A new take on ‘Nine Lives One Love’, off of coloUrs and mayhem Universe A (also written by Dallas Ross Hicks). I try not to directly compare different variants of the same musical theme, but this is such a solid step up, I think it’s worth talking about.
'Nine Lives One Love’ has a really diffuse, layered sound to it, and it feels muddled. Bells, bells, and more bells. It drags on a bit.
MOG^3, on the other hand, flies by. It’s an even longer song, and there’s so much more to it. The song’s anchored by the same musical motif, but new instrumentation choices and new variations on that theme really hooked me in. Most of all, the song’s flow is much improved. The deep, synth-distorted bridge around 1:45 gives that same starting motif a brand new sound. New wrinkles after that (at 3:10, 3:45, 4:30, etc) keep the track interesting and well-paced, all the way to the end.
I like this song a lot. I think it demonstrates an awful lot of artistic growth.
A chill, early-rock-style guitar track. This could work great as the intro track for Sherriff Horuss’s Western TV serial (in which he beats crime itself to death with his bare hands).
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.
A live piece! The performance is a little bit wobbly, especially in a couple spots where the xylophone part gets challenging. But that doesn’t distract: it adds character (my definition of ‘character’, of course, being ‘an off-note here or there that makes me like the song even better somehow’). I especially like the high-energy ‘overture’ bit that starts around 1:20.
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).
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.
A mix of sweet and sour. Wait, not sour… soul-gripping terror. Yeah. A mix of sweet and terror. The first half sets up a cool jam starting around the 1:15 mark.
It took me a few listens to put the pin on this one. I don’t really dig the melody, or the subject matter, or the instrumentation. Then it hit me - the Kankri monologue in the middle, coupled with those droning organ notes, make for a really bizarre ASMR-inducing section. I doubt Kankri ever expected that kind of response from his ramblings.
A simple song, and with such wonderfully off-kilter vocals. Meshes really well with the light ukelele-and-piano melody. The lyrics are an interesting combination of fluffy and dark.
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*
For what’s ostensibly a Latula track, this one charts a pretty dark course. Cool, crashing percussion, with the extraterrestrial melody carried on the off-beat.
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?
I could have sworn I had heard this one before. It’s more of a consistency of style than melody, though; it shares the same vibe as MOG^3. I like the bassline that underpins the whole track.
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).
A pretty piano-only take on a couple of old classics. The first half’s a new wrinkle on Homestuck, and the second half’s a ¾ interpretation of Penumbra Phantasm. I’m no student of classical music, but I can’t help thinking of Beethoven on this one.
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.