dennis in his profile
Man you saved me. The lore terrified me, at the pinnacle of my anxiety where sleep paralysis was about to kick in, I saw this comment and it plucked up my courage to finish the whole video. Thanks
@@oo_rf_oo8824 No problem man lol! Glad I could help you out! I guess Dennis needs to get better at hiding his identity online lmao
@@unnamedindividual8835 I know many are saying that Dennis is a terrible man to make up this story as a publicity stunt, I believe it has some problems ( especially with the translated Chinese ) but I think overall it is a cool project nevertheless
@@timefragment5387 Yeah exactly I don't even care that this is lied about because it's really just all about creating entertainment in the end. The whole begotten project may have been hoaxed but the music was great
For anyone wondering the email was in Chinese so I translated it. I’m not sure if it is entirely correct but the translated email reads: “Excuse my blood, but I have cut my wrist and neck. Anyway, no one will understand why. To give some explanations, I'm not human. It's just a dream, and I'll wake up soon. It's too cold, the blood has been coagulating, and my new knife is too blunt. If I don't succeed in killing the knife, I'll blow all the dung off my skull." This was very disturbing to read.
It’s rather similar to the suicide note by Pelle Ohlin of the band Mayhem. “Excuse the blood, but I have slit my wrists and neck. It was the intention that I would die in the woods so that it would take a few days before I was possibly found. I belong in the woods and have always done so. No one will understand the reason for this anyway. To give some semblance of an explanation I'm not a human, this is just a dream and soon I will wake. It was too cold and the blood kept clotting, plus my new knife is too dull. If I don't succeed dying to the knife I will blow all the shit out of my skull. Yet I do not know. I left all my lyrics by "Let the good times roll"-plus the rest of the money. Whoever finds it gets the fucking thing. As a last salutation may I present "Life Eternal". Do whatever you want with the fucking thing. / Pelle. I didn't come up with this now, but seventeen years ago.”
lmao this is definitely a copy of Dead's suicide letter it's not even trying to be original
This series really puttin me in the B̴̡̢̨̝̪̳̳͓̗̠͎̞̩̩̮͇̦̞͇̝͇̯͖̣̹̥̋̀͐̇̃̍͗̄̏̈́̈́͋͋͜͜͜͝ͅȩ̵̨̙͇̼̣̗͚̺̰͖̼̩̜͔̞̟̠̦̻͚̥̖̬͉̜̹̻̐̔̄͂g̴̻̼̭̓́͆̿̅̿̋͗͒͊͒̈́́̅̓̈́̂͐̽͘͜ͅo̷̺̦͎̹̞͇̭̭̟̻̞̪̦͔͔͚̫̗̫̭͒̆͋̽̍̑͊̓̉͐̂̍̄̔̔͋̏͘̚͘͝t̶̝͇̊͐́́͛͐̕ẗ̸̙͚̺͙͕̣̹̙̲̭̩͎̙̦̹́̇̓̈́̈́͋̒̔͊̉̆̿̊̒̑͐̿̊͗̕͠͝͠ͅé̴̜̝͚͕͍͚̪͎͍̩̫̜͐̽̍̿̉̓̋̍̄̔̅̅͂͊̑́̐̕̚̚͠͠͝ͅn̶̢̡̳̞̬̜̬̬̱̮̬̠̗͈͇̘̬̱̹̘̥̦̹͕̠̲̖̦͍̈́̋̓̈́̆͂̈̈́́̐̀̄̌̑̽͗̿̆̓͗͊̈́͗́̽̋̉͝ mood
IMPORTANT: The song (unknown) on Phantom Psalms album is LITERALLY Genesis by Grimes, just slowed down and processed through filters. Completely stolen song. I wager others have picked up on this (and other songs being just stolen and reshaped through filters)...
I should hire this guy to write essays for me with very strange comparisons
This is one of your best projects yet, i’m so excited for the one you’ve been working on. I feel like longer projects in the future would be definitely worth it, even if they’re not split up and take a bit longer to produce. Keep it up man, we love ya
The quote: “Tell me why...”
Me: AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HEARTACHE
Honestly, I think the biggest giveaway to this all being a marketing scheme is the fact that the homie already had the super special edition limited cassettes on deck for the first album's release
28:34 Grindcore fans: "Wow, this is such a long song!"
tbh, those Chinese text that's not a reference in the album just feel like google translate to me, the gramma in there are really odd.
Plot twitst: It was Dennis all along
WandaVision reference?
Not a plot twist again
@@Mokujo just the plot
One of the songs in Psalms (Sagittarius) is literally just the song Water me by FKA Twigs
Another one, Calming, is a song called Chapel by Nicole Dollanganger
The others are pretty much all samples too.
This music is only creepy if you don't know what wave and lofi music is.
As an actual creation of music, it's pretty lazy. It's so echoed and overlayered that little to no effort has been put into it. Another reason why this music sounds the way it does is because all the sampled tracks are singers with an extreme pitch in their sounds.. So lowering the pitch and tempo creates that creepy ethereal sound, but also still an audible sound because of the levels in which the pitch started at.
This whole video is probably why this music is hitting the way it does and why it might reach people. Because the story is more interesting then the music.
AS for the music itself... It's not even a notch the likes of God Body Disconnect, Ugasanie, Northumbria and other such artists create. Although these aren't Wave artists, they have a much better way of creating the desired creepy and lonely sound.
Dark Vapourwave simply just creates this uncertainty in your head because low pitch music sounds wrong and your brain just feels uncomfortable.
420 is pretty much a Diana Ross song slowed down, overall. That doesn't mean I don't like it, I just take it for what it is. So, maybe it's not morally right to deliberately take someone else's work. People have been doing it since music was a thing. It's just way easier to spot now
Thank you thank you for the music recs!
well I know what I'm going to be doing for the next 50 minutes
the best marketing strategy
ever
begotten definitely has to be his friend that was walking thru the graveyard.
Clues:
1) Dennis of all people get chosen to drop the discography
2) His friend lives in the same area of the address from georgia
3) His friend disappearing right after insisting that somebody was just messing with and the car shows up
4) “Do you really want to know who I am?” maybe it’s just me, but that sounds like something a friend who was hiding something would ask
naw it's dennis himself lol
@@hellothere9520 i wouldn’t be surprised at that either
5.It's all BS that never happened. LOL
dang i really just watched this whole vid thinking id watch a piece of it. your channel is criminally underrated, ive been watching for about a year now i came back after taking a break from the internet. i assumed you hade millions of subs by now😭 nevertheless the quality of your videos are S tier my man, thank you for showing me the wonderful world of vaporwave.
Really an incredible artist. It inspired me to create my own vaporwave songs (even if i didn't released them yet) and the whole project just sounds awesome. Thank you Begotten and thank you Pad who made me discover this artist
Awesome that you found joy in making Music! It's really one of the best things I've discovered in my life, braking the language barrier and showing a part of urself, that you can't really put into words.
No conclusion was surprisingly a very satisfying conclusion
This is the only documentary I care about.
The most underrated content makers: tabby abd pad chennington😔♥️
Wow! ...A car!? ... On a road you say?! ... That's just crazy! LOL
Hey guys, Begotten here, just wanted to say thanks for enjoying my music. I really enjoy chopping up samples and putting reverb on them so that was my inspiration
Is the music really that basic? I might try listening, but the story isn’t enough of a catalyst to make me want to.
This isn’t him it’s Dennis Mikula
TYFYS
The way you narrated this made me feel like I was in a listening to a goosebumps audiobook (in a good way!). Have you done a video on P-Model or Susumu Hirasawa? I don’t think there’s any videos made of him or his bands in English yet so that could be a cool undertaking! I cannot even begin to explain what this man’s music sounds like. He’s made songs for Berserk and almost every Satoshi Kon movie/show. He’s in his 60’s now and still absolutely killing it. I’d love to get your take on him.
6 albums. Depressing theme. Eerie explanations.
This is truly the "Everywhere At The End Of Time" of Vaporwave.
This is my favorite 50 minute advertisement of all time
I have watched this 3 times already and I am deeply intrigued~
"Scared to death of death itself and nowhere to turn, I hope I find solace before it's too late to learn."
Any other music mysteries, stories, or urban legends you'd want to see me explore for a future video? Comment and let me know! 🌠
talk about whitehouse albums
Can you talk about Swans' Soundtracks For The Blind?
Aphex twin
I’d love to see you cover Mort Garson’s discography, the guy was a synth pioneer
dark ambient, mabye there is some underlying creepy stuff there
Amazing story. Just amazing. I'm hooked.
Honestly it all just kind of seems like something the mind of a typical 19 year old male redditor who loves horror and anime would conjure.
Probably does have depression but like in the way almost everyone his age does.
I watch a lot of RUclips, this video is a masterpiece. I love the way you describe music.
This reminds me of my edgy teen years. I wrote shit like this all the time. Within 15 min the story started to fall apart and makes less sense the longer the story goes.
It's cool to see the SkullTronix clips. I used to watch those videos when I was a kid lol
Honestly the part about all the crap happening with his friend not contacting him is what made me really think the story was very unlikely to be true.
amazing video begotten is definitely going in the bandcamp hall of fame
I personally think the story is whatever, an interesting idea, but the music is so good. Some of the best vaporwave released in recent years, wish there was more from this alias bc this hazy and foggy sound is so good.
To add on to what I said, I feel as if the story tried really hard at one point and Dennis realized it was too much, I feel like if they omitted the graveyard and instead Dennis just focused on how this person themselves were doing then it would have been much cooler. Maybe if he had just listed and explained these albums and stopped there, then the story would've been much more believable. Like just imagine he uploads all 6 of the albums and everyone asks who begotten is and dennis is just like "idk some dude from azerbaijan". Would've actually presented the idea of vaporwave and anonymity that he was going for I feel.
The sad thing is there are probably real artists like this fictional character out there but they don't make music in popular genres.
What a waste of time believing this was real.
Plot twist Dennis was begotten, makes for good marketing honestly
Thank you. I was looking for a rabbit hole to go into. You deserve more recognition. This is great
I hate to be an asshole about a fun campfire story with a surprisingly optimistic conclusion, but I don't believe any of Dennis's side of this (and, by matter of course, the entire story). This reads like a cliched creepypasta, and I don't mean the so-called "Begotten" side of this as much as Dennis's behavior throughout. There's just some issues with his story that make it feel this way:
1. He's representing a label which produces music and remix tracks with collaborating artists yet doesn't know anything about the identity of the person he's representing. The label is making money from it yet he has no way of establishing a payment or distribution deal. I can believe this part of the story if we presume that the common anonymity in these genres prevents this label from recognizing the potential legal quagmire they're constantly wading through. Any contract they sign could be nullified if a legitimate name isn't used on the signature and all of the correspondence which establishes Geometric Lullaby's right to sell begotten's work can be invalidated as there is no evidence that the anonymous sender represents the intellectual property owners of said work. Maybe "underground" labels like Geometric Lullaby shoots from the hip like this all the time, but it's already putting them on shaky ground for the next points I'm bringing up.
2. Dennis's entire correspondence with begotten is weirdly unprofessional and impersonal, yet emotional and invested and trusting as though this was dialogue written for a creepypasta and not the way any actual adult person would establish a business relationship with a potentially unstable artist. This could just be that Dennis was interacting with what he believed to be an ARG strategy by the artist, but the way the story is presented places a lot of seriousness and over-reactionary emotions onto Dennis as a character than if he were just treating this as a game. Dennis is being painted like the character in story whose reactions to everything Begotten gives over is meant to manipulate his (Dennis's) audience into taking Begotten's poetry and mystique as seriously as Dennis does.
3. The entire graveyard scene was a sequence of events that I find really hard to believe happened. Tons of coincidence, a cell phone feed seems to glitch out right as something interesting might be happening, the fact that Dennis seems to be the only person in his friend's life who is talking online about this guy's sudden uprooting and disappearance all while one of the missing person's friends is talking about it parallel to marketing hit "begotten" albums. This part of the story is silly, doesn't go anywhere, and strikes me as part of the story author writing themselves into a corner before realizing that they don't want to write just a ghost story but maybe something that's more of a statement on accepting art without a prodding need to analyze the artist alongside it. This part would make me groan and think it made too little sense in a story clearly aiming to be fiction. The best possible defense for Dennis here is if his friend deleted his Facebook and went on radio silence for an extended period of time just to play a prank on the cartoonishly gullible Dennis character.
4. I think this is most damning of all, but it's even more greatly enhanced by the three points above: Dennis keeps the marketing campaign and album releases going in the face of what he is describing as mounting disturbing occurrences and mysteries around this artist whom he supposedly knows nothing about and is immediately 100% invested in. These are situations wherein he worries for the mental health and well being of the artist, supposedly was sent blood in the mail, that their friend could seemingly go missing after investigating the artist and seemingly being ambushed by somebody in a black vehicle, and yet he's still droppin' albums online (for sale) with the full texts of what's going on including what are written as direct quotes and correspondence with the artist and his own seemingly missing friend, complete with all of the trappings of any standard release by a label looking to get people clicking through their catalog. I don't buy it. I don't buy at all that in the face of the intense things that supposedly happened Dennis or anyone else at the label would feel comfortable releasing the albums, and if they were then they're calling themselves out as horrific irresponsibility with how they handled all of this. Continuing to humor an artist you truly believe could be mentally unstable and slipping deeper into clearly dangerous ways of thinking is bad form, and I almost hate this story because it so encourages this reckless behavior. I've been working in mental health for, well, too long frankly. I'd like to say that I don't believe Dennis would go through with this because of the understanding of how harmful this behavior could be, but given that apparently whoever wrote this tale doesn't realize that issue then I would hope instead that Dennis would recognize the possible legal issues he could get in by not only passing off notes of suicidal ideation from someone he believes to be mentally unwell, but PROFITING off of it as well.
I wouldn't be quite as critical of it, but given how many people have discussed this story with me like it's 100% truth I can't help but treat it like it needs to be verified against being a hoax. Nowhere do I see that it's untrue in any way, which means if it isn't true then it really is a hoax designed to push selling albums and that's... a lot less fun to me than a campy backstory for an art project. And, like I mentioned, I don't believe any of it to be true. It especially rubs me the wrong way that, with the context and phrasing, the happy ending seems to imply it's a good thing to engage with (and profit off of) the delusions and suicidal ideations of the mentally unwell. I figure it's just a collaborative ARG-ish backstory that Dennis and the true artist (or himself, if he secretly actually is Begotten) developed together as a marketing ploy, and I don't think they had any ill intentions in its creation, but I still can't help but to be rubbed the wrong way by how it was executed and delivered.
your second point is the one that really struck me throughout this whole thing. i don't like the message or how it was portrayed, but that constant lack of believable human communication just made me want to roll my eyes. it felt like at any moment he was going to see hyperrealistic blood and vomit.
Amazing, I've been looking for the second album for years since I stumbled upon it and forgot what it was called. Thanks
begotten is an edgelord. if i wasn't lazy (and had talent) i'd totally do something similar, edgy an intentionally mysterious
Interesting because to me that seems like something someone lazy and talentless would do. You're probably doing good as you are, being like this dennis guy is not really an achievement.
@@RenegadeShepard69 well if not talent, then what do you need to have to produce all the music, videos and poetry to go along with the edge?
@@512TheWolf512 knowledge and proficiency. If you learn something you will have what you need to do something. Regardless, I wasn't trying to argue on the nature of "talent", rather just say even a lot of people "without talent" and who are lazy can do something artistic. Will just have different outcomes depending on the commitment.
I’m sick of these fake viral marketing campaigns.
Yeah, it started to lose me after _"He opened the letter to find....ANOTHER LETTER!! His hands were shaking from the discovery!!"_ Everything after that just fell into the cliche edgy creepypasta tropes, and took me out of it
Oh come on dude. Who hasn't been scared to the point of shaking when they're ......... opening an ENVELOOOOOOOOOPE! LOL
No matter how this came to be, you cannot deny this music is damn near genius. I can’t believe someone could make one let alone six just like that and keep that same energy
It's boring as hell. LOL
Stumbled upon this video & watched it in its entirety, really wanted the music to be something special but unfortunately it & the poems are something I would have made in art college when I was somewhat naive & suffering from angst.
I have to say, I wasn't really interested in the topic but Pad is very skilled in words, it kept me listening.
this is way too good to have just 21k
You know, even if it’s fake it’s still a really entertaining story.
One of your best documentaries thus far! An extremely interesting and mysterious story about one of the best artists to come out on Geometric Lullaby. Absolute vaporwave gold! Well done Pad.
What an unexpectedly sweet story.
so what i'm hearing is that this is an overdone, overly dramatic story meant to market some albums that, from tons of comments here, seem to have multiple songs that are just other songs slowed and reverbed. all created by the owner of the record label. and this video functions as an attempt to advertise it further. it's so utterly lame i dont even know what to say lol
That sums up my feelings. Thanks.
I just subscribed! And I’m only on the third album!! My only question: what about the money? All the album sales and whatnot? What about a festival tour or anything? Crazy thing I like actually remember a friend of mine talking about this and I remember the skeletons like that’s what I saw it immediately brought me back to that I remembered that me and I was in college and I remember I may be wrong but isn’t this about the time when the binaural beats thing was was really certain buzz I don’t mean a national level but I mean it was being spoken about in like a certain forms in New Age forums and whatnot. Okay well I was just curious I should probably finish the video before I ask but whatever I’m already this far. Well done sir, can’t wait to see what else you have to offer.
Interesting how the "unmentionable" Chinese text loosely translates to a similar rendition of Dead's (Per Yngve Ohlin), suicide note. Perhaps this reference to Mayhem could tie in with another commenter's theory about Begotten being Dennis, as his band is Ghost Bath. As the music uses themes from black metal, it could potentially link to the usage of a Mayhem reference.
glad I'm not the only person who caught that
Well, that's 50 minutes of my life i'll never get back
Call me Columbo, but Begotten is Dennis.
You deserve more views
Pad Chennington, you'll probably never see this but can you do a video on Power Electronics? There's a great deal of experimental artists out there for you to discover (people like Sutcliffe Jügend, Whitehouse, Ramleh...)
one of the best things i’ve seen lately, thanks for making an awesome thing to watch while eating
I think this "begotten" character is pulling a Jandek.
True
A little bit, but Jandek is a lot more protective with their identity and it doesn't feel like a marketing stunt.
Pad should definitely check out Jandek though.
Hearing Begotten reminded me of the 1989 horror film and that immediately sent chills.
This makes no sense. Why would a person give this dude a lot of material with no payment for their work
For me, that was the first thing that made it obvious that Dennis was behind it all. If he had given the music away Dennis would have mentioned it in the marketing because it would add to the mystery to have an artist not care about the money. If Dennis was paying the guy then people would obviously ask why he didn't try to trace the guy via his payment details.