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Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff: The Album - Commentary

827 words across 20 entries.

Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff: The Album Listen on: YouTube, YouTube (playlist)

Alex Votl: (Twitter)

for 4/13 i'm having happy memories of making the sbahj album, something that was done as an ironic high effort shitpost joke with my closest friends

the album cover is a reference to a huge influential album for me and my friends a decade ago

we made the album anonymously and purposely left no information on how to find out who made it but it included the members of my own band centerpiece from delaware, whose members went on to do much bigger and better things, such as dirt woman and heavens gate

because of this "fanwork" (can you even call it that?) i ended up with incredible opportunities like joining the vast error music team, and then eventually actually joining the homestuck^2 music team.

homestuck will always be an important part of my life, as i met so many people through it who i talk to every day and consider my best friends and can't imagine going through life without them

thanks to everyone who listened to this goofy stupid album over the years and commented on it. i don't know why i made it, i guess i thought it was funny at the time.

i would also like to add that it includes guest vocals from several members of a close friend group that was founded on the homestuck tinychat server over a decade ago. and we're all still kicking around on discord!

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

The conception of this SBaHJ album goes all the way back to 2011. (Check out votl's commentary on LOFAM4 and a reference to one "SBAHJ Musical" that September.) This album as-is was released on SoundCloud probably sometime in 2015, but the page was never archived (dead link). The date the wiki uses, , is the date-modified for the album's cover artwork in the Google Drive download made available by votl.

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord, excerpt)

2015 sounds right! because that’s when avery/neal/justin all were in college and helped me record a chunk of it over winter break

Kalibration: (YouTube comment)

Still the best homestuck album and nothing else even comes close

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord, excerpt)

kali was involved in its creation
from the inception to the finalization
but in a very “manager” sort of way

one of my close friends for sure, they made sure some of the compositions didn’t suck

i don’t think kali’s actual fingerprint is on any song
as far as writing or performance goes

but the whole thing was a big secret project between a bunch of people who at the time didn’t want to be associated publicly with it because it was a joke lol and they had been pursuing actual like careers and didn’t want that somehow to negatively impact that pursuit

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord)

(Lan:) Just finishing listening to put yourself back together btw. that's a real good album lol

that was such a formative album for me i feel like. centerpiece got to open for real friends and free throw a handful of times at various jersey and philly shows and the guys in those bands were just incredibly loving and supportive of up and coming musicians

merging my two favorite fandoms at the time (emo and homestuck) felt natural

Pg. 1+2 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 1 and page 2.

Pg. 3+4 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 3 and page 4.

Pg. 5+6 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 5 and page 6.

Varynova: (Tumblr)

[Audio embed for a Tindeck file, "alex ft varynova - SBAHJ Musical act 05.mp3"]

Listen.

Just. Listen.

It’s not like I’m just pimping my own voice!

(This is Alex’s music anyway. To say I did anything but backup vox would be a lie.)

(From (dead Tindeck link))

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord)

varynova was one of the OG hands in the pot for the project as well from probably as far back as 2012?

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord)

sbahj 5+6 had me/julia AND avery on vocals listening to it now

Pg. 7 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 7.

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord, excerpt)

lmao trying to transcribe the lyrics i don’t even think we could do that

i remember me and avery sitting down sharing a phone and a sm58
and then picking out which parts would run over the other vocal part
and which parts to repeat
and then jumping up an down going OHHHH THIS SOUNDS GOOD

we had the sbahj page open on an iphone 3
and it kept shutting off
bc we didn’t know how to keep the screen on so we’d take turns tapping the screen while singing into the mic lmao

weird anecdote, sorry

Pg. 8 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 8.

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord)

trying to figure out which songs zach drummed on and which were just triggers/samples

i think 8 is the only remaining real drums

it just got to a point where mixing real drums with limited mics didn’t produce results we wanted

Pg. 9+11 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 9 and page 11.

Pg. 10 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 10.

Pg. 12-15 Listen on: YouTube

Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)

Page 12, page 13, page 14, page 15.

Alex Votl: (HSMusic Discord)

the talking in the background of nancho party is justin (bass player) and his girlfriend Stoned off their gourd laffin about taco bell ingredients

at one point she’s crying laughing about “bell grande… BIIIIG BELL”

“ALL THE SALSA. ALL THE CHEESE. I WANT IT SO BAD”

me and avery were trying to mix the nancho party track and they’re in the background cackling about taco bell so naturally we turned the mic on and tried not to laugh to overload it

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