At long last, Pseudumbra Phauxtasm is here.
My commentary from the LOFAM 4 booklet:
Back in 2016 I got together with @spellmynamewithabang and @jamesroachmusic to compile Homestuck Vol. 10. Everyone was pretty hyped, and there were threads in various places full of people feverishly speculating about what the tracklist would be. Much of this speculation focused on whether @fwugradiation’s elusive song Penumbra Phantasm would finally see release, founded on the rumor that he had agreed to finish it for the album.
Around this time, a couple of us on the Vol. 10 project decided to have some fun with the speculation and put together a fake version of the album to “leak” to the fans, so we gathered a few WIPs that’d been cut from Vol. 10 and arranged them at the beginning of the album for an illusion of Authenticity™. Jamie Paige put together a bunch of awful low-effort vaporwave remixes of Homestuck songs, which we gave names to match what the fans were hoping for. Finally, as the keystone piece to tie it all together, Jamie and I referenced an old Toby Fox piano recording and created a short (but hopefully convincing) song that we entitled “Penumbra Phantasm”. Christened by Toby’s seal of approval and an unholy melding with a vaporwave Sunslammer monstrosity, this one-minute-and-fifty-second piece quickly became a fan favorite once the [sock?] ruse was revealed, and we promised that this “Pseudumbra Phauxtasm” would see an extended release on LoFaM 4.
A year later we’ve completed this task, and now the latter third of the song is just a power metal cover of the Breath of the Wild theme with some rad shredding by Matt Martin, but that’s a story for another day. Ask me sometime.
(Art by @circlejourneyart)
