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.
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.
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.