Yeah, I really liked the instrumentation in Movement 1; Ira made human-like dynamics out of a pretty linear MIDI. I also liked the one timbre that's basically just doubling stuff in Movement 2, but it's that chorus-y piano just to add some TeXTUrE.

Your tension/release idea made me look at Apocalypse in 9/8. I think its tension/release comes from the polyrhythms realigning every few measures, and the bass constantly being on B. The bass made me analyze a lot of the harmony as just being relative to Dominant, like v7/v and VII/v. Might try it some other time to see if it's what you meant.

Yeah, the jam instructions recommended using leitmotifs and stuff. Honestly couldn't tell you what that word means, but most of the stuff in the suite is just variations of the same melody/bass. You might also be thinking of how the inversions help keep the harmony "at home" or "away" to keep the progression going.

Yeah, might've been Ira who compared me to Uematsu at some point. Got huge into him a couple months ago.