Solo Albums Aplenty
(Published 4/12/2021.)
Independent works from four artists, plus a variety of stylistic tweaks and additions!
Heya! We've got another smaller update to share this time, though with plenty of wonderful music brought to the wiki from a set of four solo artists. Find details and listening recommendations past the split!
As ever, thank you to everyone who sent feedback and kind messages during development! We're also very grateful for all supporters of the wiki, including: enchantingHunter, vriska/leo, and Nights!
Last update was another heavily development-focused one; reworking the codebase to support localization was a fairly daunting task. With that largely complete, though, we had the chance to focus on the core of the wiki again - music!
So, building on the addition of solo musician groups in Retrace, Retexture, we've a lovely set of independent albums and tracks to share from four artists this time. You might recognize a few of their names!
From Cristata, the artist behind Perfectly Generic Album as well as the UMSPAF track Party God, we have the all-new experimental dance album, ✌︎❒︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ●︎□︎⬧︎⧫︎✍︎. It's released under the alias hywell, and features remixes primarily of tracks from Undertale and Deltarune, though there's a trace or two of Homestuck to be found as well, if you're attentive!
(If a meeting between Homestuck and Undertale strikes your interest, you'd be well off to visit the artist's own crossover fancomic, DELTASTUCK!)
From tempest2k, the co-author for INHOSPITABLE and artist of [INHOSPITABLE DELISTED], we've brought over all their earlier Bandcamp releases! Chilled Processor and Ava - Original Soundtrack are clearly heartfelt letters to the styles of early video game music; Old World and Losing Heart are a lovely pair of more recent singles; and Nuclear's Explosion 1 is a compilation of much of their earlier work. There's a whole host of neat tracks to explore here!
From what is lost in the mines?, artist of a whole host of tracks in the Homestuck (and surrounding) fandom, we have their own three solo albums WHAT, Triassic Slump, and Bashful Hearts Out to share! These are all really impressively produced and textural works, with powerful vocals all throughout the latter two releases to boot.
(If you love the dark vocals and occasionally noisy electro rock of Bashful Hearts Out, we certainly have to point you towards Exceptis Excipiendis by Kal-la-kal-la, another fantastic 2020 solo release we find a lot of thematic overlaps can be felt in!)
And from Funk McLovin, an artist and video essayist certainly prominent in the current fan community, we've brought three wonderfully eccentric releases! The Funk McLovin Homestuck Experience is the original, a compilation of fanpieces from their 2020 Song-A-Day challenge; there's also CLASS ACT, a diverse set of original works, as well as its B-Side, an album all full of covers; and of course, The Baby is June, which is exactly what it says on the tin, and is perfect. (Like its namesake, this one is a collaboration with other voice-actor/vocalist friends!)
(Oh! Also, the new Psycholonials albums. Plus, courtesy of Niklink, the track lists for the flashes now contain the full lists of tracks featured, not just the ones from each chapter's corresponding album.)
We've had the invaluable pleasure of speaking with each of these artists through the process of bringing their albums to the wiki. If there are any albums, solo or otherwise, that you'd like to see shared on the wiki (or would like to link us your own!), feel welcomed to contact us! We hope you enjoy exploring the releases we've shared here today.
As for tweaks to the wiki site itself, you might've noticed a few aesthetic adjustments! For an expansive set of albums, we've brought over the banner art originally featured on Bandcamp and other places of release. Visit Land of Fans and Music 4 or Ancestral for a couple of our favorite examples! Much thanks to Niklink for helping with keeping track of so many of these, as well as for proposing the idea in the first place back in December.
We've also tweaked the look of the content area itself, making the background a litle translucent to let some of the wallpaper glow through. We feel this comes across particularly nicely in the pages for Cosmic Caretakers and Homestuck Vol. 5, though it'll be apparent across the site! Thanks again to Niklink for suggesting this one, and everyone on the Discord for offering feedback while we put together both these stylistic updates.
In addition, there are a few other small new features, a remarkable portion of sneaky bugs and data errors fixed, and a host of internal additions all part of this update. You can find all the specifics, as ever, in the changelog!
And as regular: the meta around the wiki!
- The localization system remains in progress, and is proving capable! We've still got some code adjustments to make before it's ready for proper release (mostly concerning translating track contribution info and some static pages), but you can give the current Spanish translation of the site a visit at /es/. Much thanks to Niklink for putting this translation together, and for being so on-the-ball keeping it up to date with additions to the English strings over the month.
- As usual, the Community Discord Server has been active! It's really a wonderful place to chat wiki and music topics, and I'd like to show personal appreciation to everyone there for offering feedback, comments, and kind messages during update development. Thank you! :)
- April 13th is coming up! That'll mark the one year anniversary of Beyond Canon; it's a really fantastic album, so as a celebratory suggestion, why not give it a listen and send some kind words and support towards the artists behind it? They'd surely be grateful for it!
As ever, thank you for the support and feedback. Besides the Discord, our usual channels remain open, so you're much encouraged to share any comments or music suggestions for the coming releases!
~ Quasar Nebula
(← Translation & Renovation)
(→ the my ex-wife is a real bitch update)