Trip Machine NM - The air was cool that day (Trip Machine Stage 1 - Decline of the City)
Another bit of Trip Machine music- this time, corresponding to the rough "level" seen in The Quiet City of Splatsville. Though much like Sparking before it, were Trip Machine some sort of playable "hero mode", the actual level would be a lot longer than what the story covers. I am at least confident in the general 'setting' of the level though- all the inbetween streets, cutaways, and courtyards between the buildings, a bit like the actual Splatsville hub in the game. Just, y'know, early in the morning, unusually cold for the time of year, and with Robots.
In terms of the actual music itself, it's On Brand for the project; very Early 2000s Videogame (more in the 'techno' direction this time though), a mix of wholly original compositional elements and cut-up + edited sample pack loops both for style accuracy and for the metatextual fittingness of the 'in-universe' musician- a being who is a mix of flesh and machine, soul and program- to reconstruct music from disparate parts. Which is something I hadn't really thought about until working on this specific piece, but I like that extra dimension it adds to the music. The formatting of the title is deliberate, for "mood". I'm particularly pleased with how the chopped up (and layered) breakbeats came out + all the pitchbending/modwheel dynamics going on with the chords, bass, and extra melody in that final section before the outro/loop-link.
It's been a little while coming, but the latest 103 Works entry is out- featuring a couple of new songs, and two songs previously released on compilations outside of the label.
My financial situation has taken a massive turn for the worst so if you can, please consider purchasing this release instead of downloading it. Thank you.
Tracklist:
1. Hertz in the Brain (Despair Decibel: Setup & Select BGM 1)
2. luce - interloper [third-MACHine's It Comes In Waves Mix]
3. Koshiro Soundsystem D - But Is It Art? [from "Embu 103rd Mix"]
4. Trip Machine NM - Elysium Addiction (Trip Machine: Boss 2 - Paranoia Unit "Hades")
5. Copyright Has Been Liberated - Stuck Somewhere Between a Radio Rock and The Stadium House with No Dawn in Sight
I've been chomping at the bit to get this out since finishing it a couple of weeks back; a heavily reworked version of one of my older xmas singles, injected with influences from Pa's Lam System and Cola Splash to reshape it into a proper little christmas rave tool. The download also includes a selection of art from me, a textless version of @diomaxwelle 's (aka @weoncehadnamesofficial ) amazing cover art, and a some metafiction stuff relating to the two characters of mine featured on the cover.
Have a very merry Christmas, y'all <3
A NEW TIME-FRAME OF TERROR UNLEASHED UPON THE WORLD!
Back from beyond the rave and mighty hungry, Waltzer Jam welcomes each and every one of you to partake in the grizzliest sounds this side of the underworld.
Basslines that crawl along the earth,
Beats that echo through the halls,
Melodies that dance within the air,
YOU'LL PRAY FOR DAWN- YOU'LL BEG FOR DEATH!
Can you escape?
Will you survive?
Your fate is sealed, on this...
EVIL NIGHT™
Remember; we are watching you...
music composed and produced by Decon Theed
cover artwork drawn by Dio Maxwelle; additional graphic design by Decon Theed
Bloody Knife in Hand Graphic designed by vectorportal.com, and is used under a creative commons attribution license.
DOWNLOAD INCLUDES: FULL RESOLUTION IMAGES OF THE COVER ART AT VARIOUS STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT, AS WELL AS ADDITIONAL REFERENCE ARTWORK FOR SAID COVER
The Beautiful Way - My Heart (Theme of Yuna Itoh) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]
Funny story about this one (it's a longun, sorry not sorry); for the longest time, I didn't really have any solid plans for any recurring musical motifs or refrains in the music of Barnbellow's Estate. The project's been worked on for so long that I can't remember if I actively didn't intend to come up with any or just figured some would eventually evolve naturally out of the composition process.
The latter wound up being the case, but almost by accident. There's a particular melody that crops up first as a wailing guitar and then in Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief that I wound up gravitating towards despite its relative simplicity. Enough to re-implement it in Gethsemene and This World Is One of Tears, where it was specifically framed as "Yuna's 'theme'", as a melodic counter to the motif that became attached to the game's main antagonist The Agony- which was itself not initially designed as such, but does first appear in "it cries. it cries. it cries. it cries.", (it first comes in around 1:18, played using sample of... I think radar noises? from an old b-movie) which were Barnbellow's Estate a real game, would play in the final area of the game leading up to the confrontation or escape from The Agony. Simple as they both are, I do ultimately like both of them and think they work within the contexts in which they've been used- plus, there's logic to the 'source' of both characters' motifs, even if I basically worked backwards for both. Such is the case when you wind up working on a project for over a decade, working on different parts of it each time with little actual schedule or tiered to-do-list.
What's funny though, is that before working on any of those (if I've got my timeline right), I had decided that Barnbellow's Estate needed some sort of 'main' motif, and played around with a couple of loose concepts that could concievably work as title screen songs on their own (with a bit of polishing up, of course). You can hear them here: Main Motif Concept 1, Main Motif Concept 2. They're both fairly similar, and they're both just... eh, I dunno, there's nothing there really; they're trying too hard to be "recognisable, repeating melodies" and as a result they just sound flat and boring and 'empty'. Needless to say, both never went any further. Ultimately, the only trouble this actually caused was leaving me unsure what the hell to do for the title screen music.
Flash forward to 2026, and we have Laceration and Avulsion. Both done kind of on a whim, both built around a soft-ish piano rendition of Yuna's motif. By the time I'm done with them I figure shit, if I'm using her motif so much, I might as well make Yuna an actual "theme song". Hence; this.
(continued below)
Very early on in her conception, Yuna was specifically a fan of old 90s rave music- this is actually reflected in a bunch of the early "alternate outfit" concepts me and Dio came up with for her, which directly reference the covers of specific rave singles (or a 'house style' of single cover in a couple of cases). For example;
T99's Anasthasia
T99's Invisible Sensuality (this would have been outside her usual tastes at the time admittedly, but hey ho)
Urban Hype's Scyopath (with an extra nod to Trip to Trumpton on the back)
It actually still persists in the present day via her main outfit- the design on her shirt is one I came up with years ago that sirectly references the rave act SL2, who's two main members were the DJs/producers Slipmatt (named for the slipmats DJ's use to help them spin/scratch records) and Lime (self explanitory)
At some point- and I can't recall exactly when- this part of her character was changed to her having an extremely broad taste in music. Essentially, she has my music taste- which is to say, anything and everything. A semi-decent overview of just how wide a net this casts can be seen in the Outfit August challenges I did with her, where the concept was specifically basing outfits directly off of albums/EPs/singles in some manner. I even made note of what her favourite songs on each release would be (and shocker, those usually lined up with me too). There wasn't any specific motivation to this change beyond giving her an angle- a wide area of interest outside of the supernatural that she was just as passionate about (and directly leads into the 'opens a record store after settling in the midwest' part of the Survive ending).
But that does represent a problem; how do you really encompass that wide palette of taste in a single song? And how do you keep it relatively on-brand with the rest of the soundtrack doing so?
The answer is "just throw shit together". Genre mashups of this wide a scope aren't exactly new- The Go! Team has been producing a blend of hip hop, indie rock, garage rock, brass bands, double dutch singing and a ton of other styles for decades now, after all. There are inherent compromises you have to make- you can't literally represent every musical style in a single song- but you can get still get the idea across. The general stylistic direction of Barnbellow's Estate's more action-y tracks really helped me out here, though- electronica fused with rock and metal- so that was the basis I worked from to help ensure relative stylistic cohesion with the soundtrack (though deliberately employing a lot of sample pack loops to create a specific "pieced together" kind of feeling + fit the scope of what a lot of vgm music was doing at the time of BE's supposed release also help in that redard). The electronica angle here definitely leans more towards oldskool rave type tunes partially as a direct homage to that aspect of Yuna's original characterisation, and partially as a semi-direct reference to one particular song I still think of as very "Yuna coded": Jonny L's Ooh I Like It, an extremely melancholic almost proto-trance rave banger. Yuna's theme ultimately goes off in a very different direction, but the main sustained chord pads you hear in the song are a fairly direct homage even if the actual chords are different. Initial passes of My Heart did actually have some four-on-the-floor techno beats in it + I had wanted to include vocoder lyrics in the song, but the former wasn't working out compared to how the rest of the song flowed and I just didn't have the software to hand for the latter (though probably for the best- the few times I've tried writing lyrics, it hasn't gone well). You'll also recognise a few loops and sounds from This World Is One of Tears and Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief- that was, again, effectively reverse engineering musical relevence via callbacks in reverse, rather than attempts to be lazy, and I picked elements from specific parts of those songs rather then going haphazard with it. I actually tried out a few different elements from those songs that either didn't work- they contrasted too heavily with the new elements- or in the case of TWIOoT, felt some of what I picked better fit The Agony then they fit Yuna.
One aspect of it that's also quite important; though again this wasn't always the case for the character, it's been established for a long time now that Yuna was born and raised in San Jose, has lived there her entire life, likely has friends in the surrounding cities and towns, and almost certainly travels around the Bay Area for this or that reason. The Bay is in her blood as much as her Japanese heritage is, basically. San Jose- and the Bay Area of northern california general- has an extremely rich musical heritage in various scenes- you can find strong hip hop rep, a ton of notable rock and metal bands, and even a fairly strong club and rave scene there if you dig; Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Shadow, Exhumed and AFI, and hell, here's an entire list of electronica events/clubs in the Bay Area for you. All of which, to some degree, is represented in My Heart- hip hop slightly less so, but the use of record scratching and a focus on breakbeats (even if at a faster tempo than hip hop usually goes for) were picked partially to reflect that heritage as much as was possible in the template I was building off of.
If you can believe it, this all lead to Metanarrative Upon Metanarrative bollocks, because I cannot fucking help myself; the song is "credited" to an act called The Beautiful Way, as you've probably noticed. In the Nincom metafiction, Fumie Saso is the composer/writer of Yuna's motif generally, and this specific song was composed/produced by her and Denji Koshiro in tandem; in Barnbellow's Estate's lore, The Beautiful Way is a local San Jose band that fuses Rock, Dance, and Hip Hop together that Yuna is a fan of, and My Heart is an in-universe song of theirs that a personal favourite (though it needs to be noted that in-universe, it is not written for or about her- it being her "theme song" is a product of the metanarrative within the metanarrative and oh dear I've gone crosseyed). The name "The Beautiful Way" is also a reference, though a bit of an anachronistic one- it's the subtitle to a book about one of San Jose's historic neighbouhoods, The Alameda, which I picked semi-randomly whilst looking for something or somewhere in San Jose I could reference for a band name. But, in a nice bit of serendipity given Yuna is canonically a Lesbian, apparently The Alameda hosts a lot of LGBQT businesses and the main headquarters of the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ+ Community Center nonprofit. Love it when things work out like that.
It was a bit of a job getting the track together- as said, I tried out a lot of different samples and elements than what you hear in the final track, trying to find the right stuff to blend- but I am pleased with it, chaotic and kind of scattershot as it is. Is it necessarily what I envisioned Yuna's theme sounding like? Is it what anyone else thought it would sound like? Probably not, but I do think it fits; when she isn't fighting for her life, Yuna is an energetic and largely upbeat woman who likes to have a good time and loves a banger tune, so that's reflected in the piece; I also think the melancholic nature of the composition and arrangement also go a long way to summing up Yuna's complicated feelings towards everything that happens over the course of Barnbellow's Estate and, more broadly, some of her own inner turmoil that she tries to keep burried, and her extremely empathetic nature. As best as I can manage, this song reflects the two sides of Yuna; the fun and jovial party gal who likes dumb jokes and always has your back, and the deeply pholosophical and large hearted individual who's trying to heal the world and the people- living or dead- within it and make it a better place.
I'm just about to start working on a more directly 1990s rave music styled alternate mix to serve as a b-side, again partially as a callback to Yuna's initial music taste, and partially just for a lark. That, plus Laceration and Avulsion, will serve as b-sides for a single release. No current ETA on the release, but "soon", hopefully- latter half of February or March would be ideal.
The Beautiful Way - My Heart [UK Club '92 Re-groove]
This took a bit longer to come together than I thought it would- The Depression™, you understand- but I'm pretty pleased with it, overall. Like the original mix, a lot of stuff chopped and changed, different loops and samples were cycled in and out- it was kind of a tricky mess to wrangle together and it's definitely as all-over-the-place as the original mix as well, but hey, I still think that's fitting and I like the energy it has as a result. The core idea of the mix is still front and centre, though; emphasising the oldskool 90s rave flavour and bringing it to the forefront. Definitely sounds like something Yuna would've bumped to at a rave in the dead of night to me!
Also, actual Korg M1 Piano samples. You have no fucking idea how giddy I am to finally use some instead of faking the sound using M2K's built in piano samples.
If you'd like some slightly more in-depth commentary, check out the upload of the original version.
The result of Locking The Fuck In™ and committing to an idea for Barnbellow's Estate's title screen music I've had for a while- and then creating more work for myself by also doing an unplanned "beefier" version of the tune for the main menu/save + load and options sub menus. Wasn't putting it off- just hadn't got 'round to it 'til now. Both songs are available to download individually or as part of the complete Barnbellow's Estate Promo Sampler- individual hyperlinks will be below.
Commentary on Laceration (Nincom Logo ~ Title Screen): Sounds fairly simple, I know- basic interpretation of Yuna's musical motif over a sustained bass note and a sound effects collage. Putting it together was a bloody long process though- see, the thing about ambient collages is you have to build them out of samples, which requires diving into your sample collection/sample packs etc. to find stuff you want. Then, you need to do any editing you might want before you can use them. This all accumilates into very, very tedious and unglamerous work, but it's both necessary and worth it.
I do like the end result though; part of that is the strength of the samples used- that weird manipulated choir sample that runs throughout for example I barely touched, just slapped a bit of reverb on it, did some panning and set about loosely timing it to the flow of the song's sections, it already sounded sufficiently Spooky enough. Mostly the same with the manipulated operatic choir that opens the song- all I really did was reduce the bass signal of the raw sample, chopped off the end, and played it in a different key- again, it was Spooky enough as is. Also, can I just say, god bless M2K for having the native option to load samples at 11hz- for tracks like this, that incredibly crunchy low-quality sample rate is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.
-
Commentary on Avulsion (Menu BGM): Initially, the plan for the complete playable version of Barnbellow's Estate that only exists in my head was that the title music would run over the main menu/save + load and options sub menus. Whilst gathering samples for that title track though, the impulse to do a slightly more "beefed up" track for the menus wormed its way into my head because god knows I just love creating even more work for myself where it's not really necessary.
The actual "beefing up" in question was relatively simple; bulking the melody out with an additional harmony layer, chords (similar sequence to Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief, but different chord sample), a heftier pad for the bass note, a couple'a weird sfx/'percussion' loops from my beloved Methods of Mayhem: Industrial Toolkit, extra perc hits for the second section, more operatic vocals I didn't really have to edit or tweak much beyond tuning/speed adjusting + basic custom strings for a background atmosphere bed, and an spooky ambient outro. Do love the little door squeak and slam into, too- had to put a little something in there to sound out when the player presses start, innit.
The remaining two releases who's art I wanted to update;
Breach
Otherside Early Works
Breach in particular I really wanted to fix, as that was a cover I did an old friend- always felt I let them down a little bit with the original cover, so I am considerably happier with the new one. You'd be surprised which of these two took more work and time to come together. But then, you might not; the deceptively simple things are usually the most tricky in the grand scheme of things.
Since getting access to better graphic design tools + taking the plunge into trying to improve my craft in the field (as it is one I've had a passion for but didn't fully persue), I've been going back and updating some of my previous cover art efforts with (what I hope to be) much, much better ones. There's still a couple I wanted to tackle, so I've set aside some time to do so. These are the first three, in order;
Hellraizer
Brutal God Project: Cronus Rising Early Works
Wake Up & See The Hills [Visor Jack's Snow in San Jose Mix]
That's actually about the fourth take of the cover for Hellraizer I've done, as I've never been tremendously happy with any prior attempt. They're all included as extras in that single's download for the curious.
Since getting access to better graphic design tools + taking the plunge into trying to improve my craft in the field (as it is one I've had a passion for but didn't fully persue), I've been going back and updating some of my previous cover art efforts with (what I hope to be) much, much better ones. There's still a couple I wanted to tackle, so I've set aside some time to do so. These are the first three, in order;
Hellraizer
Brutal God Project: Cronus Rising Early Works
Wake Up & See The Hills [Visor Jack's Snow in San Jose Mix]
That's actually about the fourth take of the cover for Hellraizer I've done, as I've never been tremendously happy with any prior attempt. They're all included as extras in that single's download for the curious.
Trip Machine NM - The air was cool that day (Trip Machine Stage 1 - Decline of the City)
Another bit of Trip Machine music- this time, corresponding to the rough "level" seen in The Quiet City of Splatsville. Though much like Sparking before it, were Trip Machine some sort of playable "hero mode", the actual level would be a lot longer than what the story covers. I am at least confident in the general 'setting' of the level though- all the inbetween streets, cutaways, and courtyards between the buildings, a bit like the actual Splatsville hub in the game. Just, y'know, early in the morning, unusually cold for the time of year, and with Robots.
In terms of the actual music itself, it's On Brand for the project; very Early 2000s Videogame (more in the 'techno' direction this time though), a mix of wholly original compositional elements and cut-up + edited sample pack loops both for style accuracy and for the metatextual fittingness of the 'in-universe' musician- a being who is a mix of flesh and machine, soul and program- to reconstruct music from disparate parts. Which is something I hadn't really thought about until working on this specific piece, but I like that extra dimension it adds to the music. The formatting of the title is deliberate, for "mood". I'm particularly pleased with how the chopped up (and layered) breakbeats came out + all the pitchbending/modwheel dynamics going on with the chords, bass, and extra melody in that final section before the outro/loop-link.
Trip Machine NM - The air was cool that day (Trip Machine Stage 1 - Decline of the City)
Another bit of Trip Machine music- this time, corresponding to the rough "level" seen in The Quiet City of Splatsville. Though much like Sparking before it, were Trip Machine some sort of playable "hero mode", the actual level would be a lot longer than what the story covers. I am at least confident in the general 'setting' of the level though- all the inbetween streets, cutaways, and courtyards between the buildings, a bit like the actual Splatsville hub in the game. Just, y'know, early in the morning, unusually cold for the time of year, and with Robots.
In terms of the actual music itself, it's On Brand for the project; very Early 2000s Videogame (more in the 'techno' direction this time though), a mix of wholly original compositional elements and cut-up + edited sample pack loops both for style accuracy and for the metatextual fittingness of the 'in-universe' musician- a being who is a mix of flesh and machine, soul and program- to reconstruct music from disparate parts. Which is something I hadn't really thought about until working on this specific piece, but I like that extra dimension it adds to the music. The formatting of the title is deliberate, for "mood". I'm particularly pleased with how the chopped up (and layered) breakbeats came out + all the pitchbending/modwheel dynamics going on with the chords, bass, and extra melody in that final section before the outro/loop-link.
The Beautiful Way - My Heart [UK Club '92 Re-groove]
This took a bit longer to come together than I thought it would- The Depression™, you understand- but I'm pretty pleased with it, overall. Like the original mix, a lot of stuff chopped and changed, different loops and samples were cycled in and out- it was kind of a tricky mess to wrangle together and it's definitely as all-over-the-place as the original mix as well, but hey, I still think that's fitting and I like the energy it has as a result. The core idea of the mix is still front and centre, though; emphasising the oldskool 90s rave flavour and bringing it to the forefront. Definitely sounds like something Yuna would've bumped to at a rave in the dead of night to me!
Also, actual Korg M1 Piano samples. You have no fucking idea how giddy I am to finally use some instead of faking the sound using M2K's built in piano samples.
If you'd like some slightly more in-depth commentary, check out the upload of the original version.
The Beautiful Way - My Heart [UK Club '92 Re-groove]
This took a bit longer to come together than I thought it would- The Depression™, you understand- but I'm pretty pleased with it, overall. Like the original mix, a lot of stuff chopped and changed, different loops and samples were cycled in and out- it was kind of a tricky mess to wrangle together and it's definitely as all-over-the-place as the original mix as well, but hey, I still think that's fitting and I like the energy it has as a result. The core idea of the mix is still front and centre, though; emphasising the oldskool 90s rave flavour and bringing it to the forefront. Definitely sounds like something Yuna would've bumped to at a rave in the dead of night to me!
Also, actual Korg M1 Piano samples. You have no fucking idea how giddy I am to finally use some instead of faking the sound using M2K's built in piano samples.
If you'd like some slightly more in-depth commentary, check out the upload of the original version.
The Beautiful Way - My Heart [UK Club '92 Re-groove]
This took a bit longer to come together than I thought it would- The Depression™, you understand- but I'm pretty pleased with it, overall. Like the original mix, a lot of stuff chopped and changed, different loops and samples were cycled in and out- it was kind of a tricky mess to wrangle together and it's definitely as all-over-the-place as the original mix as well, but hey, I still think that's fitting and I like the energy it has as a result. The core idea of the mix is still front and centre, though; emphasising the oldskool 90s rave flavour and bringing it to the forefront. Definitely sounds like something Yuna would've bumped to at a rave in the dead of night to me!
Also, actual Korg M1 Piano samples. You have no fucking idea how giddy I am to finally use some instead of faking the sound using M2K's built in piano samples.
If you'd like some slightly more in-depth commentary, check out the upload of the original version.
The Beautiful Way - My Heart (Theme of Yuna Itoh) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]
Funny story about this one (it's a longun, sorry not sorry); for the longest time, I didn't really have any solid plans for any recurring musical motifs or refrains in the music of Barnbellow's Estate. The project's been worked on for so long that I can't remember if I actively didn't intend to come up with any or just figured some would eventually evolve naturally out of the composition process.
The latter wound up being the case, but almost by accident. There's a particular melody that crops up first as a wailing guitar and then in Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief that I wound up gravitating towards despite its relative simplicity. Enough to re-implement it in Gethsemene and This World Is One of Tears, where it was specifically framed as "Yuna's 'theme'", as a melodic counter to the motif that became attached to the game's main antagonist The Agony- which was itself not initially designed as such, but does first appear in "it cries. it cries. it cries. it cries.", (it first comes in around 1:18, played using sample of... I think radar noises? from an old b-movie) which were Barnbellow's Estate a real game, would play in the final area of the game leading up to the confrontation or escape from The Agony. Simple as they both are, I do ultimately like both of them and think they work within the contexts in which they've been used- plus, there's logic to the 'source' of both characters' motifs, even if I basically worked backwards for both. Such is the case when you wind up working on a project for over a decade, working on different parts of it each time with little actual schedule or tiered to-do-list.
What's funny though, is that before working on any of those (if I've got my timeline right), I had decided that Barnbellow's Estate needed some sort of 'main' motif, and played around with a couple of loose concepts that could concievably work as title screen songs on their own (with a bit of polishing up, of course). You can hear them here: Main Motif Concept 1, Main Motif Concept 2. They're both fairly similar, and they're both just... eh, I dunno, there's nothing there really; they're trying too hard to be "recognisable, repeating melodies" and as a result they just sound flat and boring and 'empty'. Needless to say, both never went any further. Ultimately, the only trouble this actually caused was leaving me unsure what the hell to do for the title screen music.
Flash forward to 2026, and we have Laceration and Avulsion. Both done kind of on a whim, both built around a soft-ish piano rendition of Yuna's motif. By the time I'm done with them I figure shit, if I'm using her motif so much, I might as well make Yuna an actual "theme song". Hence; this.
(continued below)
Very early on in her conception, Yuna was specifically a fan of old 90s rave music- this is actually reflected in a bunch of the early "alternate outfit" concepts me and Dio came up with for her, which directly reference the covers of specific rave singles (or a 'house style' of single cover in a couple of cases). For example;
T99's Anasthasia
T99's Invisible Sensuality (this would have been outside her usual tastes at the time admittedly, but hey ho)
Urban Hype's Scyopath (with an extra nod to Trip to Trumpton on the back)
It actually still persists in the present day via her main outfit- the design on her shirt is one I came up with years ago that sirectly references the rave act SL2, who's two main members were the DJs/producers Slipmatt (named for the slipmats DJ's use to help them spin/scratch records) and Lime (self explanitory)
At some point- and I can't recall exactly when- this part of her character was changed to her having an extremely broad taste in music. Essentially, she has my music taste- which is to say, anything and everything. A semi-decent overview of just how wide a net this casts can be seen in the Outfit August challenges I did with her, where the concept was specifically basing outfits directly off of albums/EPs/singles in some manner. I even made note of what her favourite songs on each release would be (and shocker, those usually lined up with me too). There wasn't any specific motivation to this change beyond giving her an angle- a wide area of interest outside of the supernatural that she was just as passionate about (and directly leads into the 'opens a record store after settling in the midwest' part of the Survive ending).
But that does represent a problem; how do you really encompass that wide palette of taste in a single song? And how do you keep it relatively on-brand with the rest of the soundtrack doing so?
The answer is "just throw shit together". Genre mashups of this wide a scope aren't exactly new- The Go! Team has been producing a blend of hip hop, indie rock, garage rock, brass bands, double dutch singing and a ton of other styles for decades now, after all. There are inherent compromises you have to make- you can't literally represent every musical style in a single song- but you can get still get the idea across. The general stylistic direction of Barnbellow's Estate's more action-y tracks really helped me out here, though- electronica fused with rock and metal- so that was the basis I worked from to help ensure relative stylistic cohesion with the soundtrack (though deliberately employing a lot of sample pack loops to create a specific "pieced together" kind of feeling + fit the scope of what a lot of vgm music was doing at the time of BE's supposed release also help in that redard). The electronica angle here definitely leans more towards oldskool rave type tunes partially as a direct homage to that aspect of Yuna's original characterisation, and partially as a semi-direct reference to one particular song I still think of as very "Yuna coded": Jonny L's Ooh I Like It, an extremely melancholic almost proto-trance rave banger. Yuna's theme ultimately goes off in a very different direction, but the main sustained chord pads you hear in the song are a fairly direct homage even if the actual chords are different. Initial passes of My Heart did actually have some four-on-the-floor techno beats in it + I had wanted to include vocoder lyrics in the song, but the former wasn't working out compared to how the rest of the song flowed and I just didn't have the software to hand for the latter (though probably for the best- the few times I've tried writing lyrics, it hasn't gone well). You'll also recognise a few loops and sounds from This World Is One of Tears and Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief- that was, again, effectively reverse engineering musical relevence via callbacks in reverse, rather than attempts to be lazy, and I picked elements from specific parts of those songs rather then going haphazard with it. I actually tried out a few different elements from those songs that either didn't work- they contrasted too heavily with the new elements- or in the case of TWIOoT, felt some of what I picked better fit The Agony then they fit Yuna.
One aspect of it that's also quite important; though again this wasn't always the case for the character, it's been established for a long time now that Yuna was born and raised in San Jose, has lived there her entire life, likely has friends in the surrounding cities and towns, and almost certainly travels around the Bay Area for this or that reason. The Bay is in her blood as much as her Japanese heritage is, basically. San Jose- and the Bay Area of northern california general- has an extremely rich musical heritage in various scenes- you can find strong hip hop rep, a ton of notable rock and metal bands, and even a fairly strong club and rave scene there if you dig; Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Shadow, Exhumed and AFI, and hell, here's an entire list of electronica events/clubs in the Bay Area for you. All of which, to some degree, is represented in My Heart- hip hop slightly less so, but the use of record scratching and a focus on breakbeats (even if at a faster tempo than hip hop usually goes for) were picked partially to reflect that heritage as much as was possible in the template I was building off of.
If you can believe it, this all lead to Metanarrative Upon Metanarrative bollocks, because I cannot fucking help myself; the song is "credited" to an act called The Beautiful Way, as you've probably noticed. In the Nincom metafiction, Fumie Saso is the composer/writer of Yuna's motif generally, and this specific song was composed/produced by her and Denji Koshiro in tandem; in Barnbellow's Estate's lore, The Beautiful Way is a local San Jose band that fuses Rock, Dance, and Hip Hop together that Yuna is a fan of, and My Heart is an in-universe song of theirs that a personal favourite (though it needs to be noted that in-universe, it is not written for or about her- it being her "theme song" is a product of the metanarrative within the metanarrative and oh dear I've gone crosseyed). The name "The Beautiful Way" is also a reference, though a bit of an anachronistic one- it's the subtitle to a book about one of San Jose's historic neighbouhoods, The Alameda, which I picked semi-randomly whilst looking for something or somewhere in San Jose I could reference for a band name. But, in a nice bit of serendipity given Yuna is canonically a Lesbian, apparently The Alameda hosts a lot of LGBQT businesses and the main headquarters of the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ+ Community Center nonprofit. Love it when things work out like that.
It was a bit of a job getting the track together- as said, I tried out a lot of different samples and elements than what you hear in the final track, trying to find the right stuff to blend- but I am pleased with it, chaotic and kind of scattershot as it is. Is it necessarily what I envisioned Yuna's theme sounding like? Is it what anyone else thought it would sound like? Probably not, but I do think it fits; when she isn't fighting for her life, Yuna is an energetic and largely upbeat woman who likes to have a good time and loves a banger tune, so that's reflected in the piece; I also think the melancholic nature of the composition and arrangement also go a long way to summing up Yuna's complicated feelings towards everything that happens over the course of Barnbellow's Estate and, more broadly, some of her own inner turmoil that she tries to keep burried, and her extremely empathetic nature. As best as I can manage, this song reflects the two sides of Yuna; the fun and jovial party gal who likes dumb jokes and always has your back, and the deeply pholosophical and large hearted individual who's trying to heal the world and the people- living or dead- within it and make it a better place.
I'm just about to start working on a more directly 1990s rave music styled alternate mix to serve as a b-side, again partially as a callback to Yuna's initial music taste, and partially just for a lark. That, plus Laceration and Avulsion, will serve as b-sides for a single release. No current ETA on the release, but "soon", hopefully- latter half of February or March would be ideal.
The Beautiful Way - My Heart (Theme of Yuna Itoh) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]
Funny story about this one (it's a longun, sorry not sorry); for the longest time, I didn't really have any solid plans for any recurring musical motifs or refrains in the music of Barnbellow's Estate. The project's been worked on for so long that I can't remember if I actively didn't intend to come up with any or just figured some would eventually evolve naturally out of the composition process.
The latter wound up being the case, but almost by accident. There's a particular melody that crops up first as a wailing guitar and then in Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief that I wound up gravitating towards despite its relative simplicity. Enough to re-implement it in Gethsemene and This World Is One of Tears, where it was specifically framed as "Yuna's 'theme'", as a melodic counter to the motif that became attached to the game's main antagonist The Agony- which was itself not initially designed as such, but does first appear in "it cries. it cries. it cries. it cries.", (it first comes in around 1:18, played using sample of... I think radar noises? from an old b-movie) which were Barnbellow's Estate a real game, would play in the final area of the game leading up to the confrontation or escape from The Agony. Simple as they both are, I do ultimately like both of them and think they work within the contexts in which they've been used- plus, there's logic to the 'source' of both characters' motifs, even if I basically worked backwards for both. Such is the case when you wind up working on a project for over a decade, working on different parts of it each time with little actual schedule or tiered to-do-list.
What's funny though, is that before working on any of those (if I've got my timeline right), I had decided that Barnbellow's Estate needed some sort of 'main' motif, and played around with a couple of loose concepts that could concievably work as title screen songs on their own (with a bit of polishing up, of course). You can hear them here: Main Motif Concept 1, Main Motif Concept 2. They're both fairly similar, and they're both just... eh, I dunno, there's nothing there really; they're trying too hard to be "recognisable, repeating melodies" and as a result they just sound flat and boring and 'empty'. Needless to say, both never went any further. Ultimately, the only trouble this actually caused was leaving me unsure what the hell to do for the title screen music.
Flash forward to 2026, and we have Laceration and Avulsion. Both done kind of on a whim, both built around a soft-ish piano rendition of Yuna's motif. By the time I'm done with them I figure shit, if I'm using her motif so much, I might as well make Yuna an actual "theme song". Hence; this.
Very early on in her conception, Yuna was specifically a fan of old 90s rave music- this is actually reflected in a bunch of the early "alternate outfit" concepts me and Dio came up with for her, which directly reference the covers of specific rave singles (or a 'house style' of single cover in a couple of cases). For example;
T99's Anasthasia
T99's Invisible Sensuality (this would have been outside her usual tastes at the time admittedly, but hey ho)
Urban Hype's Scyopath (with an extra nod to Trip to Trumpton on the back)
It actually still persists in the present day via her main outfit- the design on her shirt is one I came up with years ago that sirectly references the rave act SL2, who's two main members were the DJs/producers Slipmatt (named for the slipmats DJ's use to help them spin/scratch records) and Lime (self explanitory)
At some point- and I can't recall exactly when- this part of her character was changed to her having an extremely broad taste in music. Essentially, she has my music taste- which is to say, anything and everything. A semi-decent overview of just how wide a net this casts can be seen in the Outfit August challenges I did with her, where the concept was specifically basing outfits directly off of albums/EPs/singles in some manner. I even made note of what her favourite songs on each release would be (and shocker, those usually lined up with me too). There wasn't any specific motivation to this change beyond giving her an angle- a wide area of interest outside of the supernatural that she was just as passionate about (and directly leads into the 'opens a record store after settling in the midwest' part of the Survive ending).
But that does represent a problem; how do you really encompass that wide palette of taste in a single song? And how do you keep it relatively on-brand with the rest of the soundtrack doing so?
The answer is "just throw shit together". Genre mashups of this wide a scope aren't exactly new- The Go! Team has been producing a blend of hip hop, indie rock, garage rock, brass bands, double dutch singing and a ton of other styles for decades now, after all. There are inherent compromises you have to make- you can't literally represent every musical style in a single song- but you can get still get the idea across. The general stylistic direction of Barnbellow's Estate's more action-y tracks really helped me out here, though- electronica fused with rock and metal- so that was the basis I worked from to help ensure relative stylistic cohesion with the soundtrack (though deliberately employing a lot of sample pack loops to create a specific "pieced together" kind of feeling + fit the scope of what a lot of vgm music was doing at the time of BE's supposed release also help in that redard). The electronica angle here definitely leans more towards oldskool rave type tunes partially as a direct homage to that aspect of Yuna's original characterisation, and partially as a semi-direct reference to one particular song I still think of as very "Yuna coded": Jonny L's Ooh I Like It, an extremely melancholic almost proto-trance rave banger. Yuna's theme ultimately goes off in a very different direction, but the main sustained chord pads you hear in the song are a fairly direct homage even if the actual chords are different. Initial passes of My Heart did actually have some four-on-the-floor techno beats in it + I had wanted to include vocoder lyrics in the song, but the former wasn't working out compared to how the rest of the song flowed and I just didn't have the software to hand for the latter (though probably for the best- the few times I've tried writing lyrics, it hasn't gone well). You'll also recognise a few loops and sounds from This World Is One of Tears and Transformation ~ Ashes of Grief- that was, again, effectively reverse engineering musical relevence via callbacks in reverse, rather than attempts to be lazy, and I picked elements from specific parts of those songs rather then going haphazard with it. I actually tried out a few different elements from those songs that either didn't work- they contrasted too heavily with the new elements- or in the case of TWIOoT, felt some of what I picked better fit The Agony then they fit Yuna.
One aspect of it that's also quite important; though again this wasn't always the case for the character, it's been established for a long time now that Yuna was born and raised in San Jose, has lived there her entire life, likely has friends in the surrounding cities and towns, and almost certainly travels around the Bay Area for this or that reason. The Bay is in her blood as much as her Japanese heritage is, basically. San Jose- and the Bay Area of northern california general- has an extremely rich musical heritage in various scenes- you can find strong hip hop rep, a ton of notable rock and metal bands, and even a fairly strong club and rave scene there if you dig; Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Shadow, Exhumed and AFI, and hell, here's an entire list of electronica events/clubs in the Bay Area for you. All of which, to some degree, is represented in My Heart- hip hop slightly less so, but the use of record scratching and a focus on breakbeats (even if at a faster tempo than hip hop usually goes for) were picked partially to reflect that heritage as much as was possible in the template I was building off of.
If you can believe it, this all lead to Metanarrative Upon Metanarrative bollocks, because I cannot fucking help myself; the song is "credited" to an act called The Beautiful Way, as you've probably noticed. In the Nincom metafiction, Fumie Saso is the composer/writer of Yuna's motif generally, and this specific song was composed/produced by her and Denji Koshiro in tandem; in Barnbellow's Estate's lore, The Beautiful Way is a local San Jose band that fuses Rock, Dance, and Hip Hop together that Yuna is a fan of, and My Heart is an in-universe song of theirs that a personal favourite (though it needs to be noted that in-universe, it is not written for or about her- it being her "theme song" is a product of the metanarrative within the metanarrative and oh dear I've gone crosseyed). The name "The Beautiful Way" is also a reference, though a bit of an anachronistic one- it's the subtitle to a book about one of San Jose's historic neighbouhoods, The Alameda, which I picked semi-randomly whilst looking for something or somewhere in San Jose I could reference for a band name. But, in a nice bit of serendipity given Yuna is canonically a Lesbian, apparently The Alameda hosts a lot of LGBQT businesses and the main headquarters of the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ+ Community Center nonprofit. Love it when things work out like that.
It was a bit of a job getting the track together- as said, I tried out a lot of different samples and elements than what you hear in the final track, trying to find the right stuff to blend- but I am pleased with it, chaotic and kind of scattershot as it is. Is it necessarily what I envisioned Yuna's theme sounding like? Is it what anyone else thought it would sound like? Probably not, but I do think it fits; when she isn't fighting for her life, Yuna is an energetic and largely upbeat woman who likes to have a good time and loves a banger tune, so that's reflected in the piece; I also think the melancholic nature of the composition and arrangement also go a long way to summing up Yuna's complicated feelings towards everything that happens over the course of Barnbellow's Estate and, more broadly, some of her own inner turmoil that she tries to keep burried, and her extremely empathetic nature. As best as I can manage, this song reflects the two sides of Yuna; the fun and jovial party gal who likes dumb jokes and always has your back, and the deeply pholosophical and large hearted individual who's trying to heal the world and the people- living or dead- within it and make it a better place.
I'm just about to start working on a more directly 1990s rave music styled alternate mix to serve as a b-side, again partially as a callback to Yuna's initial music taste, and partially just for a lark. That, plus Laceration and Avulsion, will serve as b-sides for a single release. No current ETA on the release, but "soon", hopefully- latter half of February or March would be ideal.
![My Heart (Theme of Yuna Itoh) [from "Barnbellow's Estate"]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/75c03bb93a077296018ed05b70250169/2d5dc993cb29b67f-ad/s540x810/26b3b132172848c9c2f4fee181c1a05b1aab1064.jpg)
![My Heart [UK Club '92 Re-groove]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/2d201b9fa560b429baed3afccfcd1fc1/2a826224e66aa81a-be/s540x810/d3fe7ff7927d7409a77ba0cb6a7c27d43f879e3c.png)