532 words across 3 entries.

Universal Umbrosity Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify

Raid: (Bandcamp about blurb)

This is a sick ass remix/cover I made of two Homestuck tunes I like. Toby Fox's "Umbral Ultimatum" and Tensei's "Dance of Thorns". Virtual distorted guitar solo, intense jazz/post-hardcore drumming, and synth-filled chiptune bridge included.

Check it out on YouTube too.

Raid: (YouTube description, excerpt)

I Googled "cool nouns that begin with U" to arrive at this title

Also, I had to try really hard to get this one under 4 minutes and 13 seconds long. It mattered a lot to me.

For some random thoughts on music, Homestuck, the title of the song, and more, check the extended description.

Raid: ("universal umbrosity extended description")

Woooooo! 10/25 music video! At some point I'm going to need to stop doing these because I'm going to run out of Homestuck music to cover/remix/interpolate, but that point, if it ever came, would be very far off in the distant future. I love doing these and there is still so much good Homestuck music out there. I'll probably stop doing these before I get to that point simply because I become too busy with life stuff, or because the YouTube algorithm craters me for no reason, or for a whole host of other possible reasons.

I suffered a shoulder injury in late September and was afraid I wasn't going to be able to record the drums for this tune, but I very fortunately healed in time to drum my heart out on this track.

Unfortunately, I have started browsing Twitter more frequently these past few months. I see some disgusting stuff on that app. Anyway, James Roach tweeted something about there maybe being an announcement today. Hmm...

Last but not least, what's with the title? I wanted to stick with the double "u" alliteration that Toby Fox did with the title of the original tune Umbral Ultimatum. A lot of titles of Homestuck tunes are alliterative. I wanted two "U" words. I landed on universal umbrosity, which sounded cool to me. What is universal umbrosity? Well, umbrosity, according to Wiktionary, is an obsolete noun which means "The quality of state of being umbrose; shadiness." So when I say universal umbrosity, I picture an omnipresent, inescapable, all-encompassing sense of terror, darkness, blackness, and silence. Like drowning in a pool of ink. It's too thick to swim out of and too opaque to get your bearings in. Nobody can hear you scream as you slip further into the depths, ever closer to your doom.

I hope your day is going great!

Extra note post-Spotify upload: I mixed the Spotify version of this track to be quieter than the version that wound up in the music video because Makin, the manager of the Homestuck Community Discord, left a comment saying it got too loud at certain points. And they were right! I went and checked the volume of the track with a loudness meter plugin and it was peaking and clipping all over the place. Turns out my other recent streaming platform uploads, like Moonslayer and Black, also peak hella loud too. Oops. I should've paid more attention to their final volumes. But from now on, for all the tracks that I upload, I will make them a lot quieter so they don't clip and get distorted and give listeners hearing loss. I'm making a change.