103 Works Collection

Oh, hello there; I'm back again, finally. I'd intended to take a short break from music to recharge after R.I.P.1.0.3. + XMAS 2018, but it uh... went on longer then expected. You can think my mental health bottoming out again for that one, per the norm. Thankfully I'm back in therapy, and among other quality of life improvements my therapist recommended I make more of a habit of writing music to help maintain a healthy mindset (as when I'm "in the zone" and working on music, I'm so laser focused that I haven't got the brainspace free for any sort of Depression and/or Anxiety™ nonsense), so you can expect to see music cropping up with more frequency for the foreseeable future. Anyway; on with the song decription!

This is another piece written for my friend Mushroomminded, based on her ongoing Micoverse project. This one's got a bit more context to it, though; one of the main characters, Jacob "Jake" Pierly, was the frontman of a punk rock band called Problem Sons in his youth, which served as an outlet for the anger and angst he and the other band members had regarding their, to put it mildly, less than ideal home lives. I'd been struck by the idea to write a song that'd be by the band "in universe" a little while back, and decided to commit to it as my first track after a break (because diving in at the deep end and writing in a music style I never have before was an excellent idea). In spite of the odds, I'm really pleased with the end result; I think this is the first entirely synth-less song I've written... ever, and though the guitars are obviously constructed out of single note samples rather then "played" I think the result still came out fairly solid. The composition and arrangement are almost certainly a lot more intricate and layered then you could reasonably expect a high school band to be able to pull off (not to mention there are several points where the band, which I think is a 3 piece, would need more then one guitarist to realistically be able to play it), but eh. Consider those acceptable breaks from the in-universe reality to make for a more enjoyable song.

Regarding the title; "love's hangover" is a pretty loaded and shitty term for an unwanted pregnancy; the idea behind it is that the term refers to the members of the band themselves, and where I capable of writing lyrics or singing I'd have happily performed a bitterly sardonic song with verses about how they didn't ask to be born, how it feels to be treated as a burden, that sorta thing. The only lyrics that really came to mind were "you built the f@!#ing cot, so lay me in it".

The glass bottle shattering SFX (one of my favourite details, and in my head that was performed during the recording of the song by Jake himself) is by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk).

103 Works #0

DOWNLOAD/PURCHASE

Problem Sons - Love's Hangover

I'd originally planned to do something entirely different for the next cut in my ongoing "music I make on advice from my therapist" series, but as is damn near always the case with me, plans change. The idea to do a speedy oldskool Rotterdam Techno track with some mighty slap bass came to mind as if from a dream at the start of the week, and several hours over the next few days were lost to making it a terrifying reality.

This track is another piece for one of my many, many, many Gonkaka projects; Relentless Riders. An arcade racing/driving game that, were it a real game, would be somewhat Ridge Racer inspired, but with several twists. For starters, there's no actual opponent vehicles to race against, and the courses aren't circular; the race is instead against the clock, and the courses are straight shots with a defined beginning and end (so it's a bit like OutRun in that regard, too). Another major difference is that it has a defined narrative, which I don't have the character space to sum up here, so if you'd like to read more AND see some art of the characters I drew a couple of years back, check out the tumblr link here: http://nine-hundred-and-nine.tumblr.com/post/183759195212/happy-slapper-93-mighty-obnoxious-yellow-id

As for the track itself; it couldn't possibly be more inspired by Shinji Hosoe's early work in the ridge racer games if I'd tried, though there's a touch of the old masters of Rotterdam Techno- Holy Noise, Euromasters, King Dale etc.- in there as well. Whilst older Rotterdam Techno was fast pasted and had its fair share of heavy kicks and quirky samples, the early stages of the genre didn't quite go to the same extremes as it would in the latter half of the 90s and beyond (this was an age before Speedcore and Extratone, after all). In terms of actual specific songs, this owes itself to Speedster (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NeAFVtEqVQ), Speedster Overheat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4kW9CatDJs), and though it's a newer track Rotten 7 [Remix] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe0lQUEHkDk) from the Ridge Racer series, all of which were composed by Hosoe. It's mostly the former two, what with their Slap Bass Action™, but the bittersweet chords were drawn from the latter a little. The bittersweet angle was a detail I specifically wanted to include; to keep in tandem with the narrative of Relentless Riders (seriously, click the tumblr link dog), I want the music for the project to have a forlorn tone to it. Not to the point of being morose and miserable, mind, but just enough to tug at the heart strings a bit.

Oh, yeah; why's it credited to "Mighty Obnoxious Yellow" and not "Gonkaka"? Another of the ideas for RR was to have the race BGMs be assigned to fake acts made up by Gonkaka (aliases for aliases; we're through the looking glass), though M.O.Y. is actually the name of a project that Gonkaka's bassist, Takayuki Mitsuyoshi, and their string player/head tech guy Denji Koshiro were in together before Gonkaka formed, wherein they blended electronica with their chosen instrument talents. Hence why the slap bass is off the chain here, and why the violin makes an appearance at a few points. The name and general idea are a reference to Oriental Magnetic Yellow, the name of a Yellow Magic Orchestra cover/parody band formed by Shinji Hosoe, Nobuyoshi Sano, Takayuki Aihara, and Hiroto Sasaki that they worked on between soundtrack gigs. The title of the song is a two-pronged pun; "Happy Slapping" was the name of a 'fad' from my secondary school days wherein you would suddenly slap someone, usually from behind, yell "HAPPY SLAP" as you did it, and some other dickhead would film the whole affair on their phone. And, as well established, the song's got mad slap bass in it ayyy.

Why yes, I DO think through this shit so thoroughly for pretty much my sole enjoyment, how did you know?

Mighty Obnoxious Yellow - Happy Slapper '93 [from "Relentless Riders"]

This is something long overdue; actual music for my Barnbellow's Estate project.

For those of you that haven't been around long or don't follow my exploits closely, Barnbellow's Estate is a Clock Tower inspired project that has existed, in some form, since about 2007, though it has gone through quite a few tweaks and changes within that time frame. Like a lot of my projects, it started out as an idea for a game I was certain I'd somehow make, but once reality caught up with me a bit I rejigged it into a "fake soundtrack" Gonkaka project. Because I might not be able to make full games, but I CAN make soundtracks and write an obscene amount of flavour text!

There are two primary modes of 'gameplay' in Barnbellow's Estate, were it to exists: one wherein you explore the impossibly large estate the game takes place in, solving puzzles, reading lore, and engaging with all manner of survival horror tropes; and one wherein you have to escape from the designated pursuer of whatever area of the estate your in, using the environment to your advantage (either to hide from or hinder said pursuer), or in a pinch, use Yuna's digital camera to stun and temporarily disable them. This is a piece that would play during one of the former sections- specifically, it's intended to be the primary walkaround music for the very first area of the game (the hysterical laughter and/or sobbing sample that I messed about with in the final section is a giveaway here, as it's intended to tie into the game's first pursuer; the Vengeful Mother, whom makes an appearance in and has some of her backstory expanded upon in this short story I wrote: http://deconwrites.tumblr.com/post/178869160413/barnbellows-estate-minisode-devils-handiwork). It's also a good demonstration of the general sound direction I wanted to take the walkaround tracks in: a sorta free-form, experimental semi ambient style with more melody driven breaks and a shot or two of some 80s-styled synth patches for cheesy horror flick fair.

This piece does have some more specific sources of inspiration, though; the use of rave stabs owes itself more to the music from G Darius than more dance-floor ready tracks, as G Darius' score did tend to make use of orch hits and rave stabs in unsettling and sometimes dischordant ways (here's an example track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z51Jh1kzGd0). The track's general vibe also owes a lot to the Ancient Castle Stage music from the first Devil May Cry (https://youtu.be/vF8rdHz2wZw) - the idea to use some effect-ladden and otherwise messed with samples of orchestra tune-ups and an opera singer belting out in a freeway in particular were inspired by the sudden appearance of a pleasant string melody overlaid atop the offputting ambiance (the big, bombastic organ/string section also owes itself to the Ancient Castle Stage track). The name is also a deliberate reference to the NES/Famicom horror title Sweet Home, because I don't think I've made my love of that game quite clear enough yet.

Fun trivia fact: this is technically a stealth remake of an older attempt at the first-area-walkaround-track for Barnbellow's Estate, called "Tragedy United Them": https://103records.bandcamp.com/track/tragedy-united-them-act-1-exploration-bgm-barnbellows-estate About the only thing it borrows from the original is that organ section, though.

This song includes the following sounds from freesound.org:
- orchestra warming up (BeeProductive)
- underpass (Simon Gray)
- Chamber Ensemble Tuning 2 (Cunningar0807)
- G51-09-Woman Sobs and Laughs (Craig Smith)

Gonkaka - Sweet Home (Walkaround Ambiance #1) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]

A recently unearthed demo track for one of the songs that appeared in Nincom's horror themed beat 'em up from 1990, Efiáltis. According to an article posted to the defunct Nincom fansite "Battlemaniacs United":

"According to the notes, though the demos were initially written just to get concepts for the music outlined before being reworked, at one point during the development cycle there were talks between Nincom's main sound unit + in-house band Gonaka and the manufacturing leg of the team about experimenting with early CD sound technology. The idea, essentially, was that a CD reader would be placed in each machine with a soundtrack disc inside that would be, via techno wizardry way too complex for me to understand, be queued up with the game as it ran, playing the right tracks at the right moments, leaving the sound chips free to handle purely digitised SFX and Samples. Primary composer Fumie Saso even went back to the initial demos and mildly touched them up- adding a little more finess to the synths and adding additional sounds in- but the idea was eventually shelved due to both how much it would cost to manufacture the machines, and how much it would cost the end user to buy. This wasn't a total loss, however; due to a miscommunication, the slightly beefed up versions of the demos were used by the sound converter, Nincom's legendary chiptune-geezer Manabu Kawashima, resulting in some very awesome music that pushed the sound chip to it's absolute limits."

If you'd like to read the recovered article in full (and view some also-salvaged concept art from Efiáltis' development cycle), please click the following link: https://sites.google.com/site/thisisrandomlunacy/home/articles/halloweencountdown2019/006

(If you're confused; this is all metafiction I made up and wrote for fun! Do please read the "article", as I had fun writing it, and hey, if you wanna read more metafiction about Efiáltis, check out this breakdown of the game that I really, really need to go back and finish: https://deconwrites.tumblr.com/post/175353940768/gonkaka-project-breakdown-efiáltis-pt-1 )

This song uses the following samples from freesound(.)org:
- Thunder 1 (Yoyodaman234)
- Thunder Clap OWB KY 441x16 (Dave Welsh)
- Scream (MikkyLachae)
- Creepy Evil Demon Monster Growl Halloween (Voices_Of_Marz)

Gonkaka - I Will Walk Into Hell for You (Stage 1) [Initial Demo Track for "Efiáltis"]

"Down the hill it rolls; the head of he who will be known as Britain's first Christian Martyr. Blood stains the grass with each meaty thump as gravity pulls it further and lower away from the body it was once attached to. It finally comes to rest at the base of the hill, dead-eyed face gazing upwards at the awe-addled crowd; a little beyond where it rests, a spring of the purest and freshest water bursts forth from the ground. Silence falls on the onlookers, in reverence of the miracle they just bore witness to.

All except you.

After all, the moment your blade finished cleaving his neck, your eyes burst from their sockets."

---

Happy Halloween everybody! I've been up since about 2 A.M. GMT, and started working on this track about 5 in the morning or so. I had maybe an hour's break around lunchtime but otherwise I've been going flat out working on this cut. I am very, very tired.

As the bit of prose suggests, this track is loosely inspired by the legend surrounding the execution of Saint Alban- important local folklore for me, what with being a resident of the city of Saint Albans. If you've never read the story surrounding Saint Alban, give it a look; it's surprisingly Metal™. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Alban

Total honesty: the track was mostly inspired by the guillotine foley sample that closes out the intro. Which... y'know, isn't how Saint Alban was beheaded, but hey ho, semantics. Quite where the impulse to do something that clocks in at 189bpm came from I've no idea; obviously I've still got the Rotterdam Techno bug. I'm sure this'll be my last ridiculously fast and aggressive track for a while.

... Yeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhhh probably not.

This tune uses the following sounds from freesound(.)org:
- Crowd/Mob/Riot Noise (Voices Only) - 14 people, 2 minutes HENRY VI (FillMat)
- Morphing Drop (staticpony1)
- impact 2.wav (neezen.)

Rigor Motions vs Damn That Rotter - Holywell Syndrome

I don't typically add songs to releases once the releases are published, but this is one of the very rare occasions where I... er, have. I apologise for that; it absolutely will not become a habit, I can promise you that.

This was intended to be a "how to play" track for a fictional Rhythm/Fighting game hybrid I had started developing as a potential end-of-year Xmas project, but decided to shelve in favour of another theme. I'd already done this track and didn't have anywhere else for it to go, and I didn't want to sit on it for ages- I really dislike sitting on tracks for extended periods and avoid doing so where I can- so I'm including it as an extra on the Halloween Split. I'm fond of it, actually; it was fun to do some early 2000s style 2 Step again, honestly.

Gonkaka - How U Do It (How to Play) [from "EMBU 103rd MIX"]

As you've probably noticed, I'm taking a short break from 12 Tracks 2019 to get to a few commissions I've had on the backburner for a while. I will go back and finish the remaining 6 tracks in the very near future, though!

This was a fun one; the artist Cam Collins (https://twitter.com/CAMCOLLINS999) got ahold of me and asked me to produce a short, looping track to go along with a .gif he'd put together, which you can see here; https://twitter.com/CAMCOLLINS999/status/1209283941263400960?s=20 . As I understand it, he's planning to put together a short video or "scroll" featuring the .gif, the song backing it, and story information rolling on the side to give context to the characters in it. I was given a very brief summary of the characters by Cam, which I'll relay here: "They are the "1000 CLUB", including the cat, and they are OK with stealing anything above 1000 miles in the sky". Needless to say I was hooked on the concept alone- the visual designs of the cast are super unique, and the idea of thieves that only jack stuff above a certain altitude is really interesting to me.

Cam mentioned that my track Can Humans Drive Stick? (https://103records.bandcamp.com/track/can-humans-drive-stick-final-results-name-entry-from-relentless-riders) was an influence on him when working on the .gif, and he wanted something similar to the kind of vibe it had going on. I'm pretty pleased with the result; I was worried I might subconsciously veer too close to essentially doing a copycat track, but once I got stuck into the composing process ideas for different angles that fit within the same sort of "aesthetic" came pretty quickly. As always, any track where I use the Roland D-50 "Pressure Me Lead" patch is a joy, but throwing in That Specific Chord Sample is an extra treat because by god it sounds good. I'm pleased with the drums too; I wasn't originally shooting for drums that sounded quite that "big", but stumbling upon one of the snare sounds that make it up moved me in that direction mid-process.

Arcade Child - Altitude Heaven (0.101th Above)

The second commission from my current backlog, and one that's been on the cards for... let's say "A While" and leave it at that for the sake of my personal shame, yeah? Aight sweet, nice 🤘

A pal of mine who goes by the handle DemonClaus or Claus on most platforms has been developing a game in RPG maker alongside a very talented team of individuals called Almari since around 2013, and a while back he asked if I'd be interested in providing a couple of songs to the score. Here's a selection of the writeup Claus gives for the project:

"Almari is a black comedy surreal horror JRPG inspired by Yume Nikki, OFF, Mother/EarthBound, Undertale, The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. It's been in development since 2013. The game follows Almari, a hollow objecthead who lacks any emotions. He wakes up in an unknown location and is told by a being known as Hama that he must travel through several worlds created by various human emotions known as the Worlds of Mind and defeat the Emotion Holders of the worlds to gain their emotions for himself. The game focuses on dungeon crawling, puzzle solving, and turn based combat as the meat of its experience. Almari is equipped with a writing utensil and various kinds of stationery to write words that will be used as his attacks. However, Almari does not learn these attacks by leveling up, and instead must find them throughout the Emotion Worlds."

You can read more about the game- and download the latest demo (as it is currently still in-progress)- at the following link: https://rpgmaker.net/games/10529/ . You can also scope the credits for the project here: https://almarirpg.tumblr.com/credits . Both links also provide good means to keep up with the game as development continues- which you should, because it's shaping up to be Pretty Interesting if I say so m'self.

As the title gives away, this is intended to be played during encounters with the bosses at the end of each chapter. The plan even early on was to shoot for something very electronica influenced, but in the process of hashing the track out it wound up going in a very 90s techno inspired direction. Specifically, it draws from the heavier, sometimes (but not always) darker, Industrial-influenced techno you'd hear in some video games released around the mid to late 90s and early 2000s, particularly those released on the original Playstation or Dreamcast. Good examples of the sort of thing I mean (and which were subconscious influences) are the scores from Crime Killer, iS: Internal Section, Blam! Machinehead, Re-Volt, San Frascisco Rush: Extreme Racing's PS1 port, and the Die Hard portion of Die Hard Trilogy. Thankfully, doing tracks that sounded like they fit the 90s VGM era was one of the suggestions outlined in the initial planning stages, and one of the examples Claus provided for what he wanted- Akira Yamaoka's "Bring Her Down" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQk4_T5Tf9w)- fits the bill, though the final track moved away from that direction a tad. There's still a nod to it in there, though. As a result, a lot of the samples I picked to use were very specifically chosen to evoke that age of VGM- the industrial break the song opens on, the SFX the section at 1:10 is built around, the guitar loop in the section that follows (and blending of guitars with hard techno across the track in general), and the bleepy synth loop in the closing section at 3:48 being the most significant examples. Throughout the process and various sketches I came up with before the final track began to take shape, I kept finding myself drawn to more tragic and melancholic chord sequences, which is fitting- but to say much more would be telling now, wouldn't it? ;)

Arcade Child - Loop Travesty (Boss Battle)

The temporary art for this upload was designed and produced by Gigab00ts, and was used with permission.

A character select theme for a hybrid fighter/adventure game that, as the commissioner explained it to me, "is intended to be like the adventure mode/Subspace Emissary mode from the Smash Bros. games". This was also an exercise in parsing out what sort of style I wanted to go with for the project, as there's a chance I'll be doing more for it in the future; I pulled a fair bit of inspiration from the soundtrack of Street Fighter III Third Strike, Capcom VS SNK 2, and Capcom Fighting Jam (which I think I'm one of about ten people that owned that game, and about three that thought it was Fairly Decent™ if not necessarily groundbreaking). All the vocals used in this piece barring one are in-program assets from MUSIC™ 2000's internal library and lemme tell ya, despite having a wealth of both painfully cheesy rap AND painfully cheesy singing samples to pick from, finding ones that both rhyme and make sense strung together is a bit of a ballache.

103 Works #1

Arcade Child - Turntable Voodoo (Character Select)

These were the last pieces I wrote in DETUNE inc.'s incredible iYM2151 app- a bit of software that emulated the sound of the Yamaha YM2151 FM synth chip featured in many arcade games in the late 80s/early 90s that's extremely faithful to the hardware specs- before my old iPad 2 gave up the ghost (and by that point it had gone from the iTunes App Store + I kept running into issues trying to transfer the purchase due to Reasons™ too boring to recount). I was asked yo write them by a good pal of mine as an intro and outro jingle for their lets play channel, but ultimately they went unused (no hard feelings there though; it happens!). I've been sat on them for... a while, because I initially planned on doing a similar release to the Pixel Pawns single (the two OG jingles + a remix) before they went unused, and then never really had anywhere to put them for ages. They'd have fit perfectly on the first Tracks for Cash volume, but I completely forgot to include them because I'm an Idiot (they are slated the next volume, however).

Gonkaka - Sequence.YM2151 ~ End Slate Keys

So, funny story; I thought I was coming up on a bad bout of music block, and so I resolved to take a break from trying to make music (despite how much I wanted to) to let the block burn off and just recorded a few demos/samples (which will be coming to the Patreon next week) instead. That was Tuesday.

Then, come Wednesday, whilst I was taking care of other business, this little idea for a riff using some of MUSIC™ 2000's built-in brass stab samples comes into my head and I think "oh, I'll just get that down and save it for later". So I do. But then I think "oh whilst I'm here I'll try fiddling with some samples, just for a quick lark, probably won't have much to show for it but I'll at least have a concept demo I can refer to later!" About three or four hours of near constant work barring like, one break- which is a fast turnover time for a track- this piece is done.

So much for that sabbatical.

As the process for the track was so off the cuff, I didn't really have any ideas of what to use it for; I just kind of let the song itself come out of me and dictate the direction it'd go in itself. If that makes sense. The idea of it tying in some way to the seedy, barely lit, massively congested side street networks of a big city was fairly strong, though, and upon listening to the end result I felt it'd fit my Splatoon fan project quite nicely (despite there being plenty of legible vocal samples in it but, hell, I broke that rule already). So, full context can be read at the tumblr post here: https://nine-hundred-and-nine.tumblr.com/post/618079526982926336/tetraodontiform-weary-walkin-district-301-if

I used a lot of samples for this one, obviously- mostly stab/chord samples-  including a few you may or may not recognise. Have fun picking them out!

The photo used for this upload was taken by Kaique Rocha

This song uses the following SFX from freesound.org: Light City Sounds at Night (Liljendal)

Tetraodontiform - Weary Walkin' (District 301)

This was another of those tracks I really didn't plan for, had no core idea what to do with at first, and just pumped out through pure instinct. I think I've got backed up creative fumes I need to burn.

Thankfully, an idea came for where to place this pretty quick; it fits in quite nicely with one of my Gonkaka projects, Nightmare Busters, which I wrote a huge writeup of over here -> https://nine-hundred-and-nine.tumblr.com/post/189533296122/the-12-tracks-of-christmas-2019-track-3

This track would play upon either completion of a given Course (whether you reached the point threshold or not), or upon loss of all lives before the five minute timer clocks out, over a results screen that tallies up the points you gained by attacking enemies, combo multipliers, how many traps activated, hallway bonuses you obtained, remaining life and special attack counts, and a bonus for taking the boss character of the Course if you managed to encounter and defeat them. You are then given a rank based on your total score, each of which is tied to a different threshold. This threshold changes with each stage in accordance with the "boss encounter" threshold, meaning it's easier to rank higher in earlier courses over later ones. The ranks go from F to S; if you manage to clear the boss encounter threshold for a stage you're guaranteed to make a C grade at least, and will likely clear B if you beat the boss; getting an A requires a little extra elbow grease, and achieving S ranks demands near perfect runs. A common criticism of Nightmare Busters was that the multipliers awarded by both activating traps and stockpiling lives and special moves were the easiest possible ways to get higher ranks, and that loss of lives or using special moves and ending a course with less almost always locked you out of getting S ranks unless you were an exceptionally good- and fast- player. For this reason, high-tier players that run the game at tournaments almost exclusively use Miss Red Hood due to her speed advantage and stun mechanic, which can be used to rank up meatier combos over Copper's screen-clearing mechanic.

103 Works #2

Gonkaka - Silent Judgement (Course Results) [from "Nightmare Busters"]

Y'know, now that I've spent two days slaving over, getting stressed about, working into the wee hours on, and darn near crying in sheer anger when a program crash robbed me of a bunch of assets I still needed to use for a Bassline slash Hard Garage (with a touch of Footwork and Dubstep) track that samples Tetley Tea adverts, I think I can safely say Quarantine has finally gotten the best of me. I have clearly lost my fucking mind.

Damn if that bass don't hit, though. Reckon Off Me Nut Records ought to give me a ring 'bout this one.

Jokes aside, it was nice to bring the Mk. IV Escort alias back in general, and to wheel out some more Garage-y sounds for it; it's been a bit since I've taken that approach with the alias. And as admittedly very goofy and daft as the song is, hell, we could use a bit of silliness right about now I reckon.

also I know I said I was done rinsing the guitar loop I used during the second breakdown at 4:09 but I lied I'M SORRY IT SOUNDS GOOD LEAVE ME ALONE

Mk. IV Escort - Loose Leaf Crew

Wahey, another song for me ongoing Splatoon project Despair Decibel (covered in detail here for those that need a refresher - https://nine-hundred-and-nine.tumblr.com/post/618079526982926336/tetraodontiform-weary-walkin-district-301-if ) if I keep this up I may actually manage some consistency. Imagine that!
Were Despair Decibel a real thing you could play, this track would play during the battle with the last and most important of The Dope One's underlings, Bomber Balaena. A Sonarid just like The Dope One, Bomber Balaena was as vehemently opposed to conflict as the Dope One initially was, and wished to remain so even as DO began to fight back against the coalition of foes the Sonarids were facing. However, he and The Dope One were lifelong friends- possibly more, at one point- and he felt such a strong loyalty to the Dope One that he stayed by his side until the bitter end (he was the last of the Sonarids to be wiped out, something which pushed the already furious DO even further into fury). Similarly, once resurrected, he finds himself opposed to The Dope Ones plan, feeling it is entirely unfair to punish an entire population of people so far removed from their conflict in such a severe way; however, as before, he remains loyal to his friend and fights by his side with fervour in spite of himself.
To break the title down, "Gråte" is Norwegian for "Weeping"/"crying" etc., and Rørhval is the Norse term for the throat grooves of a Blue Whale's windpipe. The name "Bomber Balaena" is also a reference- specifically, it's a nod to the Hideki Naganuma's track Bomber Barbara, which was a primary source of inspiration for the track (and thus felt it was only fair it gets a nod) -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4KIxqTYGGI

Bomber Balaena - Gråte Rørhval (Bomber Balaena Battle)

This is something of a follow up to (can't) cope. (https://103records.bandcamp.com/track/cant-cope), in terms of theme; whereas that song draws more from the raw, visceral panic and mania of a complete mental breakdown, this is more of a numb, creeping dread; the "sound" of my mind going around and around, over and over in the early hours of the morning when I'm completely alone and unable to do anything but sit in my bottomed-out mental health and pray for release.

I had been itching to do a predominantly ambient work for a while anyhow, mind you; I just picked a particularly "good" time to do just that, what with everything going on in my personal life, the world at large, and the demons and hangups I've been battling for the better part of a nearly a decade. I'm quite pleased with the end result; I wonder how I'll feel about it when I'm in a better state of mind.

Piston Quints - (not) doing well.

The idea for this track has been rolling around in my head for quite a while; just needed the whim to commit it to waveforms to strike. Which, in the midst of this godawful heatwave we're having in the UK, it finally did.

Per the norm for Gonkaka tracks, there's a bunch of context + hyperlinked text that don't work in SC descriptions, so go to the following tumblr link to read it all ayyy (please, I put a lot of effort into writing this stuff/coming up with the context for the tunes) -> https://nine-hundred-and-nine.tumblr.com/post/621976650644586496/gonkaka-enfrentando-el-armaged%C3%B3n-player-entry

103 Works #3

Mighty Obnoxious Yellow - Enfrentando el Armagedón (Player Entry ~ Select Mode, Course, and Driver)

Earlier in the year, a flute melody cropped into my head that I had to get down, along with some chords and a rough Drum & Bass break. I had no idea what to do with it for ages or where it'd fit given it had such a specific vibe, however ythis week the thought struck me;

It's be a real good base to build a song inspired by the Skipper Pavilion stage from Splatoon 2 around.

Almost all my Splatoon fan music so far has either been for my Despair Decibel fan campaign, or kind of loosely shoved in me personal canon, but I've wanted to do music specifically for bog standard Turf War/Ranked Matches for a while. I'd been struggling for ideas, though- Can't Cease, Shan't Cease grew out of one such failed attempt. However this time, as soon as the "base it around Skipper Pavilion" idea formed in my head, the song overall fell into place and I knew the sketch elements I'd done in advance would fit the palette of what I wanted. I'm very pleased with the end result; the beats are big and nicely chopped, the bass is huge where it needs to be, and I got to rinse some samples I'd wanted to have a crack at using for a while.

It's a bit too long for a round of Turf War in length and too short for a Ranked Match, but I can live with that; I didn't want to loop it both just out of preference, and because I've done a lot of loop/fadeout endings lately it feels like and I felt like not doing another one.

In-universe, this track was composed by my oldest Splatoon character, Skint, whom y'call can read about over here -> https://twitter.com/103rdsi/status/1164686736749993985

Jackpot Goalie - Temaki Tantrum

Aye, this is a short one; it was intended to be a very quick test-track to run through both my current PS1- the fake blood covered SCPH-900x model I affectionately named Bloody Bladder (after this Devil May Cry song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa0tv3k-wNU ) because I'm Like That- and a recently acquired PAL region refurbished SCPH-100x (sometimes designated under the SCPH-200x model name), which is one of the early Playstation 1 units with the built in RCA jacks that audiophiles went nuts for a couple of years back. Bit of a hiccup with that though; the spinning mechanism of the "refurb" SCPH-100x... doesn't work. Discs don't spin when the tray is closed, meaning I can't get passed the system BIOS. Tried a couple of things to get it working and made sure none of the components inside the lid were obviously broken- they weren't- but no dice. I'm hanging onto it to see if I can cannibalise the RCA jacks sometime (or more likely, get someone who knows what they're doing to do that), but for now it's a Bust. Very pleased I spent my money on that let me tell ya.

The track itself is a deliberate homage to the music from the Raiden Fighters series of SHMUPS, not only in style (very fast and evil sounding hard rave) but even trying to match the samples reasonably closely. It's most influenced by one of my favourite tracks from the series, the Enemy Launch Base (Simulation Level 1) track ( https://youtu.be/C4DFwgSpO00 ) from Raiden Fighters Jet, and unashamedly so at that. I would like to revisit it and expand it sometime, but for now I just needed something quick for the aforementioned test.

Arcade Child - Irrelevant Time (Early ver., SCPH-900x Recording)

Given the original purpose of the track- to be a quick test of recording quality- became moot, I decided to expand the song a little bit and tweak the arrangement in a couple of places. It's still a relatively short track- hence why it's set to loop once before the fadeout- but it's got much more meat to it then the original piece did.

For references sake, I'll briefly paraphrase some of the original track description; the track was heavily inspired by the music from the Raiden Fighters series of shoot 'em ups, which are all hard rave bangers (in chiptune form, albeit sample-based), though the most direct source of inspiration was the Simulation Level 01 track from Raiden Fighters Jet ( https://youtu.be/C4DFwgSpO00 ), composed by Yasuhiro Hashimoto (and one of my personal favourite tracks from the whole series). You can therefore consider this a fan track for a non-existent Raiden Fighters game, or something to that effect- that's what I was going for at least. There's also a touch of inspiration from the Option Tuning Car Battle 2 opening track- specifically the bit where it goes all Gabber( https://youtu.be/p4nzf6bknB0?t=52 ) (couldn't find an actual song upload, so the intro itself will have to do).

103 Works #4

Arcade Child - Irrelevant Time (Real Combat Scenario #83)

It's funny how song ideas sometimes evolve as the composition process goes along. This initially started out purely as an excuse to use the "Chordal" pad sample I opened Irrelevant Time with (it first comes in around 1:40 in this track) in a more pronounced capacity. Then I thought "oh I wanna make this Roland TR-909 themed somehow", because it's my favourite drum machine (and it was 909 day recently)- hence almost all the drum sounds are either from the TR-909 (MUSIC™ 2000 has a selection of sounds from the machine in its built-in library) or sound close to patches from the machine. Then I thought "oh maybe I can make this another Armored Core-like jam similar to Goofy Economy, or something from the PS1 Ghost in the Shell game", which lead to how that sorta-inspired-by-Hardfloor's-Spook-&-Spell-(Fast-ver.) first bass pattern sounds- and really, the intro and much of the arrangement in general. Ultimately though, the way the combined chord sequences in the latter third sounded together (which were the first two parts of the track to be written/programmed) + the vibe that that ghostly strikes that come in after the intro lead me down a more "spooky" route- hence the text to speed stuff, the synth theremin melody, and the sound effect collages used in the background a couple of places. It's a bit early for Spooky Month™ but hey, it's still seasonally appropriate!

You also notice the arrangement of the track is, to a degree, sparser then my usual approach, and more upfront additions/subtractions/changes to the sections take longer to come in then normal (typically 16 bars vs. my usual 8 these days). There's still stuff that changes with more regularity- there's a lot of filter-tweaking emulation going on (particularly in the basslines), but some of it's more subtle then usual. That's not necessarily for lack of trying; a few times I tried to vary sections up a bit more and deepen bits of the arrangement, but quite a lot of stuff wasn't clicking- seriously, a good 30% of things tried for this track were left on the cutting room floor. I decided to lean into it and make the track more deliberately repetitive and loop based then a lot of my stuff is, as a proof of concept and challenge to myself; y'see, a lot of music I like is really repetitive- if a hook sits right with me, I can listen to tracks that barely vary things up and really enjoy them- but I've always had an issue writing music of that nature because I fear it comes off as boring or lifeless. It's an extension of my harsh perfectionism; after the 2017 Christmas project came out so strong especially, I've had a ludicrously high standard that I want my music to meet, and more then a few pieces have struggled to get off the ground and been canned as a result. I've been doing my best to fight against it somewhat since late last year after me and my bestie Dio had a long discussion about music/label stuff whilst I was out in San Jose, but it still rears it's ugly head from time to time. This track is an attempt at doing just that.

The sound collages were put together using heavily manipulated SFX from freesound.com users foxraid, prodepha, MindlessTrails, and mikef7.

Mello-MACHine - 909 Deaths (And Counting)

Hello; my name is Decon Theed. I make tunes using MUSIC™ 2000 under several different aliases. Originally from St. Albans