By Robert J! Lake

More than any other single Flash animation in Homestuck, Descend has inspired a lot of after-the-fact musical attention. After Descend’s release, Tensei wrote a new soundtrack for it, sort of as a personal challenge (and as a fan-song, not an official release, to boot!).

That song, at one point referred to as Descend2, later became the first part of Cascade.

The game of musical telephone continues on Volume 10. Tensei’s work on Descend2 inspired RJ to make his own version, which has been released on this album as Freefall. Three different composers, three very different songs, and all thematically tied to the events that occur in the End of Act 4 flash.

Freefall is very different from Tensei’s track. The hints of similarity are still there (compare 1:20 in Freefall to 1:32 in Cascade), but I doubt I’d recognize its inspirational source on my own. Where Cascade is a constant build-up of energy, Freefall’s mostly more mellow, more flowing.