Duration: 14:40

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Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESTXZEN7Yis
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ainp6rqa6u1chz9/Layla+-+The+Iris+Missions+OST.zip (includes NSFe, MP3 renders, and the original .it files used to prototype the songs)

0:00 Iris (Title)
2:01 Hoise (Intermission)
2:10 Minddrug (Mission 1)
4:06 Lifehack (Mission 2)
5:58 Make You Believe (Mission 3)
7:24 Labyrinthine (Mission 4)
8:45 Ideologue (Mission 5)
10:09 Effuse (Mission 6)
11:28 Technophobe (Mission 7)
12:45 Rising Tide, part 1 (Mission 8)
13:14 Rising Tide, part 2 (Mission 8)

Comments from the NSFe:

All music by Supper; sound driver by dB-Soft (with minor enhancements by Supper).

This is the soundtrack to Layla: The Iris Missions, a hack of Layla I put together in fits and starts throughout 2016. Doing the music was half my motivation for making the hack in the first place, so it's quite satisfying to have everything done and packaged together like this. Sometimes I can almost imagine I knew what I was doing. At any rate, this has been a long time coming -- some of these tracks were done back in April! -- so here's a bit of commentary to close things out.

This was my first time doing NES music (and a soundtrack of any kind), which made it difficult but -- well, I'll call it "fun". I didn't really have anything in mind for the game except "cool space mission songs", and ultimately the sound direction was determined mostly by the limits of the sound driver. Specifically, since the bass and percussion parts had to be on one channel, I used fifths and octaves frequently to allow those sections to be recycled, which led directly to the sort of techno-ish style on display here.

The result isn't the best NES music you'll ever hear, but I hope it at least isn't the worst. Things certainly could have turned out a lot worse than they did (see the unused track).

01. Iris -- Title theme. I have no idea if this represents Iris at all, since none of the game's characters (all three of them) have much in the way of character development. I think it sounds kinda cool, though, and people who blow stuff up in space need to be pretty cool, so maybe it works. I'm not sure what's going on with the chord progressions in the chorus, but I like it.

02. Hoise -- Level intermission theme. Most of the tracks had placeholder names ending in "-oise" during development (it started with "poise" and sort of took off from there). I couldn't think of anything better for this one, so I kept it.

03. Minddrug -- Mission 1 theme. The heavy fifths on the offbeats really make the song. Is it cool enough for a level 1?

04. Lifehack -- Mission 2 theme. Programming the temor effects gave me some trouble (and FCEUX's inaccurate emulation didn't help when it came time to put the NSF together), but I think it worked out okay in the end.

05. Make You Believe -- Mission 3 theme. Kind of pop-ish. I'm still not happy with the harmonization on the second "verse", but it'll have to do.

06. Labyrinthine -- Mission 4 theme. I learned to spell this word during the course of development, and I'm very proud of my accomplishment. This was actually the first track I wrote, back when I thought I'd just do in-place music replacements instead of expanding the sound data, so it's a lot more primitive-sounding (and suitable for a puzzle level like this one, fortunately).

07. Ideologue -- Mission 5 theme. I kind of liked this when I wrote it, but I don't really like how it works with the level -- it's a bit too repetitive and the level's a bit too long -- but I don't have the will to do anything more with it. The name was derived by the following logic: inverted level - Shining Needle Castle - Reverse Ideology - ideologue. I liked Touhou more when I didn't understand it.

08. Effuse -- Mission 6 theme. Probably the best song in the game? This is as pop as it gets, except that last bridge.

09. Technophobe -- Mission 7 theme. Probably the best track in the game? This is as techno as it gets, including that last bridge.

10. Rising Tide (intro) -- Mission 8 theme, part 1. The loop on the triangle channel is (semi-)intentionally broken, so technically this goes on a lot longer. I haven't done the math on it, but if I don't want to sit around listening to it longer than this, no one else is either.

11. Rising Tide -- Mission 8 theme, part 2. Okay, it's probably a little too extreme for level music, but I couldn't help myself. My brother said it sounds like an anime opening. Dunno what that's supposed to mean.