2014-04-07 4:01:48 ¶ ●

RATING: 7 / 13 – this activity has been a nice diversion

Welcome to Jailbreak Vol 1, the unofficial soundtrack for the brief webcomic of the same name. I rather like the implication of more albums to come for this 134-page comic, Normally I’d be 100% sure that this was facetious, but in this fandom, who knows.

As someone whose first real game console was an NES, naturally I have a soft spot in my heart for chiptune music. This album delivers a megadose of 8-bit fundamental waveform mania. Some of these songs could have been pulled straight from an old game’s background ambiance.

That being said, by no means is it perfect. It’s one-dimensional (duh), and it loses a bit of steam in the middle tracks. But it’s a fun album to listen to.

Since it’s an unofficial compilation, it’s available for full download completely free of charge: you can download it in MP3 format (as well as some bonus NSF files, which can be played back in native chiptune format) here from GameFreakDude’s DropBox.

Click here for individual song reviews for Jailbreak Vol 1.

2014-04-17 4:01:59 ¶ ●

RATING: 5 / 13 – It is weirdly infectious.

Tomb of the Ancestors is a solo album written by Robert Blaker. It’s an unofficial Homestuck album, so it’s available completely free of charge (you can download the entire album and its bonus tracks here). Theme-wise, it’s a little like Alternia. There’s a song for each troll, only this time the subject is the trolls’ ancestors, rather than the trolls themselves.

I’ll start with the good. It’s an intense album, for the most part. There’s huge body to the brass section, and the percussion is diverse and driving. And many of the songs do well to establish a leitmotif for its subject.

But there’s places where the album falls short. The transitions between songs are jarring in a a few cases, and it makes the album feel disjointed. And some of the digital processing effects are more noisy than musical.

A lot of the songs rely on repetition of a few core segments. A little fragment of song is repeated many times, with slight variations in percussion or backing instrumentation. It’s hit or miss: on some songs on the album (and especially on one particular earlier composition of his) the hooks are great, and the flow between segments makes for a kick-ass tune. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.

The songs were all written well before the audience knew much of anything about the trolls’ ancestors. Because of this, a couple of the songs don’t fit their subject all that well. That might have contributed to the album’s unofficial release (though there’s no primary-source info available on ‘the nets’ regarding it, so I won’t speculate further). But, of course, this only has a superficial effect on the music.

Click here for individual song reviews for Tomb of the Ancestors.

2014-04-30 4:02:00 ¶ ●

RATING: 9 / 13 – “Shucks, buster, sign me up!”

Sit back, relax, and dim the lights. The symphony’s in town.

Like Sburb, this is less a collection of tracks and more a single hour-long concerto. But this album has a much greater scope. It’s ambitious, and the sound is superb. No danger of falling into that ‘uncanny valley’ of sampled instrumentation here – you may as well be sitting in the back of a hushed auditorium. It’s an absolutely professional production.

And I can’t help but like some of the specific choices Mr. Rosetti made in his compositions. He really tends to lay on the woodwinds. As a lapsed saxophone player, I can appreciate that.

With a strong main overture, the album is downright operatic in construction. Between the music, the cover art (which is fantastic and really coherent with the album), and the liner notes, the roots of a story are told. All of these details serve well to reinforce the idea of a stage production.

I don’t consider myself a really deep fan of classical music (though I do listen from time to time, especially 19th century era romantic composers like Rossini and Tchaikovsky). Over the course of a few months, I listened to this album many times, and I found myself liking it better and better with each play.

Click here for individual song reviews for Genesis Frog.