By Joren “Tensei” de Bruin
I’ve fawned over this song in the past, and I didn’t expect it to come up again, especially in the climactic part of one of the end-game Flashes. But all it took was those first three notes to clue me in on what was coming.
Source: Homestuck (art by xamag).
Favorite moment? Right after the Condesce finishes strangling her own heiress, she turns to the remaining kids, her glare cold with promise.
By Nate Tronerud
Very, very Harry Potter. The instrumentation’s a dead ringer – I had to flip back and forth a couple times between John William’s theme and this song to convince myself that I wasn’t listening to the same orchestra. The first minute wins the Grammy for style-apeing. After that, it takes off into its own thing. The gothic electric guitar is a nice twist on the standard symphony background.
By James “Flutterwhat” Fischer
Best hook on the album, especially when it’s pounded out by that Legend-of-Zelda-esque horn section.
By Dallas Ross Hicks
I like the sampled saxophone on this one; it’s tough to pull off sax artificially like that. The song’s a pre-rock 50’s croon (think Enchantment Under the Sea dance in Back to the Future).
By Ducky Senpai
Thumping drums and rave synth. My favorite bit is the dot matrix-y hook starting at 0:15.
By Nate Tronerud
A little overlong, but man, do I love those moddish horns in the intro. This song would make for an awesome walkthrough or overworld theme. It’s a close thing against Let Me Dance, Let Me Glisten and MOG^3, but this is my top track for the album.
By Nate Tronerud
The wvorst troll by a nautical mile gets his own cheap 70’s sitcom theme. Happy Days, starring Cronus as your favorite leather-jacket-wearing greaser buddy. *shudders*
By theh0nestman
I thought Homestuck music couldn’t surprise me anymore. Not so far as genre goes. But I was wrong. I didn’t expect to hear a ‘Rumble’-esque 50’s rock jam buried in the middle of a Homestuck fanmusic album, yet here we are.
The vocals have that husky, just-finished-a-set-in-a-smoke-choked-bar tone to 'em. Who would have thought that one of Cronus’s joke titles from Openbound 2 would prove inspiring?
Candles & Potency (by Jeremy “Solatrus” Iamurri)
As part of the leadup to Volume 10’s release, a full album’s worth of music was prematurely ‘leaked’ by the team. None of the music was from the actual album, and a good guffaw was had by all.
Most of the leaked playlist was vaporwave remixes of old Homestuck music (I didn’t even know vaporwave was a thing!). The first few tracks, though, were actually proposed (but bumped) from the final album. Gave it that ‘air of authenticity’ all modern pranks require. Better yet, it exposed some more solid music to the world. Ironic, I guess?
This one’s an experimental techno remix of ‘Candles and Clockwork’, off of Volume 5. That cool new beat makes it my favorite of the rejected tracks from the album, and my favorite of many ’Candles and Clockwork’ mixes over the years.
Thanks go to Makin for uploading these tracks to YouTube, and for hosting the pre-release stream (which was a riot).
Pseudumbra Fauxtasm (by Marcy Nabors & Jamie Paige Stanley)
Penumbra Phantasm isn’t on Homestuck Volume 10. But if you really, really want an idea of what it sounds like, there’s pieces of it scattered all over the place.
A few years back Toby played part of it, live, on a piano. This track, Pseudumbra Fauxtasm (alternate title: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Penumbra Phantasm), is a pretty faithful reworking of it. My favorite part’s the break right at 1:25. It’s a bit of the song that isn’t well represented in other mixes, and I love the energy of it.