This was a difficult track for me to write. I wanted to create a theme for the Siphon so I could bring it and "The Survivor's Theme" together for "The Inner Stronghold", but how do you write a theme for a machine?

I was at a loss for awhile, but then by chance I came across an article about Brian Eno's "Music for Airports", which uses a set of tape loops to cause notes to play slowly and repeatedly. Crucially, each loop is a different length, causing notes to play in different combinations. I realized that allowing math to create the melody instead of my intention was the perfect way to represent a machine, so I replicated this setup in software.

"The Dimensional Siphon" is less ambient than "Music for Airports"; each note has a very clearly-defined attack, and the loops are aligned to an underlying pulse. This means that sometimes there are clusters of rapid-fire notes. However, none of these clusters are very big; there are only five loops running, which prevents the track from feeling too chaotic.

The only issue with this technique is ending the track; letting it run until every loop resets would take super long and thus be impractical. In this soundtrack, it simply fades out. In-game, I decided to embrace the artifice and jarringly loop in the middle of a cluster, foreshadowing the glitchy elements later in the game. (It's also worth noting that the cutscene this plays in is likely to end before the track loops anyway.)