By Plumegeist plumegeist Bandcamp plumegeist SoundCloud YouTube YouTube geistbox Twitter.
Cover art by Digidigi66 digidigi66 DeviantArt.
Released 4/2/2012.
Duration: 2:54.

Listen on Bandcamp or YouTube.

Read artist commentary.

Tracks that reference Rust Maid:

From Fandom:

• CHEATER PAN by David Burkee
• A Ghost Then a Frog Then a Robot Then a Fairy by cookiefonster
• Spacetime Continuum by apatheticPianist and Pascal van den Bos
• 🎼 Fraymotif ! by Tee-vee

Flashes & games that feature Rust Maid:

• [S] Ella: Examine Spectacle on the screen.
• [S][A6I3] ==>
• [S] Meenah: Talk to Damara
• CRESCENDO - HOMESTUCK Animated Series Pilot

Artist commentary:

Plumegeist:

Around mid-2011 I was at a Nippon Ichi binge. Disgaea 4 was my most anticipated title of yesteryear and I ended up clocking roughly 300 hours in it. Playing it was essentially what finally made me look at the bigger picture when it came to how Disgaea structured it's entire universe, and if you know me, I love fictional universes with established rules and boundaries that are cleverly told.

During the time I was playing the game I had roughly three or four pipe-projects when it came to comics or visual stories in general, some of which I will delve into soon enough, but generally I come up with ideas for storytelling around one basic principle and I keep them in an idea bucket for whenever I plan on working on them. The projects are things I hope to blend audio and visual presentations to, and as such I often tend to compose music with these projects in mind. Playing Disgaea as such gave me a new idea for a story I since abandoned, and was basically a story of a witch traveling worlds. I decided eventually to experiment a bit with creating some music for a scenario I had in mind, and the only thing I would eventually get out of it was a clarinet melody. The original inspiration was to be Tenpei Sato's compositions but I never really got to finish it since my laptop had a meltdown.

In 2012 I got my laptop back and had backups of all my music files at bay, and noticed that MSPA was having a music competition. The limit was three tracks, and as such I wanted to compose three original pieces just to have a shot at getting in. While I got to composing two however, I was stuck at figuring out where I was going to go with the third one, and I realized that I still had a completely unattributed, unfinished track at hand with this work in progress. After recovering the file, rearranging a bit and ultimately rendering it, I decided I'd send it to the contest since I wasn't going to really get anywhere with the track. I figured the character it fit the most was Aradia, so I put it under her name and finished it.

The idea was to have it be a bit of a grim little insidious melody for a title character, but somehow it ended up being slightly more Grant Kirkhope-ish during the N64 era in retrospect, which is something I have to say I'm kind of proud of since he's a massive inspiration. I eventually got the call back from Radiation during late February and was told that it won a spot. I was in shock and awe at that point, as it meant that I finally got somewhere substantial with my work. Immediately I re-rendered Rust Maid; then titled Apocalypse Maid, and Orange Hat, and sent it along What Pumpkin's way.

Here's a fun fact though. When Radiation contacted me, he told me that the song was to be retitled "Rust Servant", and was to be the Handmaid's theme. This was something I was okay with, but he immediately contacted me a while afterwards and reassigned the character to it's original intended character. Between a few e-mails exchanged by me and him, we still referred to the actual track as "Rust Servant", until I got my contract which had it titled "Rust Maid". I thought this was a contract mistake of some sort, but imagine my surprise when I saw the first track on the album thinking it was mine and not realizing it was adhering to a color scheme. Rust Servant was fucking awesome though.

Another fun fact - there's a cowbell right at the start that wasn't supposed to be there. I don't even know how it got there. The original sound file was a reverse cymbal. It happened sometime after I recovered the file and I didn't notice it until after I listened to the remastered version again.