2014-06-01 4:01:47 ¶ ●

7 / 13 – tHANK YOU FOR LETTING ME FEEL THAT, i GUESS,

During Act 5, the music team was in overdrive, kicking out multiple albums that touch on all aspects of the comic. The Felt and the Midnight Crew had had their turn. This time around, it was the exiles who got their own soundtrack written for them: The Wanderers.

Its exotic, ethnic sound jumps out immediately: this is a place that Homestuck music hasn’t yet been. There’s a lot of melody and instrumentation inspired by music from the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and the subcontinent here. Adding even more variation is the Western-themed snippets here and there (in Aimless Morning Gold, Tomahawk Head, Ruins Rising, and other tracks).

So mix two parts oriental, one part spaghetti Western, with a generous helping of Homestuck electronic beats and chiptune, and what comes together is an album custom-tailored for a trek through the endless desert.

The beginning of the album’s pretty solid (kicking it off with Carapacian Dominion really sets the tone), and things pick up near the end (anchored by Bowman’s Ruins Rising), but the middle of the album’s pretty soft (a little too ambitious and ambient, I think). That being said, I think this one’s a bit of a sleeper. I hadn’t given it a proper listen-through for some time (since mid last year when I bought it), and I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover some pretty solid music on the album.

Click here for individual song reviews for The Wanderers.

2014-06-02 4:01:47 ¶ ●

Up next on the docket: Land of Fans and Music 2, an unofficial album that you can download for free right here!

2014-06-03 4:01:59 ¶ ●

By Lark Mordancy

A Frankenstein mix of some of the best of Bowman. I really like the hook from Dawn of Man on Mobius Trip and Hadron Kaleido, and it’s hard to go wrong with Sburban Jungle. The mix is terribly smooth, too. I’m a fan if it: so much so that I used this song as the backing track for a preposterously rigorous video on the conversations between characters in Homestuck.

2014-06-04 3:00:00 ¶ ●

Potential Homestuck ending #99: UPD8 (the only one that is likely to actually happen, if only metaphorically).

2014-06-04 4:02:07 ¶ ●

By David “A Lunatic’s Daydream” Ellis

A mellow tune-up on Skies of Skaia by Mark Hadley. The multi-track acoustic guitar in the first half has the same vibe as the original, while the second half soars into classic-rock anthem territory.

2014-06-05 4:01:45 ¶ ●

By Max “Imbrog” Wright

Desolation is surprisingly uplifting, judging by the notes played by it. Sort of grand and overbearing, but still far more positive than its title suggests.

2014-06-06 4:01:37 ¶ ●

By Erik “Jit” Scheele

Hard to argue with a bit of folksy, nylon string acoustic. The root for this tune’s gone through many iterations: from airy, to brutal, to techno-electronic. This version’s one of my favorites.

2014-06-07 4:01:39 ¶ ●

By Charles “Crazy-8” Neudorf and Marcy “Shadolith” Nabors

A little bit of house music for Roxy, with a monster hook that kicks in around 0:40. Great energy, great melody. That intro flourish is positively Bowman-esque.

2014-06-08 4:01:38 ¶ ●

By Trent “Trogg” West

Wanders from ambient to electronic to bass-thumping. I can’t decide whether this would work best in a positive fashion (bad things happen to the kids, but even better things result) or a negative one (Doc Scratch sets up all of his meticulous plans as we watch in fly-on-the-wall fashion).

2014-06-09 4:01:38 ¶ ●

By Astro Kid

A rockin’ synthetic remix of Jackpot. Astro Kid’s got a great talent for taking quality stuff and switching up the flow and beat. It’s a little darker, a little heavier, and just as cool.

2014-06-10 4:01:46 ¶ ●

By Land of Ships and Music

If there was ever a song written for a Saturday morning Homestuck spinoff, this is it. Really cheerful, and the production is extraordinary (great instrumentation, even better vocals).

On the other hand, if both our favorite exiles somehow wind up dead at the end of the comic, it goes from cheery to maudlin and heartbreaking. Let’s hope we never have to replay this one in memorarium.

2014-06-11 4:01:42 ¶ ●

By Domble

Musically interesting, this one. There’s a lot of ground covered (Courser, Upward Movement, Dawn of Man, and Ruins jump out at me the most), and the mix is really fun (the sharp, funky brass counter-melody stands out especially). It’s a little bit like Descend in composition.

2014-06-12 4:02:08 ¶ ●

By Kevin “UWBW” Grant

Frantic, driven jazz. The bass and drumkit lay down a solid background, but it’s the improvisational, fast piano that makes this one fun to listen to.

2014-06-13 3:02:00 ¶ ●

FAKE Potential Homestuck ending #525: ALPHA KIDS X4 TAKEDOWN COMBO.

2014-06-13 4:02:02 ¶ ●

By PhemieC

Image source: Homestuck.

Fantastic.

At first I only thought it was ‘just’ clever. That was a mistake. After a few more listen-throughs, I realized I was doing this track an injustice.

Musically, the entire composition feels terribly authentic. The little guitar string squeaks add to the song’s character, rather than distracting from it. The simple acoustic-plus-vocals arrangement gives it a better perspective than a busier composition might: it’s all one character’s thoughts.

And what a poetic set of lyrics. It’s stream-of-consciousness, all from Eridan’s perspective, as his attitude slowly deteroriates and he falls deeper into isolation and nihilism. The vocals are rapid-fire, and it’s a really impressive combination of content and rhyming meter (it’s tough to nail both without making sacrifices in one or the other).

This one’s not just my top track for the album: it’s one of my favorites throughout the Homestuck library.

2014-06-14 3:02:47 ¶ ●

## 'Game of Thrones' author wants to kill you -- for charity

> For $20,000, one male and one female character will be named after the donor in a future novel with the author promising the character will “certainly meet a grisly death.”

So, let me get this straight. For $10,000 per character, George R. R. Martin will put you into the next book.

That’s unprecedented. Who ever heard of someone spending that kind of dough to have their own personal fan character feature in their favorite work of fiction? It’s…

Hrm. Oh yeah. I guess there’s that one example. But come on, it’s Game of Thrones, and these characters are going to be killed off almost immediately. Surely the Homestuck fan trolls…

… they lasted one panel? Oh. Well, then.

2014-06-14 4:02:01 ¶ ●

By Nitrosparxx

The sampled instrumentation is a little rough around the edges, and it’s a tad plain, but there’s something enticing about this song. Maybe it’s the sad, lead violin that carries the melody. Then there’s my favorite bit, the morose, quiet rendition of Gardener that starts around 4:15. This tune’s pretty high up on my list of favorites for the album.

2014-06-15 4:01:54 ¶ ●

By Brenden “Avrec” Cameron

The first half’s a solid, sorta sad rendition of Showtime: death comes for us all. The second part’s a little more interesting. It’s a whooshy, newsroom-stacatto cut of Doctor: it’ll take more than a pesky stabbing to keep this one down.

2014-06-16 4:01:51 ¶ ●

By Samm Neiland

A really impressive, deep, reverberant strings medley of some of the heavy hitters in the catalog. The changeup in orchestration makes some of the covers almost unrecognizable, and even more fun to try to separate out.

2014-06-17 4:01:45 ¶ ●

By Paige “hrmnzr” Stanley

The fade-in’s a bit like the THX chord, morphing from chaos into ordered music. It’s supremely effortless and smooth, and I’m sure it was a technical challenge to produce. The stately, imposing version of English that starts after the crescendo is my favorite version of that tune.

Not really a fan of the second half (it’s night and day, this one), though the lead-in to Jackpot is pretty slick.

2014-06-17 5:05:00 ¶ ●

## How do you make your cartoon images? They're dope as shit!!

Thanks! I use GIMP 2.8 for all image and animation work. Most of the art assets are pulled shamelessly out of Homestuck, of course, and tools like JPEXS Flash Decompiler help to make this pretty easy. Both tools are free.

If this goofy little hobby has taught me anything, it’s shown me just how much work Andrew Hussie has put into the comics. I putzed around with this for over a month, an hour or two at a time. Most of the ‘assets’ are drawn from various sources in the comic, with a palette swap here, a change in posture there, and maybe an original effect or two.

Andrew Hussie was putting out an update of that size every couple of days or so, for five years straight. And his work, obviously, was infinitely more original and far more detailed and skillful (he chose the MSPA format for speed in storytelling, where, alas, this format represents the ceiling of my talent in comic rendering).

2014-06-18 4:01:52 ¶ ●

By Paige “hrmnzr” Stanley

This is some next level shit going on here.

How do you top the intentionally shitty irony of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff? Go in the opposite direction. Take one of the comics and treat it with the gravitas and magnitude of a Moody Blues spoken word interlude.

If there wasn’t so much great music on this album, this would be in serious danger of being a top track. It doesn’t even need a lyrics page.

2014-06-19 4:01:44 ¶ ●

By Thomas “EidolonOrpheus” Ferkol

It’s pretty and all (especially around 1:30), but the sound effects recall a stopped-up drain a little more than the majesty of Alternia’s oceans.

2014-06-20 4:01:55 ¶ ●

By Mai “Cat Boss” Yishan

The cover art for this one calls it exactly right. There’s a lot of ground covered, but at its core, this one’s a fight between jazzy, stabby Spades Slick and malevolent Lord English.

2014-06-21 4:01:35 ¶ ●

By Kevin “UWBW” Grant

Catchy, but oh so plain. The first version of this song on the album has a little more meat on its bones.

2014-06-22 5:05:42 ¶ ●

By Ian “MyUsernamesMud” White

I’ll admit, it’s technically impressive. But I can’t get past that garish curtain of 90’s bro-rap to really, truly enjoy it.

2014-06-23 4:02:11 ¶ ●

RATING: 9 / 13 – :33 < oh god this is so great

The culmination of months of songwriting and organization by fans of Homestuck, LOFAM 2 is the second of the three (so far!) unofficial song compilations to be released. There was so much music available for this cut, much of it had to be put on hold for release in the next album (LOFAM 3, which I reviewed when it came out last December). I think that was a good decision, as it keeps the album’s length manageable.

This is my favorite of the unofficial albums. It has the same variety and a similar quality as the other two LOFAM compilations, but this one has a few real ‘hits’ that put it over the top. It’s also a little more polished than the first compilation album: hard to describe specifics, but on average the songs are just a little more professional, a little deeper.

And since it’s an unofficial album, it can be downloaded, completely free, right now, by you, the reader / listener! You can find a ZIP file with all MP3’s at skaia.net.

Click here for individual song reviews for Land of Fans and Music 2.

2014-06-24 4:02:06 ¶ ●

This is it. All official and major unofficial albums have seen their day on this blog, except for this one. Up next is Strife!, a solo album by Joren “Tensei” de Bruin.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t leave this one ‘til last because I dreaded the review. Buckle in for a wild ride.

2014-06-25 4:02:01 ¶ ●

By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin

There’s some songs that work together in pairs. When some radio station sells out and plays ‘We Will Rock You’ but not ‘We Are the Champions’, it makes my skin crawl.

The first two tracks on Strife! are one such pair. Stormspirit is a subdued, simple piano introduction for the crazy, electric metal that’s soon to follow. Great way to kick off the album, and the transition into Heir Conditioning is absolutely seamless.

2014-06-26 4:02:03 ¶ ●

By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin

Image source: Homestuck.

From the calm, directly into the storm. It’s a crazy combination of chiptune-synth, rock guitar, and a few more eclectic instruments like piano and trumpet. This track amps up the energy, and it doesn’t really let off from here on out.

2014-06-27 4:01:37 ¶ ●

Heir of Grief

By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin

I’m about to run out of albums to review, but that doesn’t mean that the Homestuck music scene is dead. It’s somewhere between possible and probable that one more album will be released as the comic draws to a close. In fact, some of the music team has already begun making new tracks for Homestuck Vol. 10, if indeed it does become reality.

Tensei amongst them. This track was released about a year ago. It’s not released yet in an official capacity. And it’s such a cool jam, it’s a shame it hasn’t seen more attention. Heir of Grief, the song featured in the video, is a different take on Heir Conditioning: a little more measured in pace, but with just as much driving force behind it.

Listen to the extended solo that starts around 4:15. The song’s more of an anthem than a thrash, and Tensei just crushes it.

2014-06-28 4:01:30 ¶ ●

By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin

Image source: Homestuck.

Fiddle-driven rock insanity. The general structure’s and sound’s similar to Heir Conditioning, though it cools off just a little bit around 3:00 for a harpsichord ditty.

Although it hasn’t found a home in the comic proper, Andrew Hussie chose this track to back the video for the Homestuck Adventure Game Kickstarter.

2014-06-29 4:01:26 ¶ ●

By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin. Remix of “Beatdown” by Curt Blakeslee and “Black” by Toby “Radiation” Fox.

Image source: Homestuck.

Dave takes the reins next and runs the turntables through a couple of old favorites. The song’s built around two remixes: Beatdown first, around 0:50, and then Black later on. The instrumentation’s what stands out on this song: they’re used sparingly, but holy shit, there’s so much raw power behind the horn section.

Overall, though, my favorite moment is the pause around 2:45 that leads directly into an extended guitar solo.

All together, it makes for the perfect backing track for a memorable Flash in the comic, which takes many of its cues directly from the song. It’s my top track for the album.

2014-06-30 4:01:52 ¶ ●

By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin

Image source: Homestuck.

It’s a little mellower than the preceding tracks (although using the term ‘mellow’ is quite the stretch). A little more wide-ranging, too, with some changeups in instrumentation and an oriental vibe. Love those deep, deep drums.