Interview with Tensei
6th of June 2026
Drew Linky
My thanks to Tay for mixing the final audio of the recording, to Lyra for assistance with transcription, and to Tensei for his time!
AUDIO OF INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Drew Linky: I’m joined today, it is 1:27 PM local time, by Tensei, Joren de Bruin, who is a talented musician from–well formerly from Amsterdam, who emphasizes rock and-
Tensei: Still from Amsterdam - go on.
D: Oh, a different place from Amsterdam, fair enough. Who emphasizes rock and metal in his songs with a notable flair for the electric guitar. He’s well known as a longstanding member of the Homestuck music team, responsible for composing Strife, which is “one of the most recommended listens” in Homestuck’s vast collection. He also has two other albums uploaded on BandCamp, as well as a litany of tracks on Soundcloud and YouTube. I’ve known him for several years now through our associations on the Homestuck Discord, where your sense of humor has delighted me as often as it has taken me off guard. Tensei, thank you for agreeing to speak with me today man.
T: Yeah, no problem, happy to be here.
D: Yeah, alright, so I guess we’ll just get right into it. How’d you get started with making music?
T: Ooh, we’re going to have to go back a really long time for that. Let’s go with music in general basically, right? Well, my mom is kind of a musician, she plays piano but more as a hobby basically. She had like kind of this idea when me and my sister were very young to just kind of force us to go to a music school. There was this preschool program for children like four to five years old that could get started at a music school, or could mess around on xylophones and stuff like that. I was very annoyed that I had to go there as a child, I remember, but in the end of course I’m grateful that I could start on developing my music skills that early.
D: Yeah, of course.
T: That’s definitely still paying off.
D: Gives you a head start and everything.
T: Exactly, yeah. It’s basically one of those things like, if you have perfect pitch which is like both genetic but is also something that you have to actively develop, that’s the place where it would get discovered and developed. Unfortunately I wasn’t genetically blessed with perfect pitch, but that kind of place, you know, like for children with some musical inclination probably.
D: Yeah, sure.
T: So from that, I kind of transitioned to, like at a certain point you kind of get to look around and pick what you want your instruments to be. For me, that ended up being classical guitar, because they didn’t offer electric guitar to five-year-olds at the time. As for how I got my interest in guitar in general, I gotta say it has to be some kind of Jimi Hendrix video that I watched as a child that I was very fascinated by. I remember that he played with his teeth which is still something I can’t-
D: [laughing] Whoa.
T: [chuckling] Which, I can’t even understand the mechanics of how you’d like even… I can’t understand the mechanics of how you’d like pick strings with your teeth at all.
D: Yeah, that’s insane. Because like–I’m not very musically inclined, I think I’ve mentioned, but people playing the guitar in unconventional ways, I know of Van Halen. Well, not unconventional, but he had the “double pick” or something? I have no idea–
T: The tapping, you mean.
D: Yes, tapping. And then there was the guy from AC/DC who plays with one hand, that’s all I know. But playing with your teeth, that’s crazy.
T: Yeah, he had this… Jimi Hendrix is like the first, prototypical rockstar. He really showed off. Like you have Chuck Berry with the duck walk and things like that, but Jimi Hendrix took it to the next level with playing behind his back, playing with his teeth, and his bass guitar was like an upside down Stratocaster with the strings upside down, because he was left-handed. He taught himself to play on a right-handed guitar that he strung upside down. So just a complete, unique and insane way to play guitar.
D: And then he’s got these showboating tendencies, that’s honestly really funny.
T: Exactly, yeah.
D: That’s perfect, because the next question I had for you was: who would you consider to be a critical inspiration for your work. It sounds like Jimi Hendrix is one of them.
T: Yeah, for sure. But I wouldn’t say Jimi Hendrix isn’t very present in the kind of music that I compose, you know? But yeah, let’s skip ahead a few years on that one. Around the… I’m going to doxx my own age now, but I was around 13, 14 in the early 2000s, and I got really into the older SNES RPGs, like I never had an SNES myself, but at that point the emulators got just good enough that on quite a shitty PC you could play all those classic SNES games. So I got really into things like the 2D Final Fantasies, the Chrono Triggers and things like that. Which have, you know, fucking amazing soundtracks.
D: Yeah, for sure. So you just kind of take from a bunch of different groups of music as far as that’s concerned. That makes sense.
T: Yeah.
D: In preparing for this I had actually relistened to all the albums that you have on Bandcamp last night. I was struck by the variety in your sound, like G4M3 OR D13 from Strife 2 incorporates chiptune music all over the place, and then of course you’ve got all the guitar and more conventional instrumentation. So that makes perfect sense to me.
T: Yeah! Well, I can talk about that a bit, because I always figure–okay, let’s skip ahead a bit. I was talking that I got really into the video game music, and through fucking Limewire, if you remember that or is that before your time?
D: Yeah, unfortunately I do remember Limewire. [laughing]
T: [chuckling] Okay, so, on Limewire I was downloading video game music and I came across something called OCRemix, which was this website–I think they’re still around, but they were this community of people that did a very specific type of video game remixes. They had some fairly strict stipulations on how much original versus how much arranged material should be in that, and I got really interested in the community. That’s kind of the point at which I decided, well, I want to start composing my own music, because what these people are doing is awesome, I also want to make Chrono Trigger remixes and whatnot. So, that’s kind of how I stumbled into that whole thing, the actual digital composition stuff.
D: Sure, that makes sense. I’m into chiptunes generally, and when I was younger I tried to dabble in Famitracker and stuff, and ended up making covers of kind of like classical arrangements or baroque music because that was the easiest to look up sheet music for and everything.
T: Yeah.
D: I never really took into original comp–well, a little bit, but that’s embarrassing, I won’t get into it. I actually was curious about your creative process then. You said you were in this community full of people who were into making remixes and everything. Do you continue with that now, or do you prefer to make more original stuff?
T: It’s a bit of both, right? I would say since that’s where I got my start it’s still like a really strong part of basically my songwriting DNA and my process, I would say. Also maybe interesting to mention: that website OCRemix is very obscure, but to this day, whenever I play a video game, very often I’ll see a composer listed that was just a random guy on that website remixing at some point. It’s very interesting.
D: So they’re still kicking it man, that’s awesome.
T: And I–yeah, I mean, even Toby Fox was active for a while on there as well. I think he did one or two remixes, I don’t know if he had any posts on there. But it was this kind of unique point in time where a lot of these people that would go on to eventually be like big hitters in the video game music community, they kind of came together and they made small scale remixes of songs they liked.
D: Okay.
T: [laughing] Yeah, I mean I feel like I’m going on tangents a lot.
D: No, no, it’s whatever you want to talk about man.
T: [chuckling] Yeah, okay.
D: Yeah, I had no idea this place even existed, but I’m guessing I’m going to have to take a look now. So I guess, I did have a followup question for this, that’s why my mind is blanking: do you have any music or other media that you’d recommend specifically to fans of your own work?
T: Ooh. I would say for sure the Ys series, “Y S,” it’s an action JRPG series and they’re kind of famous for having this–rather than having a composer, they basically have this rock band that does music for them. I think, if you listen to their music, you’re definitely going to recognize where I get some of my inspirations from in, for example, Strife! and stuff like that.
D: Alright, that’s a pretty solid recommendation. I’ve heard of this before but I’ve never actually looked into it before. I’m gonna have to now.
T: I’m gonna be honest, the games themselves aren’t great, but the soundtracks blow me away. [chuckling]
D: Hey, sure. Sometimes music makes the game.
T: Yeah.
D: Next thing: without going into too much detail, perhaps, in past discussions you’ve mentioned that you have a career outside of musicmaking. But that aside, is music still an important aspect of your life today, whether professionally or as a hobby?
T: Yeah, absolutely. In both regards I would say at this point, still.
D: So you’re still actively making music?
T: Yeah. I’m kind of in a transitional period right now because I moved to a new apartment. There’s also some things I won’t be able to mention because of NDAs. Take from that whatever implication you want. But yeah, I’ve been messing around with some personal work and progress, I’ve been posting it around here and there. I know my output has slowed a bit, especially since, y’know, the heydays of actual Homestuck music, but that’s because I also work a full time job alongside the other things, in that regard.
D: I can totally understand that, it just drags everything else down. I was looking at your Bandcamp [note: meant to say SoundCloud here], again doing my research before we started, and it looks like you have Sburban Summer from three years ago on there. You also have–not reblogged, but Baq5, Times Like This? So yeah, I don’t know. But it’s exciting to know that you have stuff in the pipeline, that’s very cool. I guess we’ll just have to look forward to that.
T: Yeah, absolutely.
D: You can’t talk about it, more than understandable. Is there anyone that you’d consider collabing with in the future–well, I’m just getting in my own head, because you already mentioned that you’re actively working on music, so–
T: Yeah, if you’re talking about hypothetically, who would I want to collab with, I think… I have some ideas playing around for a vocal song, for some vocal music, and kind of the straightforward where my mind goes is, maybe I can do something with Michael Guy Bowman. That would be a thing. [chuckles]
D: Sure. I’m sure he would love to work with you, y’know?
T: Yeah, we’ve worked in the past, at least I cameo’d on one of his albums, it was very fun to do. It was a perfectly fun collaboration to do as well, so I’m definitely up for doing something like that in the future again.
D: Okay. That brings me, I guess, to the next question: I and others who talk with you more often tend to associate you with, y’know, Strife! and Strife 2, although your other album Songs Unsung is pretty good too. When I see your name come up in the wider Homestuck fandom, it’s often about stuff like Elevatorstuck or especially Heir of Grief, and your guitar work more generally. Do you have any strong feelings about people associating you with these in particular?
T: I mean, you make your bed and you lie in it, right?
D: [laughs]
T: I end up making guitar-based songs, so… [chuckles] I’m not gonna blame people for mostly associating me with that. I’m surprised Elevatorstuck is as popular as it was, I guess part of it is how it got used in the comic, especially in Act 6. But just in general, yeah, I think it’s funny that people like that song that much.
D: Yeah, I mean. Heir of Grief is on Songs Unsong so I listened to it again last night. It’s beautifully mixed and everything, so I can see why people like it as much as they do. Elevatorstuck a bit more of a mystery, but sometimes the simplest stuff works the best, y’know?
T: I mean… so that’s kind of the other thing I would say that’s… I’m not gonna call it my specialty, but it’s something I like to do, it’s what’s known as a pastiche, that’s the correct term. People often call it a parody, but the term is a pastiche, and a pastiche is you basically try to perfectly emulate a very specific style of song. So I did that with Elevatorstuck for like, y’know, generic elevator music. But I’ve also tried to do it with, for example, the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack for She’s a Sp8der, I think, on Alterniabound. Which, I kind of just tried to do the whole Hans Zimmer “he’s a pirate” type epic Pirates of the Caribbean song.
D: It works well. I guess I always got that impression from She’s a Sp8der. She’s a pirate, rather.
T: Then great. [chuckles] It worked.
D: [laughs] It worked out, yeah. I guess, in asking the original question, I’m curious: is there work you’ve done that you wish people talked about more often, perhaps?
T: Ooh. Maybe more broadly. Personally, I think Strife 2 is much better in terms of production, and I think some songs are straight up better than a lot of the Strife 1 songs, but I also understand that there is just this whole association with Homestuck at its peak when Strife 1 came out. All these people have very fond memories of these songs because they came out at a nostalgic period in their life. So I can understand that even if something that I feel is qualitatively better like Strife 2, I can understand that people prefer the original. Yeah, I wish they listened more to the followup as well.
D: I like songs from Strife 2 as well. There’s a lot of them on there that I quite like. I said I listened to it last night in preparation for this, songs like Rouge on the Rox and stuff, you’ve got that kind of peppy, almost jazzy feeling? It’s quite good! I feel like it deserves to be talked about more often, probably.
T: Yeah, I suppose it didn’t quite have the benefit of getting the whole Homestuck marketing boost.
D: [sighs] Yeah.
T: So, yeah. It makes sense to me that it doesn’t have as many views and listens as the original. Still.
D: Yeah, no. I guess that’s just the eternal struggle of being an artist. Trying to get exposure for your stuff. Either way, we did mention Michael Bowman earlier. Recently, last year, you helped him get in contact with other members of the Homestuck Music Team in order to make it easier to discuss the situation with ownership and royalties. It sounds like you were instrumental to that effort. Do you still enjoy associations with other members of the music team? Like Michael’s obvious, is there anyone in particular you really like?
T: Yeah. I never got super close to any particular person on the music team, I would say, but I don’t think we also ever had a super negative experience, or something. I mean there’s always been a bit of back and forth like with creative differences, but it’s never… we never had like drama or something. I always considered these guys as kind of a part of your life at some point, that you work together with for a few years, had some good times. I can’t really single anyone out, but I would just say, in general, I quite like everyone that’s been on the Homestuck Music Team.
D: Yeah, that’s–
T: Barring, you know, people that got cancelled for one or… [chuckles]
D: Oh, Jesus. [chuckles]
T: One of many reasons.
D: Yeah, that’s a whole can of worms. Maybe we won’t get into that. But, um.
T: Yeah.
D: That’s fair. And I guess as an extension of that, the Homestuck Pilot, y’know, released back in September. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether it’s been picked up or is otherwise being worked on. I guess I’ll offer you the same question that I gave to Michael: if you had the chance to work on it, would you like to?
T: Sure. But… with a caveat, of course. I can expand on that answer a little bit: so, purely creatively, I think that they did the right thing by having one composer, like one score-writer for the pilot. I personally don’t think it would work to be like, “Hey, let’s bring back the whole music team,” and have them write a number of songs that stylistically don’t match, and that don’t necessarily–aren’t syncable to the storyboard, and stuff like that. So from that perspective, I would be okay with licensing my music, I would be okay with someone arranging it to make it fit the score. I’m about 50/50 on whether I’d actually write something specific for it. But if it came up, yeah, I might.
D: Yeah, no, that makes sense. It’s a completely different medium. With a webcomic it makes a lot more sense to have a selection that you can pick various tracks from, but you can’t really do the same thing with a cohesive production like a show. No, that makes complete sense. I guess, how do you feel about Homestuck being picked up as a show in the first place? Do you feel that’s a good direction for the property to go in?
T: That’s such a tough one. Well, no no, it’s not a tough one. I would say it’s all in the execution, right? I thought the pilot was okay. It had some nice points to it, I would say. It doesn’t fully inspire me with confidence that it would lead to a series that I would enjoy watching on its own merits. But, for all I know, the actual series could be very different. They would probably have longer episode durations so the pacing could be spaced out a little bit more.
D: Right.
T: Things like that. Yeah, I’m not super cynical about it, let’s put it that way. I could see it working.
D: It’s complicated, I think that’s a really good answer to be honest. [sighs] The devil’s in the details, like you said. I guess it depends on how they execute everything, but I guess we’ll just say “fingers crossed.”
T: Yeah!
D: Alright, moving on from Homestuck then. Are there any other projects of yours, musical or no, that you would like fans to look into?
T: Not at this time, at least not that I can reveal. I have things in the works, but nothing to show off at this point unfortunately. I’m sorry. [chuckles]
D: No, that’s completely fair! You can’t talk about it, man. But you’re still involved with music in general, like both as a professional and a personal thing. I guess… what would you like to see yourself accomplishing musically, once all is said and done? Like, do you have any greater ambitions for yourself in this regard?
T: I wouldn’t say greater–well, maybe something like composing a full video game soundtrack, at one point, would be my dream.
D: Really? Okay.
T: Yeah.
D: I mean, that makes total sense considering how you got into it.
T: Exactly, yeah. [laughs] You go full circle.
D: Well, sometimes I think to myself, “I’m going to make a video game one of these days,” so maybe I’ll contract you to make the soundtrack for it. [laughs] We’ll have to see.
T: We’ll see!
D: Yeah, I’ll actually have to get off my ass for that, but we’ll see. I guess, any projects which aren’t by you that you’d still like people to check out? I guess this is related to the question before, but still.
T: Ooh, basically asking me for my Shill List at this point, eh?
D: Yeah, why not?
T: [chuckles] It’s hard to say, I’ve been a bit tuned out when it comes to actual fan-level projects, I’ve been mostly wasting a bit of time playing more video games like Subnautica 2 or whatever that just came out, but not necessarily something where I feel like, “Well, I need to support this indie creator, so I better signal boost them,” or something like that.
D: Right. Well, is Subnautica 2 good? I haven’t looked into it at all.
T: Yeah, I would say it’s very good. But it’s early access, so you might as well wait for the full release.
D: Oh. Okay, I was actually quite confused about this because they had that Below Zero thing that came out. That’s not Subnautica 2? That’s like a whole different thing?
T: That’s like a standalone expansion, I think it was meant to be DLC for the first game at first, and then they made it its own thing, and it’s not very good.
D: Oh, okay, yeah. Cuz I had played it when it was in early access, and there was a LOT of problems with it–eh, this is getting into the weeds, I don’t know why I’m asking. [laughs]
T: I mean, [laughing] I’m happy to talk about games as well. I don’t know how much time you have.
D: Well, you know, we’re only 25 minutes in, I could go for a hot minute. But that aside, the last direction question that I had for you is… okay, as a bit of a preamble: there was a sort of joke concerning you which floated around for a very long time. At the risk of reopening an old wound, the so-called Noir Album–
T: [laughs]
D: –was a future musical endeavor [chuckling] you described in your Indiegogo campaign for Strife 2.
T: Yeah.
D: Despite much mockery, the Noir Album seems never to have materialized. Do you have any comment on its status, or would you prefer to put it to rest?
T: I could be really cryptic right now, but I shouldn’t be.
D: Ooh.
T: No, I’ve completed a few songs for it, but it’s not really in a state where I would say, “This is worth releasing,” and also I figured I could roll it into a bigger project that I would release to the same people that backed that Kickstarter at one point. It’s kind of a thing where I’ll try to compensate for my tardiness by trying to give a lot more, but we will see how that pans out. That’s kind of my answer.
D: [chuckling] Kind of a feedback loop at this point, unfortunately. But, what you’re saying is that there’s still hope. That’s great. [laughs]
T: Still hope, yeah.
D: That’s very exciting, I’m happy to hear it. I didn’t back it, I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I am still very excited for the eventual release of the Noir Album, for sure.
T: Yeah! [chuckles]
D: That’s all I’ve got for specific questions, is there anything else you’d like to discuss in general?
T: I mean, should we go into the Homestuck Discord a bit? I feel like that should be a topic as well, since I’ve been on for a decade at this point, right?
D: Yeah.
T: That’s kind of an integral part of my history in interactions with the Homestuck fandom, so maybe worth talking about a bit.
D: Well, where should we start then? You were there in the very early days, even before I joined and I was kind of an old head as well.
T: Yeah, the way I joined… God, how did it happen again? I think at one point, Makin or someone else kind of managed to get a hold of a bunch of the Homestuck Music Team people and got them to join the Discord, kind of like an impromptu interview, or Ask Me Anything type of deal? And I kind of just stuck around, I guess?
D: Oh yeah, because–well, I was going to say that other people like Jit were on there as well.
T: Yeah, that’s true. At that point, of course the Homestuck Discord was very different from how we remember it now. I know I was mostly in the #general chat at that point, but I guess something about the vibe kind of stuck with me, that made me want to hang around. I personally am not really into the whole “hero worship” of creators, which I believe leads to a lot of potentially problematic issues. So for me, when I see someone say like, “Oh, it’s Tensei! Wow, it’s the guy that made Heir of Grief!” or whatever, my instinct is to, you know, try to be super casual about it and get down into the dumps, and just be one of the guys, you know?
D: [laughs] Yeah.
T: I’m not special, y’know? [chuckles] So maybe it was with that mentality that I stuck around a bit, that I just wanted to be like, “Hey, I’m just a regular guy, you know? Whatever, I made some songs.”
D: No, that definitely fits with what I remember of talking to you back in the early days. I was guilty of the same thing, where… [sighs] this is embarrassing as hell, but I remember one of the first times I talked to you directly–I’ve mentioned this elsewhere–I was still dabbling with Famitracker at that point, and I had offered, like, “Hey, if you want a chiptune sample or something, just ask!” and you were like, “Ha ha, okay!” [chuckling] and just never said anything about it again.
T: [laughs]
D: And now looking back, it was like painfully awkward, but–
T: I mean, I appreciate the offer, maybe I didn’t read it or maybe I didn’t remember? But sure, that’s nice that you offered back then.
D: But like you said, you played it off, like “Ah, whatever,” so I think that was kind of integral to helping me understand what kind of space it was as well. It’s not a dick-sucking contest, it’s for people to talk to each other on a more casual, grounded basis, which is… I think that’s great.
T: Yeah. I think that you need that level of irreverence that the Homestuck Discord has, within certain boundaries of course. It’s just good to shoot the shit and maybe not have to watch your Ps and Qs all that much, on occasion.
D: It adds dimension to people. Especially for people who have work to their name already, that was what, 2016-2017, the interaction I described, when Homestuck’s popularity was still relatively high, it wasn’t great like back in 2012 or whatever. That interaction is one of several I can think of where you have this realization that the people you’re talking to are just people at the end of the day, and there’s nothing super grandiose or mystical about them. I agree completely in the sense of, “hero worship” is not really something that I’m into. In that respect, I completely agree with you that having that space oriented more casual discussion is just… it’s integral, it’s good to have that.
T: Yeah, I agree. And like I said, for me I would say it was almost a deliberate move to get into some shitposting and stupid arguments, kind of roll around in the slop.
D: [chuckling] Roll around in the slop, yes. And there was a lot of slop, I can tell you that, over the years.
T: 2016, 2017, that was insane. [laughing]
D: God, yeah, now we’re getting into general Homestuck Discord history I guess. Those first two years were insane, especially with restructuring and all that, then it hit kind of a balance there. Then it hit kind of a balance there, and it’s just nice to know that people like you were sticking around there and talking. Like I had mentioned Jit earlier and there were a couple of other musicians, Michael didn’t show up as often I think, but… [sighs] who all else was there, do you remember?
T: I think in the initial invasion, let’s call it that, I think Kali might have been there as well.
D: Kali, yes.
T: Maybe RJ, I’m not sure at this point anymore. But anyway, almost nobody stuck around except me I think, so there you go.
D: Yeah, RJ left, Kali was there for a while but then I think after 2018 or so they dipped out. And now of course we’ve got the new server, which is… I actually think it’s been kind of nicer in a way, it feels a little bit less overwhelming.
T: Yeah, I mean the smaller userbase, probably some more sane rules. I think it’s been to its benefit.
D: Saner rules, yeah. You and I, I think we have kind of a ribald sense of humor, but… it’s probably for the best in a public-facing capacity to be a bit more restrained.
T: I would agree. What else can you say about that?
D: [laughs] Yeah.
T: [laughing] Without getting into the details of the whole thing.
D. Yeah… well, alright. It’s probably getting late over there and I don’t want to take up too much of your time as is. I guess, last call for any closing questions. You wanna plug your music at all?
T: I’m good for–well, really I should have done this in a year or something so I would have way more material to plug probably, but sure. Check me out on Spotify under TenseiMusic, or on Youtube I guess. I’m really bad at keeping my socials updated in that sense, it’s too convincing for me to put my music on Spotify, but ultimately it’s been worth it I would say.
D: There’s nothing saying we can’t do another interview in a year when stuff has actually happened.
T: Yeah, maybe I’ll go on a little marketing tour or something like that. [chuckling]
D: Yeah, that’d be awesome man. Well, alright, thank you very much for interviewing with me today.
T: No problem, thank you for having me.
D: Yeah, of course man.