A Disturbing Online Music Mystery 

A Disturbing Music Mystery Returns: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-A6vB0rv0IN8.html

as a native speaker I can confirm that the Chinese text is generated from Google translate

This feels more like a marketing strategy then a real thing that happened tbh

Fun fact you cant mistake blood with red ink coz when it dries it becomes brown

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...

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

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.

looks like the real Begotten are the Dennis's we made along the way

15:53 “the one considered to be the darkest of them all” *mr. clean ad starts playing*

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.

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!

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.

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.

this is gonna get in everybody's recommended in 10 years

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!

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.

that graveyard bit was probably the lamest thing ever tbh

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

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.

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.

At first this sounded like a real internet mystery. By the end it sounds so unrealistic.

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.

The quote: “Tell me why...” Me: AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HEARTACHE

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

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.

0:35 the second album (skeleton with gun) is a screenshot from JonTron's clocktower video lmao

Any other music mysteries, stories, or urban legends you'd want to see me explore for a future video? Comment and let me know! 🌠

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.

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.

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.

So Dennis used the same marketing ploy he used with his old band Ghost Bath (claimed they were a black metal band from China)?

6 albums of slowed down samples with reverb, neat

Plot twitst: It was Dennis all along

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Well I was trying to come out of depression but now I have to listen through six albums.

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)...

It was definitely dennis. Which doesn't make it any less interesting and wonderful

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.

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 liked all the begotten albums, but the story is literal bullshit and pretty disappointing. Dennis is begotten, let's all just move on to something more interesting

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.

Your channel is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels on youtube, keep the amazing work my friend looking forward to the next upload

I should hire this guy to write essays for me with very strange comparisons

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

28:34 Grindcore fans: "Wow, this is such a long song!"

well I know what I'm going to be doing for the next 50 minutes

This is an incredible music documentary. Somehow Pad Chennington is able to match the quality of the top video essayists even though he doesen't usually make this type of content. Great Job!

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

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 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

Thank you. I was looking for a rabbit hole to go into. You deserve more recognition. This is great

This was the first video I watched of yours. Amazing video and thank you for introducing me to one of the best rabbit holes I've found in awhile.

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

begotten is an edgelord. if i wasn't lazy (and had talent) i'd totally do something similar, edgy an intentionally mysterious

This is now my fav yt channel, keep up the good work man!

Thanks for the full documentary!

This series really puttin me in the B̴̡̢̨̝̪̳̳͓̗̠͎̞̩̩̮͇̦̞͇̝͇̯͖̣̹̥̋̀͐̇̃̍͗̄̏̈́̈́͋͋͜͜͜͝ͅȩ̵̨̙͇̼̣̗͚̺̰͖̼̩̜͔̞̟̠̦̻͚̥̖̬͉̜̹̻̐̔̄͂g̴̻̼̭̓́͆̿̅̿̋͗͒͊͒̈́́̅̓̈́̂͐̽͘͜ͅo̷̺̦͎̹̞͇̭̭̟̻̞̪̦͔͔͚̫̗̫̭͒̆͋̽̍̑͊̓̉͐̂̍̄̔̔͋̏͘̚͘͝t̶̝͇̊͐́́͛͐̕ẗ̸̙͚̺͙͕̣̹̙̲̭̩͎̙̦̹́̇̓̈́̈́͋̒̔͊̉̆̿̊̒̑͐̿̊͗̕͠͝͠ͅé̴̜̝͚͕͍͚̪͎͍̩̫̜͐̽̍̿̉̓̋̍̄̔̅̅͂͊̑́̐̕̚̚͠͠͝ͅn̶̢̡̳̞̬̜̬̬̱̮̬̠̗͈͇̘̬̱̹̘̥̦̹͕̠̲̖̦͍̈́̋̓̈́̆͂̈̈́́̐̀̄̌̑̽͗̿̆̓͗͊̈́͗́̽̋̉͝ mood

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.

Nice one pad! Already saw the original one but I think I will spend another 50 minutes of my day to rewatch this~❤️

Amazing story. Just amazing. I'm hooked.

this is a very edgy melodramatic artist

This is the only documentary I care about.

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.

Just found this channel. Looks VERY interesting. Can’t wait to explore!

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

I have watched this 3 times already and I am deeply intrigued~

one of the best things i’ve seen lately, thanks for making an awesome thing to watch while eating

You got me hooked, I’m obsessed

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.

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.

I watch a lot of RU-vid, this video is a masterpiece. I love the way you describe music.

Great job on the video and ty for pointing me to such an amazing musical masterpiece.

Plot twist Dennis was begotten, makes for good marketing honestly

Already watched all 3 parts, but watching again cause...just, damn

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.

amazing video!!!

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

..is this an elaborate creepypasta to sell/hype niche music?

Keep up the great work. You find the most interesting subject matter to make videos on.

Amazing, I've been looking for the second album for years since I stumbled upon it and forgot what it was called. Thanks

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.

I think this "begotten" character is pulling a Jandek.

This is extremely interesting actually, and part of me wishes I was involved for some reason. Good video!

I'm usually never this early, but I'm excited for this new video

The pretentious word salad Dennis spews like he's trying to sell low effort art to other pretentious hipsters seems pretty inline with the shitty depression poetry he "received."

6 albums. Depressing theme. Eerie explanations. This is truly the "Everywhere At The End Of Time" of Vaporwave.

Very great video. I watched your separate videos and bought begotten's music afterwards. The music is pretty creepy yet amazing.

It's cool to see the SkullTronix clips. I used to watch those videos when I was a kid lol

TLDR: its a member from a shitty black metal band called ghost bath

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.

amazing video begotten is definitely going in the bandcamp hall of fame

I’m sick of these fake viral marketing campaigns.

So Dennis made it himself then tricked a bunch of Vapourwave artists to remix his own music to celebrate his lies? Sounds sorta egotistical given he already boosted his publishing thing a whole lot, srs though who's going to believe the graveyard and metal institution and that thing with the friend acting completely non-human then essentially disappearing? Also I'm p sure that being in a mental institution (they let them just have a PC with internet to download songs to put effects on?) and/or having really bad depression/unspecific mental illnesses would more get in the way of producing music, music videos and poetry

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.

I have to say, I wasn't really interested in the topic but Pad is very skilled in words, it kept me listening.