Free Association is a band in Splatoon 3. They are credited for most of the music that plays in the Spire of Order in Side Order. They are groups of small, metallic-looking entities resembling a school of fish floating around some of the Spire's floors.[1]
Besides New World Order, Free Association's songs follow a naming convention. The songs that play on regular floors are named a single English word in all lowercase that contains the letters i, s, and e. The word corresponds to the floor's objective: "demolish" for Destroy the portal!, "jesting" for Defeat the fleeing foe!, "routines" for Protect the zone!, "souvenir" for Sink the ∞-ball!, and "jitters" for Escort the turbine tower!. Each word has three songs named after it, which each replace one of the letters with a number depending on how high up the Spire the floor is where the song plays: an i is replaced by a 1 from 1F to 9F, an s is replaced by a 2 from 11F to 19F, and an e is replaced by a 3 from 21F to 29F. Songs that play on boss floors (with there being one for each different boss) instead use one or two words in standard title casing without numbers, but with every instance of the letter O replaced by Θ (theta), the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet. All of Free Association's songs have the same names in all languages.
Trivia
Free Association's album artwork is an edited picture of the background of the Vending-Machine Corner floors. The same view can be seen from the floor when looking right.
Etymology
The name is a pun on free association, a psychoanalytic technique designed to help patients express unconscious thoughts, and the term "association", meaning a group of people.
Names in other languages
The name of the artist is the same as English in all languages except for Japanese.
Japanese
