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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d6GNuKxb0Tna9TvupVbU8TkFernPgqUK

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With their track Beautiful No Longer , kiari and mxcii impressed not only the jury at Audiotool Day earlier this year, where they placed fourth. The track stands out for its polished sound design, emotional depth, and exceptional craftsmanship in the Audiotool studio. A well-deserved win and the starting point for a truly engaging interview. Many thanks for taking the time! And thanks to all of you for voting for your favorite track of 2025.

How did the collaboration come together, and what was the starting point for the track?

kiari The starting point for Beautiful No Longer was exactly how the track begins; a melody that popped into my head one day just before the beginning of ATD that I slowly formed into a full track in my head. Right away I knew mxcii would be the perfect partner for this track though I didn't ask them to join until I had laid some groundwork in the studio days later.

mxcii kiari messaged me on discord asking to do a collab for audiotool day 2024. At the time i was honestly very burned out from music and had exams coming up, but figured that it's not every day you get an invitation from someone as talented as kiari, so i happily accepted. I was then invited to a draft where kiari had already laid out some synth/orchestral stuff as a foundation to build on.

How did you divide roles during the production, and how did your different approaches influence the final track?

kiari Because around 90% of the track's structure and progression was my vision from the start, it was less a division of roles and more of a combined effort to refine each section into its final result.

I like to see my style of production as slow and methodical, where I constantly tune one section until I'm satisfied whereas I see mxcii's style as being all over the place and changing focus often which would in turn never leave me having to think about what comes next and instead focus on turning what was already made into something cohesive.

mxcii I was at the time very much a “try random things then glue them together” type guy whereas kiari has a much more planned/intentional approach. While we mostly just made a bunch of unjoined sections kiari would occasionally be like “nah if we do this the pacing won’t be right” etc - which i think was super important for the end result. If you listen to some of my older stuff it should be very apparent that Beautiful No Longer sounds much more coherent and this more planned approach is something i think has influenced my production going forward pretty significantly. Overall the amount of work we did was pretty much 50/50, some of the sections being mostly me, some sections being mostly kiari and some being a mix.

How did working together influence the creative direction of the track?

kiari The final result is certainly louder and much more melody focused than I had originally envisioned, but I think it actually lends well to how the track progresses. I think the overall track gives the vibe that it's my signature style of story-telling drum and bass but its jazzy transition, airy atmosphere and certain melodic elements from mxcii are what elevates the track past what I could possibly have come up with on my own

mxcii Well first of all the length. If i had made a solo track at the time it would’ve been 3:00 minutes at most (if i had even finished in time). Also the orchestral/cinematic vibe and aesthetic of the track is very much kiari's thing with the choirs and pads, which isn't really my typical style so working together naturally pushed the track in a more atmospheric direction than I would've gone solo.

What were the key challenges during the production, and how did you solve them together?

kiari The main and almost only challenge during the making of the track was time. With my working two jobs during the busy holiday hours and mxcii going through their exam period in school, working on the track was very difficult and there was even a period of 2 weeks before Christmas where practically nothing got done and it was a wonder if we would even finish in time. Luckily we found a brief time right before the end of ATD that we would get a large portion of the final track completed.

Honestly there's no real way we managed to solve this beyond grinding it out as hard as we could putting in hours wherever possible. mxcii suffered for this track even more than I as they took on the added role of trying to develop callouses on their fingers over the course of a busy month to play guitar well enough for the track which took up even more of their time. Sometimes though the pressure of the situation is exactly what it takes to make something considered "track of the year" and for that I think it was worth it.

mxcii I think the two biggest challenges were probably making the transitions (which kiari did a great job at) and my fingers nearly falling off from playing guitar after like two years with no practice

Which Audiotool features or devices played a key role in shaping the track, and how did you use them in your collaboration?

kiari obvious answer is the collaboration feature itself. Being able to work together in real time definitely shaped the track how it would be as I was able to give quick and direct advice to mxcii while watching them make their sections and vice versa. Not being forced to come back to a project after someone has changed something and instead being able to make changes together as soon as they happen is a large part of what makes Audiotool so great to work in.

Also using the quasar for "pre-fade" reverb sweeps is sort of a token style of me and mxcii specifically, so we used that to our full advantage everywhere throughout the track.

mxcii One technique we used a lot which i think is one of the key things that makes the drops work is reverb sweeps with the Quasar. The idea is basically to automate the wet level on the quasar to get a sweeping effect which we used a lot to fill out space and make the sound design in those sections feel more dynamic. We also made heavy use of the heisenberg synth which constitutes most of the sounds that you hear. And of course we also used the collaboration features of audiotool which allowed us to work on the same draft without sending files back and forth a gazillion times

How did the track evolve during the main production phase, and which decisions had the biggest impact on its final direction?

kiari The evolution of the track was mainly in its early stages when we were just starting to form the first drop. I always feel like a drop has to set the expectations for what the track is going to be and it was the section that went through the most re-iteration and fine tuning.

The biggest impact, at least in my opinion; was the idea for the re-emergence of the chorus in triplet rhythm at the end of the track as I believe it ties the whole track together and completes the story I set out to make.

mxcii Probably kiari pushing my lazy ass towards making a 7 minute track instead of a 4 minute one LMAO. I was basically ready to make an outro at that point but i definitely think we made right call extending it (even if it took a lot of work to do so)

What changed between the first version of the track and the final release?

kiari Not necessarily an easy question to answer because the first version is essentially the final version, but if I had to pick the biggest change it would be mxcii's guitar playing.

mxcii I think most of our ideas didn’t actually change very much after we initially came up with them. The two main things i can recall changing is me randomly deciding to replace the intro with the guitar thing in the final track and me adding the bell synth melody at 02:10 but otherwise we ended up using nearly all ideas we came up with in the final track

Your message to the community:

kiari I mean first of all thank you for voting for us, it means a lot to me personally as often times I feel rather unrecognized and absent from the conversations happening on Audiotool despite the fact I always put my all into everything I create on this website to make it look as impressive as possible. Ultimately I think that's what everyone should be doing; making our community and DAW look like the premier place to be in the music space by making every track your best track.

Also stop posting wips it destroys your motivation to finish tracks

mxcii First of all i wanna thank you guys for voting for our track since it means that i am now TECHNICALLY an award-winning producer (don’t worry i won’t let it go to my head)

In all seriousness though it was super cool to work on this track and i learned so much in doing so. Working with kiari pushed me to being more intentional about structure and pacing, which has genuinely changed how i approach production. It’s also wild how a track i made while burned out and stressed about exams ended up resonating with people so much - i guess sometimes the best work comes from committing to a project even when you don’t feel like you’re at your best. Thanks to everyone who’s been supportive of my music over the years and to the audiotool community for being such a cool place to make stuff.