I first discovered Kid’s Story, a derivative animation of The Matrix, and was drawn to its plot: a teenager, guided by Neo via an urgent phone warning, escapes Agent pursuit by leaping from a building inside the Matrix. At the time, I was listening to a lot of electronic music, particularly Richard D. James Album by Aphex Twin. The Drum & Bass energy of that record felt well suited to the pace and tension of the scene, so I used it as a stylistic foundation for this score.

The piece opens with an 808 lo-fi hip-hop drum pattern to establish the mundane atmosphere of the school corridor, with a cowbell accent every four bars. As the scene shifts to the classroom—cutting between close-ups of the teacher writing on the blackboard and the boy—a sculpted synth enters. It begins with a single note or interval, then gradually expands, building a sense of unease beneath the surface.

When the boy’s phone rings, the drums drop out completely. A sustained Mk I flanger, tremolo violin, and faint high-pitched fragments remain, exaggerating how sharply the ringtone cuts through the quiet classroom. Once the call ends and the teacher turns back to the blackboard, the drums return to their original pattern.

When the phone rings a second time, the violin tremolo returns. I loaded the cowbell into a sampler, transposed it across pitches, and used it to play rhythmic phrases during the boy’s dialogue. The drums snap back in as the camera cuts to the teacher. As the cowbell becomes more melodic, it reflects the boy’s rising fear. When the Agents appear, the cowbell evolves into a full melody punctuated by sharp hits, marking the moment he decides to run. On the final cowbell hit, as he jumps onto the desks, a bass sample enters, playing an A major chord against C# to heighten the urgency of escape.

As the boy jumps out the window, a reverse cymbal builds tension just before impact. The moment he hits the corridor floor, the drums shift into a full Drum & Bass groove. Two layered Alchemy basses double each other, paired with a bouncy ES2 synth with a short attack and no sustain, carrying a quirky melodic line. When the boy begins skateboarding, the melody transfers to a brighter, high-frequency Alchemy synth. As he jumps over boxes, a delayed triangle wave from the ES2 emphasizes the height of each leap. The basslines and melody interlock, steadily increasing intensity.

After a white flash cut to the Agents, the groove slows back into lo-fi hip-hop, anchored by a lingering oscillating tone from the EFM1 to maintain tension. When the boy jumps onto the table, the tempo shifts abruptly and the rhythm modulates into a dubstep-influenced groove. The distorted bass conveys desperation and physical strain. As he escapes into the girls’ bathroom, the music cuts out, then reenters with a scream and the sound of shattering glass. The glass sample is then transformed into a rhythmic element.

As the boy climbs toward the roof, only bass and sparse textures remain, reflecting his isolation. When the Agents reappear, a low drone enters, followed by a five-piece string section playing a melody in unison above it. As the boy falls to his apparent death, all strings sustain a single pitch, spread across octaves. The violin and viola gradually bend microtonally, drifting out of tune while the remaining strings stay fixed. This slow destabilization creates a physical sense of vertigo. At the moment of impact, the bent strings slide back into alignment, reforming the unison and swelling into a final crescendo.

The use of sustained unison lines with subtle pitch instability—where individual voices pull away while the harmony remains grounded—draws on the same kind of restrained tension found in Promises by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra, allowing the emotional weight of the scene to emerge through small shifts rather than overt gestures.