By James “soselfimportant” Roach
I mentioned that the organ gets a workout on this album, and this is its apex. Ironically, it’s the one place where I think a Wurlitzer with a few more options would be a little more appropriate. The acoustics are good, but it just feels one-dimensional.
By Elliot “TheLastBanana” Colp
The beat’s pretty good, but the robotic voice samples just kill it for me. Too dense, especially in the second half of the song.
RATING: 12 / 13 – like a bow of ribbone on a beiuetuifiul ponny
The Universe A album concentrated on the trolls, and each troll (both ancestors and troll kids) had a song. On this album, it’s the human kids’ turn: each of the 8 kids (Beta and Alpha) get a song, and that leaves plenty of extra room for some more varied subjects afterwards as well.
In the original contest, much more music than could be used was submitted, and both coloUrs and mayhem albums are packed with quality music that covers the entire genre (which is basically ‘all possible music’).
I imagine, though, that the first eight full tracks got the most contest attention, because it’s as solid a stretch of music as exists in the Homestuck library. Just stellar. That’s not to take away from the remainder of the album: a lot of familiar motifs appear, and the second half has great, catchy songs too. One of the songs was written by a ten-year-old (Cupcake Girl). Ten! If only I had such talent at that age (or ever, to be frank).
Click here for individual song reviews for coloUrs and mayhem: Universe B.
Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead, the very first theme album, up next.
By Clark “Plazmataz” Powell
Piano, drumset, and bass happens to be my favorite jazz ensemble and man, does this number do that trio justice. There’s a break at around 1:20 where it really cuts loose. That bit didn’t make it into the Flash, and it’s my favorite part of the song. Love hearing that big bass just tear it up.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
It’s got some great piano and synth hooks, but I have to admit that I think Black is a superior remix. Whereas this tune is driving but measured, Black throws away any pretense of control and just cuts loose.
If this tune is Diamonds Droog, carefully orchestrating and executing his psychopathic plan…
…then Black is Spades Slick (or any of the Jack Noir incarnations, for that matter) spouting one-liners and stabbing everything in front of him as fast as he can.
By Mark Hadley
Harlequin with a side of jazz. The sax and bass interludes between the main cover melody give it a little more of an edge.
By Mark Hadley
Another bass, piano, and drum trio, but this time the piano and the drumset are there for backup. This is a bass-led jam, and it’s that much cooler for it.
By Kevin Regamey
A slow-paced ensemble tune. The sax lead is natural and flows well (which is a bit of an exception for the album: more on that later), and I especially like the clarinet reply in the second half.
By Mark Hadley
The unofficial theme of the Midnight Crew. The saxophone suggests style, but that ominous string section says ‘beat with a sack full of doorknobs first and ask questions later.’
(the actual chart’s on the bottom: Tumblr won’t upload it).
A while back I posted a few conversation charts. I’ve been playing around with how to show such information in a more interesting way: this is Acts 1 and 2, with each kids’ conversation shown (as well as the sum of all their conversations). I’ll make a video that covers the entire comic soon.
By Hilary “Pie” Troiano
The whole album has a serious noir vibe to it, but this song’s the noirest of them all. I can just picture Spades Slick playing that maudlin trumpet intro in the rain, underneath a single lonely streetlight. Possibly after being stabbed in the eye by a femme fatale.
By Andrew Huo and Ian Taylor
The intro sets the tone, with its hopping around in key and pitch. Vaguely unsettling, which I’m sure is the intended effect. That muffled, phased processing effect suggests that you’re sitting in the very back of a smoky dive while the band plays on.
By Gabe Nezovic
Jazz-concrète. It’s an interesting experiment, but a little too abstract for my tastes.
By Andrew Huo and Michael Guy Bowman
Like Hauntjelly, the intro’s pretty cool, but the trumpet part is just a little too perfectly played, the timing absolutely precise.
RATING: 6 / 13 – It’s goddamn bedlam down here.
The very first theme album. If the Midnight Crew formed a band, what would it sound like? Since they originate from the hard-boiled, ‘two steak dinners’ world of Problem Sleuth, jazz and noir rules the day. The whole album has a very listenable quality to it, and there’s a few great songs (Three in the Morning, Ace of Trump) scattered throughout as well. Lots of jazz piano, bass, and drums. But there’s one thing that holds me back a bit.
Saxophone must be one of the toughest instruments to produce samples for. On some of the songs where the sax leads the charge, I have a hard time ‘suspending my disbelief,’ so to speak. It’s got that throaty, growly tenor sax voice, but it just feels a little bit off in tone and cadence. Compare Liquid Negrocity to the saxophone lead in Blue Atom, which was a live alto sax player. The transitions in the latter are crisp but much more natural (especially near the end when the part gets busy).
And jazz is one of the most organic forms of music there is. When I think of jazz, I think of Miles Davis wailing away on the trumpet, or Blind Willie Buttermilk Stubbs usin’ his twiddlin’ fingers.
All that being said, it’s a good collection of neo-jazz-noir, one that works on its own level throughout (there’s not much in the way of dead spots).
Click here for individual song reviews for Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead.
Alternia, a solo album by Toby “Radiation” Fox, will be next up for legislaceration.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
Image source: Homestuck.
It’s a musical meat grinder, like something out of a Mega Man boss fight (and not just a little reminiscent of Atomyk Ebonpyre). This song’s lead synth line is so industrial, it ought to be churning out a new Volkswagen at the end of every play.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
Image source: Homestuck.
It’s interesting to think about how some of the trolls’ motifs were established: this album was most likely the root of many of them. Most of Tavros’s themes have a western vibe, and I imagine that direction was set here. Strummed guitar and soaring trumpet, along with some more eclectic stuff like accordion and xylophone.
… *facepalm*
Wow did I ever miss that. It makes perfect sense! You’re right, especially with the extra brass that tends to show up in his songs. ¡Olé!
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
My favorite track on the album. It kicks off with a threatening piano introduction, and the slow harpsichord melody that follows carries an air of terrible inevitability (that bent-note oboe really helps drive the point home). Perfect for scenes of courtblock drama. Like many tracks on this album, this one is revisited on AlterniaBound, but I prefer this version and its slower, measured pacing.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
Image source: Homestuck.
A nice change of pace from the energy and aggressiveness that dominates the first half of the album. The main hook from Crustacean shows up here too. That melody is all about presentation, it seems. It sounds legitimately yearning here. Not crabby at all. Nope, not one bit.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
Where Death of the Lusii was light but maudlin, this track skews in a much more positive direction. It’s just a simple, flighty piano melody, backed by a tremulous string background. But it’s got a good vibe to it.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
If anyone ever asks me what ‘grouchy’ music should sound like, well, this tune is officially locked into my head. Grouchy and whiny, with the orneriest synth-tuba background ever conceived.
Image source: Homestuck.
Theme (Bonus) (by Toby “Radiation” Fox) is one of three ultra-secret bonus tracks on the album. No, it’s not exactly appropriate for a planet full of sociopathic, foul-mouthed aliens, but damn is this a great melody. There’s an even better version of this song lurking on a future album (AlterniaBound): I think I’ll elaborate a little bit on it when we get there.
The ultimate uncannybrutal stat. This video shows character conversations throughout all of Homestuck, along the same lines as the charts I made earlier. One frame per page, and it’s over four minutes long (damn, Homestuck is big).
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
I don’t know, I think ‘capricious but also horrifying’ works a lot better than 'capricious and whimsical’. Of course, Gamzee wasn’t at all horrifying when this song was released, so there wasn’t much of a choice.
By Toby “Radiation” Fox
Oh, I’m sure I’m dating myself by saying this, but I had Mario Paint when it first came out, when I was a kid. Like, on a plastic cartridge, with that ridiculous cheap, garish SNES mouse that came with it. There’s probably quite a few kids whose first creative art or music projects originated on a television, waiting seconds for their multimedia Mario Paint masterpiece to be saved to the cartridge’s RAM chip.
In case this is completely foreign to you, here’s Explore, only in Mario Paint Composer (made by someone more talented than I am, to be sure). That’ll give you a basic idea of how it worked (the tool in the video is much more powerful than the original SNES version, though).
Unfortunately, such cutting-edge hardware still resulted in a rather limited musical palette. Cat noises, Yoshi sounds, and the baby (!) can only take a track so far, I’m afraid.
RATING: 6 / 13 – could enjoy it on a nostalgic level
Alternia is the first ‘solo’ album that I’ve reviewed. These albums are created primarily by a single musician (in this case, Toby “Radiation” Fox). It wasn’t widely featured in Homestuck proper: in fact, the closest it comes to factoring into the comic is a link to Showdown on this page.
The music was written immediately before and during Hivebent: for reference purposes, this was where Homestuck was when the album was released. We had only just met many of the trolls. Yet in one fell swoop, Radiation has composed memorable, recurring themes for many characters (neo-Baroque harpsichord for Terezi, Western for Tavros, uh, crabby for Karkat, and so forth). It’s impressive how these motifs have persisted in future albums.
In part, that helps to explain the rating, too. Once again, hindsight and access to future material unavoidably skews how things are perceived. There’s some good music on this album, but many of the songs are released in superior form on a follow-up (AlterniaBound). Alternia itself is brief but wide-ranging in genre, and it feels a little rough around the edges in comparison. It contains the seeds of some great tracks (and a few very strong, stand-alone ones like The Lemonsnout Turnabout), to be further explored and refined.
I couldn’t decide whether ‘noise a horse would make’ was a bad thing (as Dave thinks) or a wonderful, glorious thing (as Hussie certainly thinks). So I figured, it’s probably both!
I’ll be getting into one of the unofficial fan albums next: Land of Fans and Music.
I’ve had a strong personal temptation to ‘soft-ball’ the reviews for the unofficial fan albums. I mentioned earlier that since the official Homestuck albums were for sale, offering an honest opinion (for good or for bad) is important. Yet the fan albums are all free (like, completely free. Not just 'can listen to on Bandcamp’ free, but 'here’s the download link’ free).
But after a while, I came to the conclusion that that would be bullshit. 'Grading on a curve’ would be unfair. The fan albums are, by and large, of a quality that matches the official albums. Many talented artists (including much of the Homestuck music team) contributed to these albums. It would be doing them all a disservice to treat their work any differently, as if they’re by nature not 'as good’ as the official material.
So the echeladder review grades for everything will be on the same scale. No soft-balls to be found here.
Image source: Homestuck.
I’ll be reviewing Land of Fans and Music next. It’s an album where every song is dedicated to Arquiusprite.
Alright, that’s not true at all. It’s completely false. But I had this picture handy, so I figured I’d throw it out there.
By Hames. Original “Atomyk Ebonpyre” by Toby “Radiation” Fox
Atomyk Ebonpyre has come out in many flavors. This one’s faithful to the original chiptune version, just with a much more polished feel. It’s as if the original was run through the ‘modern production values’ machine, and this excellent bit of music came out.
That’s not to say there’s nothing new here, though. The off-beat, muted trumpet call gives it a really weird, interesting feeling too, like the accompaniment for an anachronistic, record-spinning deejay from the 40’s. Never heard big band horns and turntables mix so well.
By Yan “Nucleose” Rodriguez
This track has a story to tell, with its antagonistic, dominating horn melody. We wander smoothly from planning (0:00), to execution (1:00), through a moment of false victory (1:23), then on to panic (1:35) and the ensuing mad chase (2:40).
I don’t know if this song was written with ‘soundtrack’ in mind. But you can close your eyes and see how well this piece would work in a Flash animation. I hope I’m not offering a backhanded complement when I say that, because it’s a great listen as a stand-alone piece too.
By Erik “Jit” Scheele
I love this little piece. There’s a couple of versions of it floating around (I’m sure I’ll come back to it when I review AlterniaBound and One Year Older), and this one’s probably the most cheerful. It’s a little too evenly paced to be ragtime, but it has that feel.
By Brenna “Random Encounter” Curran
A noirish, jazzy number. It’s a neat combination of horns and flighty percussion. By the end, it’s like a semi truck full of saxophones rushing headlong towards you.
By Ian White (MyUsernamesMud). Original “Beatdown” by Curt Blakeslee
Drop the minor key and switch out some of the instrumentation, and Beatdown takes on a whole new feel. That solid percussion line does a lot to drive the track’s vibe, too. No longer is it a cautionary tale about fraternal abuse. This is the soundtrack for brotherly fort-building.
By Ralen Gainsborough. Original “Sburban Jungle” by Michael Guy Bowman
A solid, simple chiptune jam that draws from Sburban Jungle. I especially like how that crazy, rapid xylophone part in the original isn’t replicated here: instead, that basic riff (xylophone riff? sure, why not) is slowed down and drawn out until it’s almost unrecognizable, but better for the medium.
By Trent “Trogg” West
The track starts out light (with shades of Frost in the background), but by about the end of the first minute, it’s kicked it into high gear with a pretty solid synth percussion jam.
By Eston “silence” Schweickart
It’s best described as a very stylish medley. There’s versions of many familiar tunes remixed into this song, but each has a unique kick to it.
There’s a jazzy, Latin version of Crystalanthemums. That’s followed up by a symphonic, soaring cut of that Nic Cage sappy specialty, How Do I Live. An aggressive version of Ruins intercut with Liquid Negrocity fits in too. But I think it’s the bookends that are the best on this song.
There’s a song called Lotus that shows up quite often throughout the Homestuck catalog. I never really dug it, until I heard it borrowed for the intro and the coda here. It works great as a slow, simple piano dirge.
Composed and performed by Kristian “Dacen” Anderson. Mixed by Eston “silence” Schweickart
The clean, plucked electric guitar gives off a huge 80’s pop/rock vibe (I swear there’s a Van Halen or Van Halen-ish song that this reminds me of, but I cannot for the life of me remember it). Atmospheric and relaxing.
By Eston “silence” Schweickart
I want to describe it as ambient or atmospheric (there I go fighting to cram in puns again), but this song is just too damn cool for those sorts of adjectives. Great flow and a fantastic, eclectic mix of instrumentation. My favorite part? The windy static at 2:00, followed by a fade-in of the main guitar melody.
By Brad “Avinoch” Griffin
It’s a tidy mashup of Doctor and Sburban Jungle. The main piano melody meanders between the two, all backed by that frantic xylophone rhythm. The little snatch of Penumbra Phantasm at around 1:20’s a nice touch, too.
By Trent “Trogg” West
It’s taken a couple of trips through the gears of the wub machine, but that combination of low synth and high electric piano makes for a slick beat.
Arranged by tynic. Original MIDI by Beast72. Vocals by tynic and Goatmon
Alright, I knew that Aradia’s and Equius’s relationship was unconventional, if not a little twisted. But I’ve never heard the charges levied quite so eloquently as in this song. I had to go backwards and tick off each individual adjective. So, in order:
Yep, it’s all there. God damnit. The song itself is ridiculously saccharine and catchy, too. Mary Poppins wouldn’t last a day on Alternia.
By Marcy Nabors (Steamlord313/Shadolith)
It’s all of the naks. All of them. I would say that it’s impossible to successfully use crocodile naks as a significant part of a musical piece, but when we get to Genesis Frog, Mr. Rosetti is there to prove me wrong.
By Elaine Wang (electronic orange juice/orngjce223). Original “Frost” by Jeremy “Solatrus” Iamurri
I like the source (Frost), and I like the choice of instrumentation (mostly woodwinds and strings). But the heavy usage of long, drawn-out notes exposes the sampled nature of the instruments a little too audibly. Parts of the song falls into the uncanny valley of musical instruments: it sounds like a flute, or an oboe, but the perfect pitch and timing makes it feel… off.
By Gec (Eligecos)
So many horns. The organ intro’s pretty cool, but it descends into a whirling batshit pandemonium of screeching honk horns soon afterwards.
RATING: 8 / 13 – Ill, dog. I’m basically titillated here
A lot of fan-created music has been made over the years, and fortunately there have been efforts to collect it into an organized form. This is one of the early ‘fan music greatest hits’ compilations.
It’s a great deal of music, and it’s a little patchy as one long play-through. But it’s comparable in quality to the Homestuck volume albums. It most definitely carries that ‘Homestuck’ vibe: it has the same smattering of remixes, the same genre-bending variation, and the same general feel as the official material. Small wonder, I suppose: all of the artists were inspired by the comic, and many tracks on this album were written by members of the official music team.
Of course, the best part about this album is that it is completely, utterly free. The entire album (one ZIP file, all in MP3 format) can be downloaded from skaia.net. Give it a whirl.
Click here for individual song reviews for Land of Fans and Music.
Next up for review……. oh.
Oh god.
We could probably stand to delay this album’s introduction a little longer. Why don’t we see what other albums are out there.
Any album. HURRY.