Barriers (Main)

* Barriers
* Fiberglass and Flowers
* Twilight and Thunderstorms
* Inserenity and Infernos
* The End of Days
* Solar Eclipse on a March Evening

*Barriers* is a group of albums (three main albums, one extras album, and one single) recorded and released by *Billy Hill & The Optimists*. The album has thirteen parts, all of these parts with the exception of thirteen contain 3 tracks for each, all relating back to the story of *A Trip Through the Wormhole*. The albums draw inspiration from many paces, but the main genres are ambient, piano, and drone, leaning more towards dark ambient and horror ambient in the later albums. The three main albums in this trilogy have a lot of similarities between each other, certain track placements having trends, such as track one being the title track or track four being the shortest track, as well as samples being shared between the albums, being the most prevalent in the third main album.

Due to the scope of Barriers and how much story it covers just through its main albums, it is worth it to break it down, especially with some albums being related to Barriers, but are not officially part of Barriers. Parts 1 through 4 of Barriers are in *Fiberglass and Flowers*, Parts 5 through 8 are in *Twilight and Thunderstorms*, Parts 9 through 12 are in *Inserenity and Infernos*, and Part Thirteen is *The End of Days*. Other than the thirteen parts of barriers, there is one extras album which was released alongside Twilight, that being *Solar Eclipse on a March Evening*. While it is not considered a part of the main Barriers albums and is not in the Barriers compilation album, it is still connected to Barriers and has story connections related to some of the stories featured in the Barriers albums. Although *The Roar of a Distant Storm* and *Mental Collapse Nervous Breakdown* were released between the main albums and are related to important stories and characters in Barriers, Gemenii's and The Unnamed's stories respectfully, they are not considered parts of the Barriers albums, but they are part of the list of story-line albums.

Story-line albums are albums that have **direct connections to the story of A Trip Through the Wormhole**. Albums with loose story connections such as *Greatest Hits Collection* and *The End of Days* are not considered as story-line albums because although names or themes may evoke parts of the story, there is no direct connection like there is in main story-line albums. *Fiberglass and Flowers*, *The Roar of a Distant Storm*, *Solar Eclipse on a March Evening / Exercises in Ambience - Ecliptic Version*, *Twilight and Thunderstorms*, *Mental Collapse Nervous Breakdown*, *Inserenity and Infernos*, *The Stars are Out Tonight*, and *Where the Wind Bows Through you* all have direct connections to the main story of A Trip Through the Wormhole, and thus are all considered story-line albums.

## Fiberglass and Flowers

Fiberglass and Flowers is the first album in the Barriers series and kicked off the entire Barriers trilogy, and out of all of the albums, it had the most interesting development cycle. It all started on January 10 of 2022 when the first song and title track was created. Shortly after this first song was made, full parts of the album were made, part four being made first, than part one, than part 3. For a while, there were only 3 parts of the album created, and the names for most were very different from what they are now. During this early stage when full parts were uploaded as segmented 20+ minute songs like they are in the Barriers compilation, The names would be the given part of the album followed by the names for each segment, examples are in the image below.

Not too long after this period, the songs were split up and from the three full songs, 9 songs were born which allowed for part two to be created. Due to the way part two and part three were structured, when tracks started to get revamped in February the names changed along with them. Part two which used to consist of songs named Cold Bridge, Dead of Winter, and In the Middle of the Woods saw a change where Cold Bridge was deleted, merging the two old names and putting Fleeting Eclipse in the empty slot. This decision to merge the names and put one in brackets sparked one of the first trends across the series of albums. A similar thing happened with part three, where every song had an 'alternate' title, where it was one title followed by AKA and then the next title. When this was phased out during part three's revamp, Deepspace AKA Fallen and Monumentality AKA Blindness were combined to create Deepspace Monumentality, and Dusk over Seamark AKA Blinding Agony was shortened to Dusk over the Sea. The revamp of part three also introduced a sample trend, where the ninth song of all three main Barriers albums would sample a Les Brown song, in this first case being Daybreak Serenade with a clever usage of a quiet vocal sample that follows the melody at a certain point.

Another of the main trends was set during the production of part two with In the Middle of the Woods. In the Middle and Running Down an Empty Road (then A song to Lose your Mind to) were both made on the same day, the fifteen minute long In the Middle stemming from a lost extended version of Running Down which looped for almost sixteen minutes. This sparked the trend that the last song of every main Barriers album would sample Layton and Johnstone. Just like in Fiberglass, there were outtakes in a way for the last song, however they were different for later albums, due to the way the production went on.

By late February, most of the work was done and the last changes were being done before the album's release. The way it was released similarly sparked a trend as well where the four parts would be released individually on youtube before the full album would come out the day after part four. In the full album video, a joke insertion was added. This would continue a trend which lasted to Twilight and Thunderstorms, however it was not repeated in Inserenity and Infernos, although there is no telling if more insertions will come in the future for wide youtube releases of other albums or compilations.

After the album was released, surviving files of the old versions of parts from the album were uploaded to the full Barriers album as bonus tracks, a trend which would begin the use of old songs as well as alternates rather than leaving them unreleased and lost to time.

## Twilight and Thunderstorms

Twilight and Thunderstorms is the second main album in the Barriers series and marked a major turning point in the production which seemed to have hurt the final product of the album, more so in Inserenity and Infernos. This turning point was the decision to put most of the stories first rather than have them come after the songs were made. This allowed for songs to more appropriately represent the selected mood and story of the songs, being very on-the-nose at times, a great example being the use of the rain sounds from Spring and a Storm in Twilight and Thunderstorms, World Below, A Time Long Since Past, and It's so dark here. It all adds to the atmosphere the album aims to create, and though it can be a bit much at times with the direct sampling of storm sounds from various sources for the title tracks, other times it works well and adds to the ambience, mixing well with the noise from the samples.

Another large change in production was to create songs roughly chronologically in respect to their album placement. The title track was the first made for the album, and then World Below and then A Time Long Since Past, all in a relatively linear fashion except for Empty Desolation which was made after Otherworldly Dread. This process made it simpler to manage, without having to worry about other parts being incomplete and messing up the order of the album. Other than these main production chances, Twilight also utilized better technique in certain places, especially when it came to going over tracks which was done near the end of production.

In the beginning, the album went fast but it begun to slow down as more time was put into developing the story. This initial speed may have hurt the sound though, and a few of the early songs received large changes near the end of production. These sweeping changes near the end came to the massive benefit of many songs, making a large difference in tone, especially in It's so dark here, where a massive section was added onto the end which nearly doubled the song's length, as well as adding in more noise to the constant drone, those being the direct samples of A Time Long Since Past which adds to the sinking feeling.

As more focus was put onto representing the story well enough, this gave way to less tracks that went wherever to songs which were more structured, an example of a very structured song being Empty Desolation which almost moves like the parts of a play, going from one section to another to tell different parts of a story. This song also pulls a lot from Solar Eclipse, this song contributing to a good chunk of the content used on the album. Empty Desolation Section A-a, A-c, B, C-a, and C-b all pull from Solar Eclipse, all of these with the exception of A-c pulling from longer parts made specifically for this song. Section A-c was added on later along with sections D-a and D-b. Small changes like this made a large difference, even if the additions only add up to a little over two minutes of content they still made the ending feel very grand, as well as related back to the story with the use of the striking sound from Hand me my Shovel, I'm going In! which became representative of Gemenii's story.

Just like Fiberglass and Flowers, once Twilight was finished its final production touch ups the parts were released one by one in a series of four days before the full album was released on June 6, exactly three months after the release of Fiberglass. Just like Fiberglass did, there was an insertion into the full album video, but unlike the one in Fiberglass, the one in Twilight was darker and more serious, not to mention much longer. More effort was also put in, using two unused songs over a dark image to add to the atmosphere of the section. It comes abruptly and it ends abruptly just like the one in Fiberglass.

As the album was produced old files were saved and some were uploaded, however there is less surviving old content from Twilight, there is quite a lot of unused content which was added onto Solar Eclipse. Most of these additions were extended or isolated parts of tracks, while others were alternate takes for existing songs or just miscellaneous unused content.

## Inserenity and Infernos

Inserenity and Infernos is the third and final main album in the Barriers series and acts as a grand finale to all of the themes and stories represented throughout, giving some stories endings and continuing new storylines which would be expanded upon in future albums and Solar Eclipse. This conclusive feel was achieved by bringing together samples used in previous parts to make the music tie everything together, along with bringing in new samples to give it new elements. As well as repurposing samples, Inserenity also pulls from more albums directly, and widens the type of samples it uses, including more original recordings.

Building off of the new production elements of Twilight, Inserenity takes a more on the nose approach when telling its stories rather than being more abstract like Fiberglass. Inserenity was also produced linearly, the songs being made in their album placement order. As part nine was being developed, one song would go up one day, then the next day another with some edits to the first. This schedule did not last long however, and there were longer gaps in new content being released around the midway point of the album due to Mental Collapse Nervous Breakdown being produced alongside it. Once Mental Collapse was finished and released, parts eleven and twelve were ready to be produced, however there was a delay between the two in order for the story of part twelve to be sorted out.

When each song was made, the samples were more carefully chosen. In previous albums when most of the samples had no relation to the story in general but as more samples became used, they became associated with specific stories, and thus some important samples and sample artists were chosen carefully when creating each song, all relating back to either Fiberglass, Twilight or both. In some cases, sample artists were used to tie to albums outside the main Barriers trilogy, such as sections B-c and B-d of Shattering Sky, both using samples by The Jacques Orchestra, connecting it to Red Horizon from Mental Collapse, the first sample of which using a different sample by the same orchestra, all three samples part of their rendition of St. Matthew Passion.

The connection between Shattering Sky and Red Horizon is very intentional as well, seeing as the stories lead directly into each other, the latter beginning where the former leaves off. Inserenity acts as a storyline junction, where some storylines are reinforced, some are finished, and some are continued, and songs like these only serve to reinforce these connections, much like how other songs on this album serve as a jumping-off or ending point for various stories, such as how the story of part twelve leads directly into that of Solar Eclipse's Otherworldly Dread.