OCRA-0009 - Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream

[zircon]

Welcome to the Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream feedback and opinions thread! Feel free to leave your thoughts about this remix album here.

You can download the project and read more about it here:

http://ff7.ocremix.org/

The website and CD art is all courtesy of the man himself, djpretzel, who has been a huge force in promoting this project and getting it out to various media contacts.

Don't forget to Digg it, too. (http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream) :)

This is the largest OCR site project to date, and has been twenty months in the making. As director, I hope you all enjoy the hard work of everyone involved and spread the word!

[Liontamer]

Nice work, brothers and sisters.

[Forty-second]

Aaaaaaah, the wait is over!

Great job guys, I know it's been quite a long road to get this far!

[SnappleMan]

wow...just...wow...just..wow...just..wow....just.. .
wow....just...wow...just...wow

wow...just...wow...just..wow...just..wow....just.. .
wow....just...wow...just...wow

[GreatLeo]

Fantastic work guys!
Definately well worth the wait!! :D

[ferr]

Grats and whatnot, been waiting a while for it.

[bonsai]

Hooray!

Congrats on finally putting it through after a year or so.

[Black_Dog]

I've just been lurking in the deepest darkest shadows for the longest time (or so it seems) waiting for this album to drop. I'll pick up the Mp3s tonight so I can check it out tomorrow at work, I'll be sure to grab the Wavs while I'm at work and seed this thing for as long as I possibly can.
I'm sure this album is worth the wait and I can't wait to check it out. For now, though, I must sleep.
Take it easy guys, you've worked hard and I hope it pays off :)

[ragmscg]

Thanks, AWESOME work. Was waiting for a while O_O and it seems totally worth it. ^^

[sinclair44]

Yay it's up, looks to be awesome... I've got Azureus set so I'll listen in the morning.

Congrats on the release guys!

[SnappleMan]

wow...just...

[SnappleMan]

.......wow

[Gollgagh]

Snapple, shut up jeez.

Say something more verbose, like HOLY SHIT THIS FUKKIN ROCKS!!


!!!

[SnappleMan]

wow....just....wow

[Black_Dog]

Listening to the first track right now (couldn't wait til tomorrow).
To quote Snapple... wow... just... wow
I guess the best things in life are free

[tweek]

wow....just....wow

Absolutely nothing to add.....

[Broken]

YEAHH!!!!
I'm glad I stayed up so late tonight. This sucker's going on CD TONIGHT! This will hopefully tide me over as I wait for "Summoning of Spirits" to be released.

[ggeorge759]

Easily one of the best remix projects on OCReMix

[Dunnowhathuh]

No need to stay up late here, almost 3pm in the arvo haha. Too bad there aren't many seeds as of yet but I'll wait patiently. Sounds awesome so far from the tracks that I do have.

[cybercircuit1]

Damn amazing job guys. Only on the second track and I've already been brought to tears.

Thank you for all your hard work!

[Marcel]

Hey, I registered just to say this:

I took a 2 year hiatus from listening to any video game music. I dug out a few of my old Uematsu CDs a few days ago and have been getting back into it. Around the time I stopped listening, the remix scene was sorta fading a bit, VGMix having collapsed and such, but having begun to listen to this album, my faith has been restored. What is here so far is of surprisingly professional quality. I expect to have to pay for this sort of quality. Good job all around and my gratitude! I've dugg and am downloading the torrent, having moved my downloaded mp3s of the album onto the torrent to share with others.

--Marcel

[Doomgaze]

Haha, yea! Good job to all the guys who participated in this project.

[AMT]

Congrats on finishing this guys, this sounds amazing! Can't wait until the rest finishes downloading. Good work!

[Wiesty]

Well, Here it is, the 2nd album (next to chrono trigger) That i've always wanted to see remixed, and it's finally here. From what I've heard so far, it is amazing, great job to all the remixers on project. It has a fair number of piano solo songs, which appeal to me, and they are very well written, tis hard to write a good solo piano piece. The songs are amazing, and I cant think of any i've heard so far that have trashed the original. The album art is also very well done. Overall, this is my new official favorite, still tied with CS tho.
Kudos

[Escariot]

POSTING IN AN EPIC PROJECT THREAD!

Good shit here, seriously. Not much else to except that I'm thoroughly enjoying every track, more than once.

[OA]

Fantastic work everyone, the quality and variety is awesome.

It's a little early for detailed comments, but everything i've heard thus far has been incredible.

[SnappleMan]

Wow...just.......wow

[anosou]

I overslept, but now downloading is underway!
Finally releaed huh? great job guys :)

[WesPip]

Releasing enough "singles"? Christ.
Also, the torrent is going slow as fuck right now. One seed, dl'ing at about 10kbps right now. UL'ing at about the same. Fuck.

[The Pezman]

What I've heard so far while doing (or attempting to do) my homework is great.

Just wish there were a few more tracks on there.

And while I'm at it, I wish I were sk1ll3d enough to have contributed a couple of them.

[- Myke -]

Wow is that FFMusicDJ i see??? on one of those songs?? holy shit...haven't heard of him coming out with anything lately.. what a great treat

[Arek the Absolute]

imma seedin da prawject

Can't wait to here this. Here is to a project that is definitely going to be good times for my ears.

[zircon]

http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream/

DIGG THIS NOW!!!

Tell all your friends also! XD

[Didaji]

Yay ! Downloading it atm :)

[Didaji]

Very nice, havent listened to all yet but so far i love it :)

[The Pezman]

http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream/

DIGG THIS NOW!!!

Tell all your friends also! XD
You should tour. Come to Carlisle. You'd get a good number of fans here at Dickinson, especially since I've pimped this out in the paper.

[Bruce Lee]

How...how could One-Winged Angel be so profoundly ruined like that...

No one remixes in the spirit of the source material anymore. It's all giga-sample wankery. Kudos for making a nice little chiptune at the beginning and having good A&R, but the song feels nothing like One-Winged Angel.

[Patrick Burns]

I am sad tonight because I've never played this game. However, it does put me in the position to give you some non-nostalgia/familiarity influenced feedback, and I can tell that, from what I've listened to so far, this project still kicks it.

Congratulations on finishing it, and have fun basking in one of OCR's biggest ever afterglows (at least in my time here).

[!Nekko!]

Torrenting - will get around to seeding the MP3s once I get those downloaded and then working on the wavs.

Also... Fuckin' bLiNd and FFmusic DJ! Talk about making me remember why I love trance and hardcore so much.

[- Myke -]

Wouldn't it be cool if Nobuo Uematsu registered on OCREMIX and wrote a page or two to congratualate all of you for all your hard work and dedication. It's the best kind of compliment to have your music remixed at this kind of quality.

I hope the diehard japanese fans over in japan are downloading this right now. Or I hope word gets over there.... That would be awesome.

[captainocd]

[01:19] captain0cd: 45 Tracks.
[01:19] captain0cd: That's like.
[01:19] captain0cd: If music was sex.
[01:19] captain0cd: This would be an orgy.
[01:19] Friend: that should be the cd title
[01:19] Friend: 'Orgy- A FFVII Compilation'

This is too much. I don't even know what to say. I feel like I should be giving you people money.

Thank you.

[Wanderer]

I reckon this thing must be pretty good

[JJT]

i support this ReVent or Productmix

[Dhsu]

How...how could One-Winged Angel be so profoundly ruined like that...

No one remixes in the spirit of the source material anymore. It's all giga-sample wankery. Kudos for making a nice little chiptune at the beginning and having good A&R, but the song feels nothing like One-Winged Angel.
Oh dear, here they come already.

[Liontamer]

How...how could One-Winged Angel be so profoundly ruined like that...

No one remixes in the spirit of the source material anymore. It's all giga-sample wankery. Kudos for making a nice little chiptune at the beginning and having good A&R, but the song feels nothing like One-Winged Angel.

"Hey Mikey, he likes it!" [/Life]

I feel like I should be giving you people money.

Thank you.

We basically spent everything on new shirts months ago, so we're tapped out. Consider buying some gear.

[Arek the Absolute]

Oh dear, here they come already.

What did you honestly expect? I am surprised it took this long. I would have thought they would have flamed after the first 2 posts.
Seriously.

I have been hearing a lot of positive things about this project from people that dislike ff7. That is saying a WHOLE LOT, seriously.

This isn't just representing a game. This is a gathering of great musicians covering MUSIC. Music that should be respected and listened to as MUSIC and not just part of a game.

I too dislike FF7, but believe me, I really am looking forward to hearing this when I am done downloading everything from zircon (since he is like the only other seeder atm who has all 2.3 gigs of what I am going to be seeding soon).

Give this a shot from a musical perspective people. Keep an open mind. You will enjoy this if you do.


*note: I know that the person didn't say he disliked ff7. This is more of a post for all the haters in general*

[Midian_Galaxus]

Let me break from the pack, as people get way too emotionally invested in games. I am an absolute fanatic for everything FF7 and wasted many months, maybe even years, on playing FF7, over and over again. And so far, (and yes, I've already listened to One Winged Angel), this album is everything and more that I've been hoping for for 2 long years. Damn fine job by everybody. If I could have pixietricks' babies I would.

Hurrah for Voices Of The Lifestream finally being released!

[Fishy]

Half way through downloading Disc 2.

I know I'm on this thing but I still haven't heard most of it, and I'm totally blown away so far.

[captainocd]

We basically spent everything on new shirts months ago, so we're tapped out. Consider buying some gear.

I suppose I'll give it another (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8859) shot.

[Fanboy]

Well, i have not yet heard it all but i've plowed my way through a few songs and; Wow, incredible.

I recall that i thought that Trenthian's idéa to combine Cid's theme and Gold Saucer was a bit bold and oh did i have to eat that one up. This will rock my world for a few months now, great job and a big thanks for this one. =D

[djpretzel]

I suppose I'll give it another (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8859) shot.

Another way you can really help out is by helping promote the album - tell your friends, ask them to tell their friends, and make sure you digg it at:

http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream (http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream)

[Skummel Maske]

I'm looking forward to listening to this, though the download is turtling along at 10kb/s right now. One question: Why the wav files?

[OverCoat]

Oh dear, here they come already.

Benefit of the Boomerang's version is bettar (http://scene.org/file_dl.php?url=ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/ronin_collective/rc026-virgilsimpendingtechnoswing-01-sairinkatatsubasanotechno_benefitoftheboomerang.mp 3&id=381665) :<

[herograw]

http://stuff.herograw.org/pimp.png

hahahahahahahahahaha, attention much?

Also, I seriously expected "one mo time fo tha bass!" to come up somewhere in mustin's mix.

haven't listened to everything yet because it's still thursday in my world. Great job, guys.

[DoubleD]

Okay, so Im new to the forums but I've been listening to OC for about 2 years now, and I gotta say much <3 to all the artists making the music, keep it up!!! Okay, now to my point....I saw the post of whoever saying that One Winged Angel was so profoundly ruined needs to be pimp slapped, and pimp slapped hard..I skipped forward to the song just to hear what all the fuss was about...I really liked the opening, started getting stronger then BOOM!!! I got to 0:44s and the song proceded to melt my face off! The song rocks balls and so far the rest of the album(s) are just as great! Thanks again all who toiled and slaved <3<3<3

[Fishy]

Okay, so Im new to the forums but I've been listening to OC for about 2 years now, and I gotta say much <3 to all the artists making the music, keep it up!!! Okay, now to my point....I saw the post of whoever saying that One Winged Angel was so profoundly ruined needs to be pimped slap, and pimp slapped hard..I skipped forward to the song just to hear what all the fuss was about...I really liked the opening, started getting stronger then BOOM!!! I got to 0:44s and the song proceded to melt my face off! The song rocks balls and so far the rest of the album(s) are just as great! Thanks again all who toiled and slaved <3<3<3

Woo, people like it. The only thing that bugs me about OWA is that its not 10 times longer, but hey, its a ridiculous source to work with.

[Jogilius]

Just started listening to the tracks. But what does "dirge" actually mean?

[Inimitable]

Main Entry: dirge http://www.m-w.com/images/audio.gif (javascript:popWin('/cgi-bin/audio.pl?dirge001.wav=dirge'))
Pronunciation: 'd&rj
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English dirige, the Office of the Dead, from the first word of a Late Latin antiphon, from Latin, imperative of dirigere to direct -- more at DRESS (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/dress)
1 : a song or hymn of grief or lamentation; especially : one intended to accompany funeral or memorial rites
2 : a slow, solemn, and mournful piece of music
3 : something (as a poem) that has the qualities of a dirge

Also, there are way too many hit-and-runs goin on here. I started downloading really recently and finished just 10 ago. SEED, people!

[DoubleD]

Just started listening to the tracks. But what does "dirge" actually mean?


Wikipedia has this to say "A dirge is a somber song (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song) expressing mourning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourning) or grief (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief), such as would be appropriate for performance at a funeral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funeral). The English word "dirge" is derived (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology) from the Latin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin) Dirige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam ("Direct my way in your sight, O Lord my God") , the first words of the first antiphon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiphon) in the Matins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matins) of the Office for the Dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_the_Dead). The original meaning of "dirge" in English referred to this office."

[Torzelan]

This is better than any of my recent christmas- and birthdays.

So pumped that I'd finally get to hear the rest of that redxii.mp3 sample and I'm... at... loss for words. As some one said earlier; I feel like I should be giving you money. I curse the cruel fate of not owning a printer or CD labeling kit, but sooner or later...

So far only heard two other tracks in full (am actually trying to hold back until I get home from work and can listen to it all in one go but couldn't wait to hear these three in particular) and I have not enjoyed any music this much for a long time, no exaggerating. I am thoroughly thankful that nobody saw me when I fired up Lunatic Moon and the guitars kicked in.

Am pimping this to everyone I know and my upload will run this torrent exclusively for a good while.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It's not the only thing that makes this one of the best Fridays I've ever experienced, but it's a damn perfect soundtrack to accompany.

Oh and by the way, I'm quite fond of those little 350x19(?) image signatures that a lot of people have; it would be awesome if there was an official one for this so that I can have the project page linked in other forums. If there are no plans to do this I'll do one later myself.

[wlee]

Yum.




No, I am not dyslexic.

[SwordBreaker]

I'm a huge fan of Uematsu, Final Fantasy VII, and videogame music. Even though FF7's soundtrack isn't Uematsu's best work, I still have a special place in my heart for some of its tracks. With that being said, I've been excited about this project ever since I heard of it on VGDJ (a video recording of one of the panels). I'm downloading the torrent now. Once I give it a good listen, expect a detailed review from me. :)

[prophetik]

[01:19] captain0cd: 45 Tracks.
[01:19] captain0cd: That's like.
[01:19] captain0cd: If music was sex.
[01:19] captain0cd: This would be an orgy.
[01:19] Friend: that should be the cd title
[01:19] Friend: 'Orgy- A FFVII Compilation'

This is too much. I don't even know what to say. I feel like I should be giving you people money.

Thank you.

this entire project is incredible. thanks for making it so damned good.

[Duo]

This has altered the entire course of my month. I am currently in a financial low point and did not know what I was going to do for fresh music. I check OCR once a day in hopes for a new track...

And I get 45 tracks across 4 CD's of one of my favorite soundtracks of all time.

OWA is definitely different from what I'm used to, but having heard the other versions so much, it's great to get a fresh take on it, and it really is cool. Everything sounds great thus far.

This is just so awesome I cannot believe it. I wasn't even aware of this project. It was a complete surprise to me. I can't sleep now. Yes. Yes. YES.

[Skummel Maske]

Some tracks do seem to stray alot from the originals, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Considering my relationship to the game, I do visualize the scenarios when listening to the tracks, and I've realized that the tracks don't always fit very good in that aspect. On the other hand, the musical value of this is very high. The vocals on the Heart of Anxiety remix were wonderful! The tracks I've heard this far have all impressed me alot, even though I usually dislike trance-ish music. The robot voice, though? Meh :P

[duelace]

This is just so awesome I cannot believe it. I wasn't even aware of this project. It was a complete surprise to me. I can't sleep now. Yes. Yes. YES.

ditto man, i didnt know about it eighter so i felt kinda like :banghead: this little guy at first lol and i feel you on the sleep part, found this out at around midnight while i was falling asleep, now its 4am an dim wide awake listening to music, gonna grab a couple blank CD's tomorrow so i can have something new to listen to in the car for the next couple of month's :p

[Barnsalot]

I've listened to a few tracks (torrenting the rest of them). I haven't been disappointed yet. ;)
It was a pleasant surprise to see that even obscure tracks like the submarine theme had been mixed.

Also, we need more diggs in case you guys haven't checked the front page of this topic: http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream

[Fishy]

Whenever I get a new CD or a new Album, I always listen to the whole thing, in one go just to feel it. I've done this with more or less every album I aquire, and let me tell you.

Voices Of The Lifestream just fucking killed eveything in my collection. This is without a doubt the best album I've ever listened to. I know professional albums might have better production, or well known people, but none of them have the incredible variance and blend of styles and genres.

Some of my favourites:
Anything by Steffan Andrews, amazing orchestration on all three tracks
Blinds Birth Of A God
BGC's Opening
Shnabubula, Bladiator and Dshu's piano tracks
AS's revamped chocobo thing

Argh there's too many to list. I do want to say that my favourite of all is without a doubt Zirc and pixie's Deliverance of the Heart. My favourite VG tune, remixed perfectly.

A huge thanks to everyone who took part, and a huge thanks to zircon for letting me be a part of it :).

[Doulifée]

Nice work so far. I didn't listen to everything ( a 45 project track is big :) ) so i took a quick tour of theme i know.

kudos to the two or three remixers who's name didn't ring a bell to me.

i'll add more later when i'll listen more of it.

[Bummerdude]

I'll seed as well when the download is complete. Nonetheless, 2.32 GB sure takes time.

[Skummel Maske]

I didn't see any info about this on the site, so I'll ask here: Will it be possible to order this on CDs? All the artwork is wonderful, and it'd look great in my CD collection^^

[DeepChild]

Congrats on the massive release! The DL was ultra smooth, so well done on that front as well. I've been shaking with anticipation for this release for a while now, and hearing pixietricks do her thing on the first track just confirmed for me that this is going to be a freaking awesome day. Checking the credits I can already tell this album is going to bring down the house (or office building in this case). Thanks to all for the huge effort. *bows humbly before the collective talent*

EDIT: Ok, I'm halfway through my second listen now, and I wanted to tell you all how utterly impressed I am. I've completely enjoyed each and every track; Not one has made me want to skip over it to find out what awaits me after. For an album that features such a wide variety of styles and sounds, that's really saying something. A few tracks stand out in my memory at the moment, and I wanted to make special mention of them. Lunatic Moon just lent new meaning to the word badass. Fading Entity totally blew me away, and made me stop working for minutes just so I could take it all in. I have to prevent myself from playing this song too often in the near future so I don't wear out the splendor I feel when hearing it. Deliverance of the Heart is a spectacular opener, and Son of Chaos is a fantastic take on the Shinra Theme (one of my favorites from the OST). Oh, and Darangen's Collision kicks it as well (a great mix of the North Cave track, another of my favorites). I hope that my highlighting these particular pieces doesn't detract from my earlier praise for each of the tracks on this album, as they are all excellent. Heartfelt thanks and congratuations to the artists for the effort and talent they poured into this project.

EDIT 2: I would be remiss if I did not also give praise specifically to sephfire and sgx for No Such Thing as the Promised Land. It has grown on my trememdously, as I expect each of the tracks will do in days to come.

[Didaji]

Album downloaded and all tracks listened through, awesome album, i know for sure that im going to listen alot on this one. Thanks to all involved that made it possible for us to listen to this masterpiece.

[Jenga]

Big Meh. This just made me wish Disco Dan was around.

[Fenrir]

Dear God it's the entire front page

[Dunther]

{ download in progress }

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Ok, I've been listening thinking "ok, there's gotta be at least one track on here that doesn't fucking blow me away.

There isn't.

Every. Single. Track. Is fucking brilliant in every way, and among the best music I've heard.

[Airwalker]

Interesting, I found out about the album on Digg before I did directly from the source.

Made the front page, even.

[DTwirler]

Torrenting now, can't wait to hear it.

[Ninja-san]

Crossroads Cid's theme is great and frankly the only song that popd out at me at the moment. The music's great make now mistake but I feel like its not stepping out of the box. None the less awesome job to all the musicans and those on the project.

[anosou]

AS's revamped chocobo thing

u r liar!
u r sukking up!

btw just got home and listening this through. Loved your track too Fishy ;)
so far, only three tracks listened, but man they all blew me away O.o bastards

[Infinity's End]

Y'know, you guys are asking A LOT to get people and try to seed the WAV folder. It's like asking someone with a Civic if they could help you move you computer, but also, go ahead and just strap the whole computer desk to the roof! WAV files are ginormously huge and it's a 2GB folder! Ain't no way I'm seeding that WAV folder... or even downloading it for that matter.

[The Author]

Y'know, you guys are asking A LOT to get people and try to seed the WAV folder. It's like asking someone with a Civic if they could help you move you computer, but also, go ahead and just strap the whole computer desk to the roof! WAV files are ginormously huge and it's a 2GB folder! Ain't no way I'm seeding that WAV folder... or even downloading it for that matter.
No one is forcing you to seed so don't be a jerk and come in here to say you will leech and not help. As soon as I figure out how much bandwidth I have left this month, I will seed whatever I download. But I won't be a jerk and say "oh well, I didn't feel like helping out."

[The Damned]

Congrats on ruining every other project in progress by being too awesome for them to live up to.

(for those who aren't fully awake yet, that's a compliment)

[Nutritious]

Haven't gotten through all the tracks yet, but everything I've listened to so far has been incredible. Great job guys.

Digg'd (Dugg?) it.

[Dhsu]

I do have to admit I'm a little confused by the decision to include WAVs as opposed to a much more compact lossless format such as FLAC or APE. While they might be less well-known formats, I'm pretty sure anyone who cares about lossless in the first place will be very familiar with them.

[Jorpho]

Bluddy 'ell. Why in $deity's name is it WAVs again!? WHY!?

Apologies if this is beating a dead horse, but if I want a copy of a piece of music without compression losses, I'll use lossless compression! Winamp comes with built in FLAC support these days - it's not like it's obscure or anything!

The only justification I can think of for making people download twice as much data as they need to is so they can burn it to an audio CD right away (people still make those?!) with some burning program that doesn't support FLAC, in case they're using some tiny hard drive with insufficient free space to decompress the FLACs after downloading them. And even that seems like a largely unlikely scenario these days.

Huzzah for the talented work of the OC Remix composers and all that, but I doubt I'm the only one who feels this way about this tremendous bandwidth wasteage. I'll download the MP3s now.

[noobraska]

Thanks for all the work put into this album (these albums?) I'll be seeding as I go off to class and work.

[bladiator]

Holy cow.

1400+ leeches? 82MB/SEC!!?

Epic.

[SirChadlyOC]

Downloading the torrent now. It should be done in about 20 more hours. I'm not going to digg this until myself and other OCR community regulars have the opportunity to seed first.

After being around OCR for several years, the massive project releases start to feel pretty similar to the big April Fool's Day jokes. Some of the praise for this work borders on ridiculousness. I'm sure it's good, but I'm not so sure this music is going to change my life to the extent that I name my firstborn "Voices Mainstream" or anything.

Then of course there's other trolls ruining it for everyone. Just like April Fool's Day. "NE1 WHO THINKS THIS MUSIK IS GOOD IS STOOPID AND DOSENT NO GOOD MUSIK CHECK THE DATE MORONS" :roll:

[Amayirot Akago]

Fantastic. Utterly fantastic. Right from the start I knew my ears were in for a treat, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

[Sindra]

I'll throw the album some publicity on the geek news website I post for......


....when we come back online after being shut down by Microsoft. O.o

[Villainelle]

Excellent work, kudos to all involved, and thank you for this.

Just wanted to add support to the notion of releasing FLAC instead of WAV files please. I've also chosen to skip those files in the torrent. Lossless formats like FLAC can be transcoded freely to whatever you like; no reason not to use them!

[BardicKnowledge]

It's downloading now, and I can't wait to finish my TA job for the day to go home and listen.

I'll post again with a review post-listening. Congratulations to everyone involved, and thanks for continuing to give me an incredible source of free music :p

Oh, and the praise from Tommy Tallarico on the front page is especially cool.

[Vero]

Nice. I heard FFmusic Dj's demo of "Ahead on Our Way" a while back and I've been hoping for a complete version. I am not disappointed.

bLiNd's Jenova mix is awesome, also.

[Miletus]

Hm the torrent is going ultraslow for me. About 10 minutes in I'm downloaded 1.25mb. Anything I can do?

[Scars Unseen]

Is there a mirror for the torrent file itself? The link on ff7.ocremix.org has been timing out on me for hours now.

[Dhsu]

You know, I just realized something: this project has more music than the actual game has data, by a full disc.

I think that definitely says something about the magnitude of what's been done here. You guys should all be proud of yourselves.

[bladiator]

correction to the last post ..

2500 leeches and 146MB/sec

Anyone else getting hard?

[LionheartAce]

Hey guys, amazing job on the album I'm enjoying it very much so far. I have to agree with Tommy Tallarico's assessment, so much talent.

[zircon]

VotL torrent has hit 221mbps so far. Old record was 48mbps on Kong in Concert, after it was Slashdotted.

:)

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=288299

PLEASE register an account and "+" this - come on guys!

[Nutritious]

VotL torrent has hit 221mbps so far. Old record was 48mbps on Kong in Concert, after it was Slashdotted.

:)

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=288299

PLEASE register an account and "+" this - come on guys!

Created an account and logged in there, but nothing happens when I try to + it :/

[!Nekko!]

My network here lets me pull off 300 - 1000 kB/s uploads, so I'm hoping my school doesn't take a shit on me for uploading so much.

[Scars Unseen]

Could someone send me a copy of the torrent file? My email is puppyonacid@hotmail.com

[Paedansu]

Just wondering, will one of the fine folks responsible for this be setting it up as a recognized album on last.fm? I'm a little obsessive about my scrobbles and they're kinda drifting into the ether...

[The Pezman]

This is the largest OCR site project to date
Awesome.

Now let's get to work on one larger.

[KyleJCrb]

Awesome.

Now let's get to work on one larger.

SoS is close, with 44 tracks.

[Villainelle]

One more minor quibble, about ID3 tags (in small font size to not detract from this wonderful release :) ).

I would suggest you not put the URL of the project at the front of the album title. The correct album title is Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream, as shown on the project web site, artwork etc.--not http://ff7.ocremix.org/ - Voices of the Lifestream, as it currently is in the ID3 tags. There is already a URL field in the ID3 tag specifications, and it is already filled out with the project URL.

I'm sure you guys are just trying to follow OCR's standard of putting the official site URL as the album name, but I don't think it's appropriate for a site project and it makes for messy categorizing in media players/organizers. (As an example, I want this album to show up in my media player's album view next to Final Fantasy VII: Piano Collections.)

ETA: Spotted an error in a tag: Disc 2, track 12, Hy Bound's "Mark of the Beatsmith" has a typo ("Beathsmith") in the song title.

[SwordBreaker]

Man...just listened to the album. I'm speechless. Indeed, there's something for everyone here. Some of the best stuff I've listened to in a long while are in this album. Excellent work, everyone.

The coolest thing about this album is that each and every track has its own "thing" going on. From Black Wing Metamorphosis awesome blend of styles and genres to Liontamer's robotic spoken vocals in Adrenalyne Kyck (that especially grew on me), you're going to appreciate how unique each track sounds.

My personal favorites so far: Materia Junkie, Short Skirts, Collision, Every Story Begins with a Name, Serenety, Full Frontal Assault, Damn Those Turks, Adrenalyne Kyck, Black Wing Metamorphosis, Beginning of the End, and Lunatic Moon.

Expect a full fledged review from me soon.

[The Damned]

Awesome.

Now let's get to work on one larger.

I know this one project that has over three hundred source songs to choose from.

(insert shifty-eyed emoticon here)

[xa hoi van minh]

Hate to be a Debbie Downer, but am I the only one experiencing problems with the torrent?

I'm using BitComet 0.93 and I keep getting "Stopped[Disk Error]."

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

Using bit comet 0.91, no problems whatsoever.

Oh and i'm well impressed and thoroughly enjoying this compilation.

[xa hoi van minh]

Using bit comet 0.91, no problems whatsoever.

I had problems with the previous version; that's why I upgraded to .93 today X_X

I grabbed the torrent file from VotL's site; is that one buggy? Is there another file available?

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

Grabbed the same file, not buggy.

you could always download each track 1 by 1 at the tracks part of the site.

[xa hoi van minh]

Aww, fuck it. I'll download track-by-track.

[Paedansu]

Hate to be a Debbie Downer, but am I the only one experiencing problems with the torrent?

I'm using BitComet 0.93 and I keep getting "Stopped[Disk Error]."

While moving the completed files about on my hard drive I did at one point get an error about a filename being too long. Make sure the directory that the files are being saved to isn't buried too many folders deep in your hard drive.

[dPaladin]

Well, I've +'d the firehose article and I'm getting the torrent, but it looks like I'm only sharing and not downloading it, despite the fact that I've only got the artwork so far.

[dgoss]

It might be nice to have a way to download all the tracks at once but without the .wav files. For those of us with slow DSL, downloading a 2GB+ torrent takes several days, which is frustrating when you just want the smaller MP3 files.

[xa hoi van minh]

While moving the completed files about on my hard drive I did at one point get an error about a filename being too long. Make sure the directory that the files are being saved to isn't buried too many folders deep in your hard drive.

That was the problem- but I was only saving it in my My Music folder (Windows); this is the first time I ever had any sort of error...! It's working now, because I'm now saving it to c:\\FFVotL\ as opposed to c:\documents and settings...


...48 hours to go, but worth it. And I'll seed for about two months XD

[Kapyrna]

Thread created on the Relic forums.

I DLed this last night about 11 my time, and listened to it start to finish. I went to bed at about 2:45, feeling...wonderful. Thanks, guys. This is the kind of thing mixing here started for.

[Paedansu]

It might be nice to have a way to download all the tracks at once but without the .wav files. For those of us with slow DSL, downloading a 2GB+ torrent takes several days, which is frustrating when you just want the smaller MP3 files.
Most bittorrent clients give you some option for selecting which files within the torrent you actually want to download, or allow you to place priority on specific files. Investigate whichever client you use and see if you can specify to only download the MP3 folder.

[Palpable]

I'm a little embarrassed to admit I haven't played the game (or FFVIII), but the music here absolutely transcends the need to have heard these songs before. Stunning work, y'all. For some reason, the Rare Square comments thread isn't working, so I'll mention here that it's my favorite song of the ones I've heard so far.

[KyleJCrb]

Luiza's track rules.

[XxSwtDreamerxX]

Finally!!! I've been waiting forever. Thanks a bunch

[anosou]

Luiza's track rules.

WORD! 10char

[xa hoi van minh]

Whoa, WAV files? *balettes*

This'll only take about 2 hours now XD

[XZero]

I've been out of the loop since school resumed last month, and earlier this week a friend from work mentioned this compilation to me. This morning, I downloaded it, and have since listened to every track once or twice through.

Overall, this is a very well done arrangement. Some of the tracks were admittedly a bit weaker than I'd hoped for, but the majority of the songs were quite well done. My only real complaint is that I felt the arrangements on certain songs were too liberal with the source material. That's not to say that the arrangements weren't good, but for whatever reason I prefered the PS1 midi version.

I want to end on a positive note, so I will say that this is an excellent remix project (the biggest one on the site I believe), and is an impressive demonstration of the talents of 40+ musicians. Well done.

[Sephiroth]

:o I was surprised when I got the email about it today. Can't wait to listen to it. :3

I've already spread the news about it in an IRC channel I frequent, so I'm helping to spread the news about this. :3 Excellent work.

[Black Mage]

Wow, over 800 Diggs so far. Keep this up and the project will be featured on the next Diggnation for sure. C'mon, people, DIGG IT!

[Citan]

The torrent doesn't seem to be doing so hot for me. Is it just me that it's going really slow for, or are there just a bunch of BitComet, BitTyrant, and BitLord users around here?

[Sephiroth]

The torrent doesn't seem to be doing so hot for me. Is it just me that it's going really slow for, or are there just a bunch of BitComet, BitTyrant, and BitLord users around here?
That's what you get with a new torrent. You gotta give it some time for the ratio of seeds to peers to even out.

[Scars Unseen]

So I guess I'm the only one who can't even get the torrent from the site? Maybe it's because I'm in Japan. Wouldn't be the first time.

[zircon]

ALTERNATE TORRENT DOWNLOAD:

http://www.soundtempest.net/Final%20Fantasy%20VII%20-%20Voices%20of%20the%20Lifestream.torrent

[Dunther]

Uff...I've finished to listen it! You can't belive it but I'm tired XD ...

A nice project anyway...I'll listen it better tonight...

[suzumebachi]

Nice work everyone. Many congrats to all our colleagues who came together to make it happen!

[The Pezman]

Luiza's track rules.
Not that the other tracks weren't awesome, but it was what I noticed most in the released preview, and the first song I chose to play when I finally hooked my laptop back up to my PC speakers.

[Scars Unseen]

OK. Now I am utterly mystified. I have the exact same issue with that link as I do with the one on ocremix. But I can download other files from SoundTempest with no problems. I think my PC just doesn't want me to download the wav version of this thing. Stoopid PC.

Anyway, thanks for going to the trouble to set that up, Zircon. Maybe I'll have better luck with one of them tomorrow.

[ArrEmmDee]

Well I prefer not to give FF VII any more attention than the excess it already doesn't deserve, I've always been a gigantic sucker for One-Winged Angel.


This remix is fucking beautiful!



I'll comment on the rest of the album once this is off loop. :]

[Mini Mog]

WOW! I've only downloaded the first two tracks so far but all I can say is WOW!

You guys are incredible...thank you so much for sharing this with us! I've informed a few communities I'm involved in so I'm hoping they'll hear these wonderful songs too!

[Amiboshi]

While Final Fantasy VII did not have the greatest and utmost stimulating soundtrack, in my own opinion, I'm thoroughly impressed with this project, from the few tracks I've had the opportunity to listen to so far. It's really, really something. Of course, I would've been even happier if Wutai and Yuffie received a little love, but there's all sorts of other awesome at Voices of the Lifestream that it's easy to forgive and forget that minute disappointment. :)

Thanks guys, I loved this.

[Blue Magic]

GREAT JOB EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!

I am....happy........in...my PANTS!!!!!!!!!!!:mrgreen:






That 2 GB download is crazy! What up with all of those big ass WAV files in there?

[JoeFu]

Downloaded, but why does the Torrent contain both MP3s and WAVs?

I don't get it. For those who don't have utorrent or ones where you can choose what you can download thats kinda weird.

I really don't see a point in downloading both wavs and mp3s.

[Atreus]

I have the opportunity to print 500 8.5x11 flyers and post them around my university; if anyone has some good layouts or artwork suggestions, I'd appreciate an email (atreusgracchus@gmail.com)or file I can use.

Now if only the ports for torrenting weren't blocked here . . . :(

[Nutritious]

Downloaded, but why does the Torrent contain both MP3s and WAVs?

I don't get it. For those who don't have utorrent or ones where you can choose what you can download thats kinda weird.

I really don't see a point in downloading both wavs and mp3s.

So you can burn the wavs onto 4 cd's (so it's actually an album) for cd-quality sound along with the CD art and labels.

[zircon]

WAV and MP3 are there because some people want lossless. Doing two torrents would be silly when any decent client lets you deselect what you don't want (or prioritize what you do). This way, if you only want MP3, you deselect the WAVs. Plus, even if you only want lossless, it's nice to have ALL the 45 songs uniformly tagged and encoded. That took hours for me to do.

Why not FLAC? Not accessible enough. A lot of players don't support it, and if you're trying to reach the widest number of people, it makes more sense to go with a format that *everyone* can use. After all, the main reason people ask for lossless is for CD burning, and if you have to go through another step to do that (FLAC->WAV) then isn't that kind of silly?

Anyway, glad you all are enjoying it!

[Nutritious]

WAV and MP3 are there because some people want lossless. Doing two torrents would be silly when any decent client lets you deselect what you don't want (or prioritize what you do). This way, if you only want MP3, you deselect the WAVs. Plus, even if you only want lossless, it's nice to have ALL the 45 songs uniformly tagged and encoded. That took hours for me to do.

Why not FLAC? Not accessible enough. A lot of players don't support it, and if you're trying to reach the widest number of people, it makes more sense to go with a format that *everyone* can use. After all, the main reason people ask for lossless is for CD burning, and if you have to go through another step to do that (FLAC->WAV) then isn't that kind of silly?

Anyway, glad you all are enjoying it!


I keep beating you to the punch, eh? :<

[sephfire]

Thanks for making this all happen, zirc. Not only have you organized a huge achievement for this site, you ran the whole thing smoothly and professionally throughout. I'm thrilled I got to be involved.

Well done, everybody. :nicework:

[anosou]

Thanks zircon.
Thanks djpretzl.
Thanks remixers.
Thanks listeners.
Thanks OCR.

[canadanger]

I have been enjoying the Remixes here for quite some time and I must say that this collection has really brought together a great amount of talent into one project. I have been listening all day and been encouraging others to listen to all the tracks, and have not encountered anyone who does not like what they hear. Congratulations on such a wonderful collection and I look forward to the future releases by all the artists.

[The Tiger]

Another step forward for the video game music community. This album has and will open the eyes of folks who had previously failed to see the quality and versitilaty of video game music, not to mention the talent of the people here who strive to share such a message with the world.

Excellent work and congratulations to all of you involved in this project.

[Mogrothir]

Heh. I didn't even get an email - my girlfriend did and I nearly wet myself. Immediately started pulling it down. Been listening to it, and I'm enjoying it quite a lot.

My biggest issue has been that 4-09, the One-Winged Angel track didn't download correctly. Neither the .wav nor the .mp3 file will play for me - I'm wondering if this is an isolated incident, or what. I'll grab another version of the song, but I figured I'd throw it out there in case I'm not the only one.

Well done, guys.

[Hawke Edge]

I've placed a .rar of disc 1-4 (with CD images) on Megaupload.

The link to it is:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WJ3USD6A

Enjoy!

This is ONLY for the MP3 version.

[Blake]

Thanks so much for this. It owns. The artwork is great too. Zircon pwns for getting this together.

[Z]

Never played ffvii and i still like the soundtrack a lot...er at least most of it.Good job guys and gals.My favorite happens to be the redxiii mix.That guitar simply rocks. Pixies vocal remixes are also worth noting. Good job putting it all together for us zirc.

[Paedansu]

My biggest issue has been that 4-09, the One-Winged Angel track didn't download correctly. Neither the .wav nor the .mp3 file will play for me - I'm wondering if this is an isolated incident, or what. I'll grab another version of the song, but I figured I'd throw it out there in case I'm not the only one.
It's due to the filename being so bloody long because of all the contributors' names in it. If you're saving it to a directory buried particularly deeply in your hard drive then the name/path ends up being longer than your OS can handle. Try putting the download directory right at the top level of your hard drive.

[Blake]

By the way, KEEP DIGGING! Almost to top ten dug items!

http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream
http://digg.com/music/Final_Fantasy_VII_Voices_of_the_Lifestream


If you dont have account, register!

[Itos]

Dear listeners, could someone point me to any classical or orchestral pieces? Not to offend the remixers, but I have a strong distaste for anything electronic or metal. Combine that with a really slow internet connection and you get electronic-russian roulette.

[zircon]

The only strictly orchestral pieces are Jeremy Robson's "Valse Aeris" (2-02) and Steffan Andrews' "Jenova Returns" (4-07). However I really think it's silly to limit yourself like that. There are tons of other genres on here besides metal and electronica, and even within those, that are a lot of subgenres that you might enjoy. Just listen through, you won't be disappointed.

[Nutritious]

Dear listeners, could someone point me to any classical or orchestral pieces? Not to offend the remixers, but I have a strong distaste for anything electronic or metal. Combine that with a really slow internet connection and you get electronic-russian roulette.

Get the torrent going, turn off the wav's, and go to bed. Then listen to everything in the morning and see what you like :)

[Itos]

However I really think it's silly to limit yourself like that...Just listen through, you won't be disappointed.

I have been picking a few at random and except for the tracks you've mentioned, I have been disappointed. I'm not saying any song is bad per se, its just not my thing.

Get the torrent going, turn off the wav's, and go to bed. Then listen to everything in the morning and see what you like :)

Unfortunately this would cost a lot since I would exceed my bandwidth cap.

Thank you for your time, I've got what I wanted.

[Scott Scheule]

The Valse de Aeris is typically classical and is my favorite piece from the album.

[KeeperS]

Is there some reason there's no torrent with just the MP3 files? The WAV files are basically useless to me, and I'm betting they take up 90% of that 2gb. I don't care about minor compression that I won't even notice, and I don't want to spend more time getting these than necessary. I'll be listening to them on my MP3 player more than anywhere else anyway.

I suppose I'll just download the songs individually, but that defeats the purpose of having a torrent.

[Kanthos]

If you have a half-decent torrent client, you can choose to only download some of the files instead of all of them :)

[JJT]

Is there some reason there's no torrent with just the MP3 files? The WAV files are basically useless to me, and I'm betting they take up 90% of that 2gb. I don't care about minor compression that I won't even notice, and I don't want to spend more time getting these than necessary. I'll be listening to them on my MP3 player more than anywhere else anyway.

I suppose I'll just download the songs individually, but that defeats the purpose of having a torrent.

the torrent has both mp3 and wav versions of the 4 CDs, so just choose what you want to download. smart guy.

[Avatar of Justice]

WAV and MP3 are there because some people want lossless. Doing two torrents would be silly when any decent client lets you deselect what you don't want (or prioritize what you do). This way, if you only want MP3, you deselect the WAVs. Plus, even if you only want lossless, it's nice to have ALL the 45 songs uniformly tagged and encoded. That took hours for me to do.

WAV's are much appreciated. Voices of the Lifestream will be one more group of songs I can have as OGG (through WAV encoding). The music is also good too, haha.

[KeeperS]

If you have a half-decent torrent client, you can choose to only download some of the files instead of all of them :)

Whoops. Guess I don't have a half decent torrent client then. I didn't even know you could do that with a torrent.

[Richard]

Wow cool I can't believe you guys did this.

I never go on OC Remix, and only downloaded Kong in Concert (which is awesome btw). I only made this account to compliment the KiC guys, and here I am complimenting you guys who made this album. I'll definitely listen to these tracks!

Keep up the good work guys!


After listening to the soundtrack, I must say it's pretty sweet. However, a disliked a few tracks, mainly the ones with lyrics added. Adrenalyne Kick is OK though would be much better without the guy talking. The Crossroads I just despise like totally (sorry). I just dislike how you guys just had to add vocals to the songs despite them never being there. Ruined the songs for me because of this. Other than these two tracks the soundtrack is awesome. 4.5/5 on the album.

[KyleJCrb]

Whoops. Guess I don't have a half decent torrent client then. I didn't even know you could do that with a torrent.

Try Azureus.

[Kenobio]

Probably mentioned already, but I just noticed VotL got its own headline over at Kotaku with a very positive response. Should bring in a ton of exposure, well done!

[ProjectSpam]

Wow. Having listened to the entire album, I must say that this was well worth the wait. I pretty much dug every track, my early favorites being Hy Bound's Mark of a Beathsmith, Scenes from a Memory, Short Skirts, Chasing the Storm, Alien Exploration.. actually I could go on and on. Kudos to all involved!

[joe_cam]

Crazy thumbs up on this shit. Massive props to everybody involved.
Shit like this makes me proud to be a member of OCR for the past how many years.

[k0nsp1ra70r]

I wish I could seed at the moment. But I'm almost at my download limit, so I'll have to stick to track-by-tracking the whole thing ftm.

I'll seed as soon as my download limit isn't so boned.

3 Discs completed...

[Dhsu]

I have been picking a few at random and except for the tracks you've mentioned, I have been disappointed. I'm not saying any song is bad per se, its just not my thing.
If nothing else, you need to at least listen to "Stone Eyes" and "Midnight at Club Corel." Hearing Shnabubula in action is a life-changing experience.

WAV and MP3 are there because some people want lossless. Doing two torrents would be silly when any decent client lets you deselect what you don't want (or prioritize what you do). This way, if you only want MP3, you deselect the WAVs. Plus, even if you only want lossless, it's nice to have ALL the 45 songs uniformly tagged and encoded. That took hours for me to do.

Why not FLAC? Not accessible enough. A lot of players don't support it, and if you're trying to reach the widest number of people, it makes more sense to go with a format that *everyone* can use. After all, the main reason people ask for lossless is for CD burning, and if you have to go through another step to do that (FLAC->WAV) then isn't that kind of silly?
Don't you find the slightest bit of irony in eschewing FLAC in the name of "accessibility" and saving a couple button clicks, in the same breath that you are telling people to download a "decent client" to get the torrent?

Sure, any experienced BT user will have a client that allows file selection. Likewise, any person who cares in the least about lossless in the first place will know about and have a FLAC player. Furthermore, the time it takes to extract FLAC to WAV is practically negligible compared to the time that would be saved by downloading compressed files. We're talking potentially hours here, multiplied across the hundreds of people downloading the torrent.

I suppose it's all pretty moot at this point for this particular release, but it's something future project coordinators should keep in mind. But in the meantime, I guess the WAVs are doing a good job of inflating the bandwidth stats. :nicework:

[Disposable Hero]

I've listened to about half of the project and so far I have been pretty underwhelmed. There have been a few tracks that made me go "Yeah. Okay, this is pretty good," but they've been greatly outnumbered by tracks that were either mediocre or downright bad (Jovette Rivera, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?)

[Jorpho]

Why not FLAC? Not accessible enough. A lot of players don't support it, and if you're trying to reach the widest number of people, it makes more sense to go with a format that *everyone* can use. After all, the main reason people ask for lossless is for CD burning, and if you have to go through another step to do that (FLAC->WAV) then isn't that kind of silly?

Supplying WAVs is an inconvenience to the vast majority just to save trouble for some tiny minority that wants to listen to lossless audio but doesn't have a player that supports FLAC (wtf?) and/or wants to burn an audio CD but doesn't have a burner that supports FLAC. And MP3 is quite accessible for enough people already.

To paraphrase Mr. Babbage, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke this course of action.

[zircon]

Dhsu: Simply put, most people already have a decent BT client capable of just DLing the MP3s - or they can just get the MP3s off the mirrors. However, FLAC is not a widespread format yet. Simply because you "care about lossless" (which may just mean you want to burn files directly to a CD) doesn't mean you automatically have a FLAC decoder. Doing it in that format would have inconvenienced a number of people for the sake of a small minority. Saving 1GB on the torrent isn't worth that, IMO.

Jorpho: Again, you don't HAVE to download the WAVs. While a few people have posted here unaware that you could deselect them, the overwhelming majority of people I have personally spoken with had no problems doing that when they only wanted the MP3s. I don't consider learning the ins and outs of your BitTorrent client an "inconvenience"; I do consider forcing anyone who might just want to drag and drop WAVs into WMP for burning to download extra software an inconvenience.

Anyway, there's really no point in arguing about this further since the decision has already been made.

[Dhsu]

Doing it in that format would have inconvenienced a number of people for the sake of a small minority.
I think the number of people complaining about the WAVs conflicts with your stats. Not a single person except you has complained about FLAC. The real inconvenience here is needing to spend hours downloading an extra 1GB, especially when so many people have monthly download caps, as opposed to the 15 minutes at most it would require to get and use a FLAC decoder.

Anyway, there's really no point in arguing about this further since the decision has already been made.
Like I mentioned, this discussion is so future coordinators don't make the same mistake.

[djpretzel]

Anyway, there's really no point in arguing about this further since the decision has already been made.

Ditto that.

Also, you're really not telling us anything we didn't know... though we appreciate the feedback and I think the intentions are good, we DID have this discussion internally, and weighed the pros/cons of a larger distribution vs. a somewhat esoteric file format. That Winamp has FLAC support built in now is great, but a lot of folks are using (gasp) WMP or whatever, and say what you want about WAV, it's definitely foolproof. I could have gone either way on this issue...

I'm not convinced the wrong decision was made, either - if we'd gone with FLAC, we might be getting an equal number of confused emails. Those folks would be less aggressive/visible as they'd be less likely to post on a thread because of the noobish nature of their confusion, but... hindsight's always 20/20.

It's a little disappointing that folks always assume we gave zero thought to the issue, or went with WAV to inflate bandwidth statistics, or try to graft the worst possible intentions onto what amounts to a technical decision that was weighed and duly considered. It's definitely worth talking about this for future projects as the optimal solution to me remains elusive. However, we're ALWAYS gonna have folks pushing OGG who don't appreciate the accessibility of MP3, we're always gonna have people pushing FLAC who don't appreciate the accessibility of WAV, and dumbing down the issue or oversimplifying it and demonizing us seems immature.

Then again, this is the Internet, so perhaps I'm being naive...

[Dhsu]

or went with WAV to inflate bandwidth statistics
My comment was made in jest BTW.

Anyway, if in the future a coordinator still sees a need to use WAV, at least ZIP them beforehand. And if someone starts telling me about the inconvenience and obscurity of ZIP files, I tell you no jury in the world will convict me of what happens next. :P

[Shadow Wolf]

Okay. So, um... this fucking owns, completely and totally. Every last inch of it. I have to specifically call out BGC for the most amazing Bombing Run remix I could have ever imagined, but if a group of mixers can make the CHOCOBO FARM music sound awesome, all I can do is bow and stare. Excellent work guys. And girls.

[Dyne]

My comment was made in jest BTW.

Anyway, if in the future a coordinator still sees a need to use WAV, at least ZIP them beforehand. And if someone starts telling me about the inconvenience and obscurity of ZIP files, I tell you no jury in the world will convict me of what happens next. :P

A link to the nearest zip file program? Winrar for that matter?

[Dunnowhathuh]

Good thing I'm not fussy, I just unchecked all the WAVs and walked away...anyways, great job the lot of you who contributed. Still only about half way through the album but I like what I hear so far. And damn I just love it when Sixto breaks out and starts shredding that guitar.

[The Joker]

S'pretty good. I dig it.

I'll even go as far as to say to some of the songs:
Oooh, you touch my tralalala, my ding ding dong.

[The Instrument of GAWD]

I'm finding it hard to believe that you guys thought this would go so unnoticed that you had to send out e-mails and beg forum members to spread the news.

<sarcasim>Cause news about FF7-ANYTHING is just that slow.</sarcasim>

[Knives]

There have been a few tracks that made me go "Yeah. Okay, this is pretty good," but they've been greatly outnumbered by tracks that were either mediocre or downright bad (Jovette Rivera, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?)

"A good job" would be the correct answer to that question. I thought Rivera produced one of the more awesome tracks for the album. But hey, to each is his own, right?

[Disposable Hero]

"A good job" would be the correct answer to that question. I thought Rivera produced one of the more awesome tracks for the album. But hey, to each is his own, right?
I'd say it was more of a travesty and an abomination unto the ears, but yeah, to each his own.

[Dhsu]

Don't make me drive from Houston and pee in your mouth.

[Disposable Hero]

Don't make me drive from Houston and pee in your mouth.
You'd just be led on a merry chase up to IronKnuckle's abode up in Fayetteville for the meetup next week.

But seriously, I liked your track, dude. It was mostly the "this will be dark and brooding yet epic watch how awesome i am also guitars whoo" stuff that got on my nerves.

[DarkeSword]

Downloaded, but why does the Torrent contain both MP3s and WAVs?

I don't get it. For those who don't have utorrent or ones where you can choose what you can download thats kinda weird.

I really don't see a point in downloading both wavs and mp3s.

Pretty much any modern BT client worth using these days allows for multiple file selection. If a person is using a client that doesn't support that feature, they should update their BT client.

[Monobrow]

Some tracks I like, some I don't. Honestly I think I expected better or something, like the second coming of Christ in a remix? Some of these are superb, one or two really do move me, don't get me wrong, but I'm not feeling it quite as much as I think I should. I wonder why?

This is a first impression though, maybe I will give this a few more listens.

[Scars Unseen]

A link to the nearest zip file program? Winrar for that matter?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/default.mspx

Built into Windows since XP. Opens up just like a folder too.

On the other hand, I still can't download the torrent file from either the ocremix site or the soundtempest mirror that Zircon was kind enough to provide.

[ddrace]

Not a regular poster here, but damn good job on this. I just started listening to this album, and it's easily one of the best =D . Also, I have done what you asked in the email you sent me by posting info about this album on 2 sites now ^_^ . I'll be sure to get this some notice. It's the least I can do. Once again, rock on for doing this thing ^____^;

[XiaoXiaoNeo]

After downloading each individual track, adding the respective album art, and putting the resulted tracks on my ipod, I finally can enjoy this album!
Big thanks to everyone for working so hard to make the awesome project come to life!

[Brushfire]

There is no limit to how awesome is album is. These guys obviously don't need any instructions to know how to rock. Great job everyone!!

[k u n g f u c h i c k e n]

O.o........


Ok, I refuse to believe that you all weren't on drugs as you made your respective tracks.

[Lotd2242]

Wow that was a lot to listen through.

Well I guess I came at this a little more critically than some of my fellow posters since I'm not salivating over its rich goodness, but not quite so critically as Disposable Hero there...

I thought some tracks were really good and some were pretty big misses. But that happens with every project. I just want to dish out some general reward points here since it's tough to come into a forum like this and criticize a piece when you don't do much in the way of remixing yourself. And it would be a monster post to take them each individually in any detailed way. If anyone is actually interested in a critical discussion of a mix/mixes that won't be "ZOMG WTF", I'll be happy to help provide that, but for this post, I'll just put up some of my personal highlights.

The first piece that stood out for me was Materia Junkie. It was a definite win in my opinion. It took the original to the next level. If I have to go slumming I hope it sounds like that.

I liked Short Skirts. It was a groovy rhythm that fit really well. It makes me think of how things would be if Tifa and Cloud had met and grown up under different circumstances.

Valse Aeris was perhaps the biggest pleasant surprise for me. I'm always apprehensive about Aerith's theme being done because it's a uniquely beautiful, yet entirely morose theme. I never thought I'd ever hear it in such a way where it actually sounded happy without turning it into something goofy, but Mr. Robson managed to accomplish that quite impressively.

Alien Exploration and Golden Feathers were also very nice surprises. I spent so much time in that damned Saucer that almost every piece of music in the place grew to grate on my nerves. I thought for sure I'd be hitting the "next" button here, but I was impressed at how well both managed to get out of that obnoxiously happy amusement park feel.

And lastly, The Golden Ivories of Gaia I really enjoyed. Good arrangement and a nice way to close everything out.

So congratulations to all of you for all of your hard work. Hopefully, FFVI is next. :-)

[ut2k4master]

The album art looks amazing, and as soon as I've downloaded the MP3 part, I'm listening to it. I'll seed for as long as I can, the game and movie were both great, I can only hope that this album will reflect that.

[Paratha]

Oh man, this is just amazing.

Time to fire up FFVII PC and replace the regular MIDIs with these.

[dilbert627]

The album is awesome. Definitely the best OC Remix project.

Quick Question: Disc 4 Track 2 - Collision. Is this meant to be a tribute to David Crowder Band? Because it's VERY VERY similar to the song 'Do Not Move' from the album... 'A Collision'. Far too similar to be a coincidence ;)

[Imasock]

I don't even know where to begin. This is one of the most amazing sets of music I've ever heard. I simply cannot express how much in awe I am at the creative abilities and the amount of time and love put into this project.

The music is all tastefully done, and it's all excellent quality and sounds immaculate. I can't believe you remixers did this for free. There were only one or two tracks that I was slightly bummed about, but I suppose my expectations were set so high after listening to the other songs, and even so, it's still all good.

I don't think I can say anymore without sounding like a suck-up, but truly, this is superb work. Well done, everyone who worked on this receives my utmost respect and gratitude for everything they've done towards this, it's amazing.

Don't let any naysayers get to you, this deserves all the positive praises it's been given and more. Man, I wish I could thank each and every one of you personally, dang. Keep up the amazing work, this sort of thing makes me wish I could do something this fantastic.

[Ashram]

This album is definitely amazing. I especially love Pot Hocket's acoustic tracks. Very nice.

I only have two major gripes about the album. One is too much techno/electronica. For originally being an orchestra-based score, turning some of these songs into those genres just doesn't sound right.

And the other, of course, is Black Wing Metamorphosis, the remake of One Winged Angel. It's an alright song, but not only were the vocals off (From what I can hear, they messed up the "Estuans interius, ira vehementi" and completely missed the "Sors immanis, et inannis". The rhythm for the vocals isn't very fluid either.) but the guitar solo they have is at the very end, for something like 19 seconds. If you're going to try and go for Advent: One Winged Angel, try something a bit longer.

[ForumChibi]

You guys said it took more than a year to put all this together... it definitely shows.

While I don't necessarily like each track in relation to the original, each song on it's own is wonderful. There were many songs that I had difficulty hearing or feeling the original song, or only caught it for a brief window out of the whole piece, but I think what was more important was that I could clearly see the remixer's interpretation and personality in all of them. Even the tracks that I didn't like from the original game or the ones that fell into genres that I don't particularly care for I could still appreciate the emotions and quality from the composers.

In retrospect, the only things I didn't enjoy as much were that I do agree there were a few too many techno tracks, and also, it seems like almost every song has a really long intro which cut the songs down quite a bit. Some of the songs were only 3 minutes long to begin with, so with a 1 minute intro of beats before we actually heard the original theme made a lot of them too short to truly enjoy and left me wanting more.

It's hard to pick a favorite, though the vocals were superb, and Deliverance of the Heart was an obvious good choice as the first track in the set. Kudos to everyone on their hard work - it was well worth the effort.

[joe_cam]

Alright, put a few more listens into everything and I definitely give this a thumbs up. Not every track is a runaway success and despite what Taucer says, not every song is an instant hardon (then again, it's kinda easy to give him a boner............. don't ask.), but the majority of these tracks are total winners and MAJOR props to Zirc for putting it all together and all the mixers for doing a great job.
This is 100% Joe Cam Approved, and that means absolutely nothing!

[NZman]

Haven't heard the entire album yet, but 'Chasing the Storm' is one my favorites so far, despite it's brevity.
The rest of what I have heard of the album is also quite excellent. Keep up the great work folks!

[Jogilius]

In general the whole collection is good, but the third part, advent, had many tracks I didn't even want to listen to the end. Didn't like many of the tracks in that part.

ed: I guess part of the reason for this is that I don't think I've ever heard a good Chocobo remix, and these chocobo songs make no exception. And the Gold Saucer songs isn't a good target for remixing either.

[mll]

My first post since Kong in Concert. :)

Just 2 things. First, nice work guys, I'm in the process of listening to it, but at first listen some tracks are really inspired. Amazing to see that some people I discovered as Kong in Concert performers are still here, alive & kicking, and arein the process of making their passion a job. :)
Second, as I received a mail from the OCR admins to pass the word on this work, well, I wanted to let you know that Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream is on MusicBrainz (http://musicbrainz.org/search/textsearch.html?query=%22Final+Fantasy+VII%3A+Voic es+of+the+Lifestream%22&type=release&limit=25&adv=on&handlearguments=1) (but I should reckon, mostly thanks to Grungi Ankhfire (http://musicbrainz.org/show/user/?userid=292871)).

[olesia]

keh, it's all my favorite artists in one convenient project! (I'm sure none of my friends who listen to "real people music" can say the same.) A lot of these tracks give me shivers, they're so good.

You guys rock my knee socks. (and now I wish there were OCR swag knee socks)

It's the middle of the night and there's 1200+ seeds. This is awesome!

*burns*

[Gameguardian]

WOW OCremix! You have done it again! I love you for your hard work and effort and thank you for time and time again proving that Video Game Music is one of the most brilliant forms of artistic expression on Earth!

Thank you original VGM composers and thank you OC remix workers and remixers who make lovely projects such as these possible!

[Franky]

It's interesting to see how many people are nothing but positive to this album. I can sum up my feelings for it so far in one word.

Bland.

Granted, I haven't listen through the whole thing yet, but halfway into disc 4 I can say that no track so far has really leapt out and grabbed me. I'm sure this album would work okay in a club, as background music, but it's definitely not something I would actually sit down and listen to by my lonesome.

[Shiryu]

He he, what timing, you had to release you project the same day I released mine, an alternative OST to Wii's Excite Truck.

Im only writing now, because I have only finished listening to the 4 CDs a few minutes ago, it is truly amazing work from everyone, and since im a big Zircon fan, it was pure melodic heaven for me.

Congratulations, you are truly an inspiration to us all. I somehow feel old, since I've been a regular OCR visitor ever since version 1 and looking back at all those gigabytes of MP3 I have downloaded in all these years from you and for free, truly makes me grateful.

Thank you all.

v ^_^

PS: Electro Truck EX (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?p=317919#post317919) thread

[Kirie]

*squees* Thank you all so much, for your hard work and dedication! This is so awesome~

[anosou]

Alien Exploration and Golden Feathers were also very nice surprises.

I'm really glad you like Golden Feathers! :D
It was my first remix I ever made with a computer. Before (three years ago) I did some really bad piano arrangements but that's the first song of my new start. Thank you very much :)

[Hyperion5182]

5 tracks in and i cant get my jaw off the basement floor... i hate having to repair flooring...

holy @%$#^#%

*prostrate* *prostrate*

[Liontamer]

Quick Question: Disc 4 Track 2 - Collision. Is this meant to be a tribute to David Crowder Band? Because it's VERY VERY similar to the song 'Do Not Move' from the album... 'A Collision'. Far too similar to be a coincidence ;)
Gotta check. If you could send me a copy of the song (I'm assuming you have it on you), we'd appreciate it. Thanks for the heads-up. When this was subbed to the panel, no mention was made of that influence, i.e. it clearly should have been mentioned.

[Angrylobster]

Amazing is all I can say. I love it so far

Thanks for all your hard work guys, this is what i've been waiting for when it comes to FFVII remix's.

I especially loved Crystal Sermon. I loved how parts of the FFVII main theme were thrown in there. Too good!

[Jaybell]

OH MAN IS THAT LARRY ON VOCODER IN ADRENALYNE KICK OH MAN OH MAN

I'm only 8 tracks in and not ONE track has disappointed. Like, at all.

[Lotd2242]

I'm really glad you like Golden Feathers! :D
It was my first remix I ever made with a computer. Before (three years ago) I did some really bad piano arrangements but that's the first song of my new start. Thank you very much :)

You're welcome. Anybody who can make me not want to spam the button to get back into the race deserves credit. :-)

[Bahamut]

In general the whole collection is good, but the third part, advent, had many tracks I didn't even want to listen to the end. Didn't like many of the tracks in that part.

ed: I guess part of the reason for this is that I don't think I've ever heard a good Chocobo remix, and these chocobo songs make no exception. And the Gold Saucer songs isn't a good target for remixing either.

I find this kind of funny, as I enjoyed the third disc the most.

I think this thread illustrates how enjoyable the project was to most though, despite the range of musical tastes. I haven't seen one legitimate critique yet, which is saying something.

[norg]

for most of the naysayers who are less than pleased with the final product, i suspect that there is something that is contributing to that feel:

overload.

unless i made a mistake somewhere in winamp, it shows that the mp3s add up to 3 hours, 20 minutes, and 27 seconds.

that's a metric assload of music.

difficult to feel objective or sometimes even excited about a music pack that lasts longer without repeat than two full length movies (or one extended lord of the rings movie (or what most george w. bush presidential speeches feel like (oh snap, i went political))).

it's very easily understandable why there are some folks who aren't as excited about it. especially considering there are a wide variety of musical tastes catered to in the pack and not everyone likes all of those musical tastes (for example, i don't have robot ears). it's one of those things where, once the dust settles, people will have their favorites which will get added to their playlists and the rest will be left alone to others who will completely shun the first groups people of selected songs and add the rest to their play lists and so forth and so on.

variety is the spice of life. this pack is an entire spice rack. and not everyone likes curry (heathens. how can you not like curry?).

-= george =-

[Jeditrooper]

Kick ass this. got the torrent as soon as I could. Off to the MP3 player they go!

*jumps in joy*

[kittyanya]

Since I have two extra computers hooked up to our cable internet and using torrents kills my mom's connection, I had to go to the singles page and download from there. I got the following:

1. Fight On! (Simply amazing! The contrast and the techno and the beat! MUCH love!)

2. Crazy Motorcycle. (I never giggled so hard. The way the song was done, it's INCREDIBLE! I love it!)

3. Racing Chocobos - Place your Bets! (It flows so smoothly and cheerfully! I could head nod to this all day!)

4. Electric de Chocobo - (Huge fan of the cute birds now and forever and this song is great! My toes were tapping away happily as I giggled.)

5. One-Winged Angel - (Whoever said this was ruined was so wrong. Oh my gosh, if this song was candy, I'd devour it in seconds. Yummy, yummy goodness.)

Overall: I downloaded ONLY 5 songs and can't believe it. An old game company once said their games go to 11. The DJs at OCremix go to the Infinite Universe and past it. Keep up the great work!

When my mom gets off her computer, I'll help seed!

[TrueLugia121]

i agree with you on that one, Lotd2242. all the artists who work on this project should be paid in full credit where it's due. i mean i'm always a fan of OverClocked Remix fer a number of years and i've heard alot of remixes from that site and i gotta say the ones i think are the best are on this project.
although i've heard many other porjects in the past (and if i had a favourite outta those it'd be Chrono Symphony because of the way it's orchestrated.

one thing to note about Final Fantasy VII Voices of the Lifestream however , and i've onlyheard the first 13 tracks of it, is that there are a good number of elements and styles that really blend in well. and for the orchestrated tracks like Jeremy's entry in the project, "Valse Aeris", most of the time pieces like those tend not to bother with the orchestral sense of balance for the most part. indeed outta the tracks i've hard so far, the one that almost put me to tears is Darangen's Kweh! arrangement of the Chocobo Theme. sounded just as cute as the one composed fer Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales DS.
nice hard rock coming in from norg and SnappleMan with their Full Frontal Assault arrangement of Fighting! Nobuo Uematsu did his first Rock score with Otherworld fer Final Fantasy X and since then he's made the idea to arrange past Final Fantasy scores in the Rock/Instrumental element and norg and SnappleMan paid a great tribute to that idea with Full Frontal Assault. nice job you two. Jeremy Robson produces some amazing orchestration. i wonder though if Mr. Robson got an actual Symphony Orchestra to record that Valse Aeris track or was it actually synthesized to SOUND like an acutal orchestra? anyway his previous arrangements are beautifully orchestrated and Valse Aeris is an entry that's sure to add to his masterpiece.

overall the project really stood out fantastically. 45 Tracks, 4 Discs, 3h:26m:25s total playing time, i'm sure anyone who has witnessed the original score would appreciate the sheer brilliance of this project. Andrew Averser, Mr. zircon, what you did was an absolutely astounding job of coming up with the idea for this project. to all of the artists who contributed to the project, i take my hat off to you. David W. Lloyd, Mr. djpretzel, if you really don't mind me asking what sorta tools or software did you use to create the cover art fer the album? those images look professionally crisp and well done. nice job on the homepage too.

to the entire team excellent job.

[Broken]

Well, it's already been said a million times and it will continue to be said, but you all did an amazing job. I didn't say "OMG AWESOME" for every track, but the overall quality and scope of this album far surpases any other project I've listened to from this website. There is a lot of techno and electronica, and that doesn't bother me in the least, but even if you don't like that, there are a couple gems of acoustic and orchestral tracks in the collection, too. Still haven't gotten to listen to the 4th disk, but I assume that it's not going to be so amazingly awful that it ruins the entire poject for me, so I look foward to it.

I started downloading the torrent the night it came out on my old school bit torrnado torrent (and I realized the moment I saw the 2 Gig size that I wasn't going to be burning the music that night.) So, now I have everything (Wav's, MP3's, Album art, etc,) and I've been seeding ever-since.

[anosou]

Andrew Averser

hihihihihihihihihihihihihihihi :)
I almost couldn't take that post seriously after that

EDIT: I said almost

[TrueLugia121]

so you dislike the things i've said in my reply then Another Soundscape? if so i do apologise dearly.

[SwordBreaker]

OH MAN IS THAT LARRY ON VOCODER IN ADRENALYNE KICK OH MAN OH MAN

I can't get that track out of my head. It's incredibly catchy. I'm assuming that Zircon contributed all the incredibly cool synth guitar sounds while BGC did the arrangement. Larry's spoken lyrics, while short, really adds something to the track. I don't care if people think it's cheesy.

"If I had known that this was coming, I would've done things d-d-d-d-ifferently!"

[Delpheous]

Always log in to give props to these Album releases. You guys did an amazing job. Love it thus far (haven't listened to everything yet, first cd, first few songs on the second) and I've loved just about everything.

Per usual top grade stuff from you guys. Thanks for all the hard work, and much, much props.

[zircon]

Actually, Jimmy did most of the work on that... I shaped + polished a bunch of the sounds, did mixing/mastering, created one of the main drumloops, a couple of the synths, and a little bit of arrangement. Recognizable contributions, sure, but my fellow judgefgt deserves most of the credit. :)

[Jaybell]

Aw man the songs won't all fit on my shitty 256mb mp3 player. :(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

I was trying to weed out the ones I didn't like but I CAN'T DECIDE. I may have to get a memory card JUST for this album.

[xa hoi van minh]

I'll just pop in here for a sec. I'm on "Materia Junkie" right now and so far I'm likin' what I'm hearin'.

I'm also seeding, ~35 Kb/sec. I'm another person that did NOT download the WAV folder, let alone seed(ing) it. And sorry for being late to the party, but why include the WAV files again?

[joe_cam]

Did bladiator sneak a cumshot into his song? I swear I just heard one...30 seconds in... It's there...
Have there been any other 34518 sightings in this project?

[zircon]

HAHAHA, yeah, I'm pretty sure he does go back to the '1' as part of the block chord... that is amazing.

[po!]

i've only had a chance to skim through the tracks, but everythang sounds good so far

NICE WORK :nicework:

[SwordBreaker]

Actually, Jimmy did most of the work on that... I shaped + polished a bunch of the sounds, did mixing/mastering, created one of the main drumloops, a couple of the synths, and a little bit of arrangement. Recognizable contributions, sure, but my fellow judgefgt deserves most of the credit. :)

Very interesting. All this time I've been hearing the guitar sounds and I'm thinking, "this has to be Zircon". Looks like BGC has a couple of tricks up his sleeve. :)

Anyways, this track has officially climbed up to one of my favorites of this album. I'll say it again; incredibly catchy.

[Jaybell]

ALSO ALSO ALSO, for some reason I can't do ANYTHING to the copy of Black Wing Metamorphosis that came with the torrent. Can't play it, move it, or even rename it or delete it. I have to re-download it separately from the site, I guess. Anyone know why it did that?

[Jillian Aversa]

Okay, so this might be a little ambitious, but... While I find it's easy to just review a few of my personal favorites, I think every track on this project deserves some individual attention. So here goes! I'll post in parts, one for each disc over the course of the next couple days.

DISC 1: Crisis

1. Deliverance of the Heart (Heart of Anxiety) - pixietricks, zircon:

Outside of some of his original game score work, this is the first piece I ever heard Andy attempt in such a different style from his normal, more in-your-face (i.e. badass) electronic music. It just goes to show that you should never underestimate someone's talent based solely on what you've heard of their "signature sound." There are so many layers of soft, percussive elements that just take my breath away. The bells, strings, warm pads work together in beautiful harmony. Andy truly captured the genre to a T. I was so happy with this piece that I begged him to do another in the same vein for his most recent album, ANTIGRAVITY... resulting in the title track! And now yet another will be appearing on my own album in the spring. So... yeah. I may sound a little biased as zircon's girlfriend, but I'm definitely proud of him. :D



2. Every Story Begins With a Name (Opening - Bombing Mission) - Big Giant Circles:

The way this piece unfolds is so brilliant. It really reminds me of Pink Floyd, particularly their album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, with the atmospheric intro chalk full of subtle electronic sound effects later breaking into an epic film-score-esque drumset pattern straight out of the 80's. At 2:10, the song takes a new turn, taking you on journey through what sounds like an elaborate little computer chip, trying to get past the alarms and booby traps. The choir is so effectively used in this context, and I love the little ethnic section starting around 4:30. Excellent work - gives the beginning of the CD a nice kick in the @$$!




3. No Such Thing As the Promised Land (Mako Reactor) - sephfire, sgx:

I'm definitely a sucker for this kind of expansive, atmospheric track; I always have to hold my breath a little through all the softer sections. That gritty bass synth is the perfect choice to compliment the industrial sort of percussion that emerges from the rubble. And those ever-so-faint breath stutters give me the CHILLS. Coming from two of my favorite artists in the community, this piece really paints a picture. I only wish I could have heard more from you both on the project! :D



4. Materia Junkie (Underneath the Rotting Pizza ~ The Oppressed) - LuIzA:

Sorry to Another Soundscape for the title steal-age, but the name fit LuIzA's mix so well! XD (I remember Andy was searching for one for a while... my original suggestion was "Lipstick and Cheap Seats") Metal has never been my favorite genre of music, but because of many artists on this album, my realm of appreciation has widened greatly. This is an awesome interpretation of the source, from the gritty guitars to the sexy bassline to the altogether new ska section. I also love how LuIzA managed to subtly quote the main theme in a different mode, with those processed bells/vibes at 0:51 and 1:05. Her solos may not be as jaw-droppingly fast and furious as Sixto or Snappleman, but she always exhibits such seasoned taste that one could never doubt her abilities. Very well done.



5. Full Frontal Assault (Let the Battles Begin!) - norg, Snappleman:

I don't think I have enough experience with the genre to adequately access how amazing this track is. You two need to collaborate more often; I couldn't imagine a more badass take on the Battle Theme. My favorite part is at 2:16 when you get to the awesome "BAM BAM BAM.... BAM BAM BAM" unison in the new key. Sheer energy from start to finish. Yep, definitely worth wait. Like, wow... Just wow... Just... wow... :wink:



6. Too Much Fighting (Fanfare) - Another Soundscape:

Yay, synth reggae! I have to say, Another Soundscape is one of the most promising new remixers I have seen come out of this community. He demonstrates such boundless creativity; I remember being really pleasantly surprised with both his FF7 content entries (the other of which, Golden Feathers, we'll get to later). The soundscape (har) of this piece is so unusual, it's refreshing. Prelude quotes, sexy Japanese voice sampling, and some really cool instrumental solos. I likes it!



7. Damn Those Turks! (Turks' Theme) - Daniel Baranowsky:

This track is like an Old Western set in space. The Native American tribal vocals at 1:31 are simply awesome - especially in contrast with the gritty, futuristic elements of the rest of the piece. It's almost like they were filtered through some sort of cathedral reverb, giving them a distinctly ethereal quality. Definitely nice to hear something new from Dan B; I was not let down!



8. Adrenalyne Kyck (Hurry!) - Big Giant Circles, Liontamer, zircon:

This piece started out a little slow for me, but I know that it's partially due to the repetitive nature of the source. The guitar and synth work beginning at 1:36 was a welcome change, and from that point I started to get into the kind of mesmerizing groove. Larry's cameo was, surprisingly enough (hehe), probably my favorite part of the whole thing. I wish there had been more vocoding later in the song! This is one of those tracks that serves more as filler than plot-changing action, so I think it achieved what it set out to do quite well. Nice contributions from all.



9. Nomura Limit (Fight On!) - zircon:

I've never been the biggest fan of SSH's style, but Andy certainly captured it with this track, and actually helped open my eyes/mind to the genre. The kick-arse guitar and snyth solos obviously take the cake here, but I can't help but love the breakdown section beginning at 1:45, with the pretty bell-like arpeggios and choir pads... of course. ^_~ And the harpsichord part he sequenced is just RIDICULOUS; when I saw his entire screen filled with octave leaps and crazy little intervals, I began to appreciate the effort that goes into programming these pieces. Every time I listen to Nomura Limit, it grows on me more and more. I just kind of want to... \M/ .... Ack, save me from metalheadom!



10. Son of Chaos (Shinra Company) - Xaleph:

I have to say, this is probably THE spookiest track on the entire project. From the raw kicks that sound like they're right in your ear, to the echoing crashes, to the awesome choir that ties it all together... I can't imagine what kind of horrors go on in this haunted factory, but I'm not sure I want to. Fantastic work from Mr. Carbunk1e.



11. Lunatic Moon (Red XII's Theme ~ Cosmo Canyon) - Sixto Sounds, zircon:

This is just one of the many phenomenal collaborative efforts on Voices of the Lifestream. Sixto and zircon's talents lend to one another so flawlessly that it's a... little unnerving. (Don't steal him away from meeee!) MAN, can Sixto shred! And the ethnic sections at 0:57 and 1:55 are like the ying to Juan's yang, transporting me back to Andy's SSF2 Turbo remix "Flying Heaven" in the most delightful way. A true pleasure to listen to!



12. motor crazycycle (Crazy Motorcycle) - tefnek:

So happy we got to have tefnek's wonderful talent on this project. This track is unlike any of the other electronic ones on VotL, with little melodic content but a LOT of spunk. I'd honestly be wary about driving with this music in the player, for fear of speeding... Or just succumbing to general... road rage. It's so damn cheeky, I love it. :D This one should win the "best ending" award, with that little smooch sound effect that basically screams, "Kiss my ____!" Well done.




Phew! So yeah, more to come, but I'm absolutely loving it so far.

[zircon]

ALSO ALSO ALSO, for some reason I can't do ANYTHING to the copy of Black Wing Metamorphosis that came with the torrent. Can't play it, move it, or even rename it or delete it. I have to re-download it separately from the site, I guess. Anyone know why it did that?

The file name is 132 characters, which apparently is giving some people trouble... though most seem to be having no problem with it. I suggest renaming it something like "4-10 Various Artists - Black Wing Metamorphosis.mp3" when you download. What OS are you using?

[Lotd2242]

for most of the naysayers who are less than pleased with the final product, i suspect that there is something that is contributing to that feel:

overload.

unless i made a mistake somewhere in winamp, it shows that the mp3s add up to 3 hours, 20 minutes, and 27 seconds.

that's a metric assload of music.

difficult to feel objective or sometimes even excited about a music pack that lasts longer without repeat than two full length movies (or one extended lord of the rings movie (or what most george w. bush presidential speeches feel like (oh snap, i went political))).

it's very easily understandable why there are some folks who aren't as excited about it. especially considering there are a wide variety of musical tastes catered to in the pack and not everyone likes all of those musical tastes (for example, i don't have robot ears). it's one of those things where, once the dust settles, people will have their favorites which will get added to their playlists and the rest will be left alone to others who will completely shun the first groups people of selected songs and add the rest to their play lists and so forth and so on.

variety is the spice of life. this pack is an entire spice rack. and not everyone likes curry (heathens. how can you not like curry?).

-= george =-

I disagree with the assertion that any lack of gushing enthusiasm (at least on my part) has anything to do with the length of the material.
And as someone who enjoys all kinds of various musical styles, the variety (though I think there was less than you imply) doesn't bother me.

The ultimate deciding factor for me is whether or not at the end of the mix I feel like it took the original and added it to it in an meaningful way. Some mixes in here accomplished that, and some did not, and it was split almost half and half for me. Even some of the tracks themselves were half and half for me, where I'd either be completed turned off by the intro, but really enjoy the ending, or enjoy the intro and be shaking my head by the middle.

So in the end, It wasn't a constant cranking up into a drooling stupor, but more of a roller coaster of ups and downs.

[anosou]

Wow pixietrix :D Way to review! I should do that too :O
Anyway, thank you very much for your kind words. "One of the most promising new remixers". I mean wow. I can't put words on that!
Again, thank you very very much. It's these things that keeps me going :)

[Flaillen]

Currently downloading the Torrent, well the MP3 versions... don't need the WAV files. It'll have an extra seed in 15 minutes.

Anyway, while that downloads I'm listenin' to the tracks as well... or well I was until one track which I've played 3 times now; Jovette Rivera's The Crossroad (Cid's Theme), really like this one so I'm gonna keep playing it for a while until the album is downloaded. ^_^

This is by far my favourite album to come out of the OC projects, that could be due to it being Final Fantasy and a combination of many of my favourite artists from the site, most likely is.
Anyhow, love the album and look forward to more stuff.

...Also, great to see a new track Jovette. =)

[Jaybell]

The file name is 132 characters, which apparently is giving some people trouble... though most seem to be having no problem with it. I suggest renaming it something like "4-10 Various Artists - Black Wing Metamorphosis.mp3" when you download. What OS are you using?

Yeah, that seems to be the problem. I re-downloaded the track and saved it as "a bunch of people - black wing metamorphosis etc etc." Trouble is, I still can't delete/rename/do anything to the old copy. I'm using Windows XP, by the way.

Also I agree ENTIRELY with what Pixietricks said about Another Soundscape. Too Much Fighting is just friggin' awesome. And so is Golden Feathers, it went from super happy techno to soft relaxing sitar strumming goodness, and it did it well.

ALSO STILL, how did Valse Aeris get accepted onto the site? It's ten megabytes in the torrent file! o_O I assume it was edited down/compressed?

Also one winged chiptune ftw.

okay i'm done.

seriously.

EDIT: I KNEW there was something else I had to say. It's that a little past the two minute mark in Star Salzman's mix (2:10 to be exact), the percussion sounds almost EXACTLY like the Battletoads pause music. You know, "boom CH boom CH boom CH CH CH." Well, not EXACTLY VERBATIM COVER of it but it sounds QUITE similar.

NOW I'm done.

but probably not really

[gbarules2999]

I am honestly in awe. I have been spreading the word out to all the forums I know: this will be an excellent album for anybody. I revived my dead account here to speak.

I have been looping the first track for an hour, and it's just amazing. I love it so much.

[KyleJCrb]

The file name is 132 characters, which apparently is giving some people trouble... though most seem to be having no problem with it. I suggest renaming it something like "4-10 Various Artists - Black Wing Metamorphosis.mp3" when you download. What OS are you using?

In Windows, the problem is dependent on where the file is placed. If it's placed under many subfolders (so the directory structure looks like x:/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/file) instead of near the top of the drives folder structure, it goes crazy and can't read that particular file, because the filename with the directories added is too long. Once the file is there, it's stuck and can't be renamed or moved. The only way to delete it is by taking everything else out of the folder and deleting the folder itself.

[zircon]

Huh, guess you learn something every day. Oops.

ALSO STILL, how did Valse Aeris get accepted onto the site? It's ten megabytes in the torrent file! o_O I assume it was edited down/compressed?

My 1337 encoding skills :) Many of the 'flood' mixes had to be re-encoded to ABR/VBR in order to get under 6mb. Valse was especially tricky. All of the project MP3s in the torrent and on the mirrors, however, are straight up 192kbps CBR.

[big giant circles]

OH MAN IS THAT LARRY ON VOCODER IN ADRENALYNE KICK OH MAN OH MAN

I'm only 8 tracks in and not ONE track has disappointed. Like, at all.

I can't get that track out of my head. It's incredibly catchy. I'm assuming that Zircon contributed all the incredibly cool synth guitar sounds while BGC did the arrangement. Larry's spoken lyrics, while short, really adds something to the track. I don't care if people think it's cheesy.

"If I had known that this was coming, I would've done things d-d-d-d-ifferently!"

Actually, Jimmy did most of the work on that... I shaped + polished a bunch of the sounds, did mixing/mastering, created one of the main drumloops, a couple of the synths, and a little bit of arrangement. Recognizable contributions, sure, but my fellow judgefgt deserves most of the credit. :)

yes, Andy played a critical role in getting that track to sound as well as it did. Without his help, I'm sure the overall mastering would have been much more washed-out and bland. He turned mud-grunge into crystal-grunge :)

also, there needs to be moar gushing about the liquid sex that is liontamer's voice. :D

and yes, my crappy guitar playing was one of the aces I had up my sleve ;) glad you liked it.

[Jaybell]

In Windows, the problem is dependent on where the file is placed. If it's placed under many subfolders (so the directory structure looks like x:/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/file) instead of near the top of the drives folder structure, it goes crazy and can't read that particular file, because the filename with the directories added is too long. Once the file is there, it's stuck and can't be renamed or moved. The only way to delete it is by taking everything else out of the folder and deleting the folder itself.

Yeah, that worked! Thank you.

[Blue_Elephant]

Hello,

I've been lurking around the site now for...hmm maybe about a year and a half? I mean, I've been enjoying awesome free music for a while so the least I could do is write a review right? Ok, disk one:

Perhaps I should preface this with the fact that I haven't actually played the game...so perhaps some of the nostalgia is lost on me. I do recognize some of the more famous themes though.

Deliverance of the Heart:

Pretty nice mellow song. Works well for the album into. I was kind of surprized though. Given that I haven't played they game, I guess it wasn't the sort of music that I associated FF:VII with in my mind. I probably should play it...

Every Story Begins with a Name:

Seems like more of a segwaying(sp?) piece. I didn't really get into it that much until around 2:08 and then I really started liking it around 3:05. I like a lot of the individual themes, but I usually prefer a song to have a one or two progressive theme and the song seems to have 3 to 4 maybe...or I'm crazy and have no idea what I'm talking about. Although...I don't know if that was the remixer's choice or the source.

No Such Thing as the Promised Land:

Even before I listened to this I was really anticipating this song...well because the Mario Paint: Intense Color song is one of my favorite songs. Very brooding...so when I first listened to it I wasn't in quite the right mood, but then I listened to it later when I was alone at night and it fit just right. Awesome.

Materia Junkie:

I didn't really really get into this one as much. Still top quality stuff though, just not really my style. I do like the title though. Make me think of Cloud passed out on the floor amid a pile of used needles.

Frontal Assualt:

I really like the drums on this one. I don't know how to describe it...but the sound has a nice "feel" to it. I'm speaking literally. That's why I can't quite describe it...hmmm.

Too Much Fighting:

I really like this song! Doesn't take itself too seriously and it isn't too silly either. The begining is kinda funky and then it progresses later (around the japanese) nicely.

Damn Those Turks:

Second fav. on this project!! Bassline is just freakin' cool. I just never heard this style before (maybe I'm musically sheltered, but what ever). I love the vocals too! I kind of wonder what the source tune was like...Just a ton of fun to listen to.

Adrenyline Kick(sp?):

Everything is layered really nicely and blends perfect. Foot tapper IMO, very catchy.
Oh yeah! I'm listening to these as I type so sometimes I remember things that I forgot and will add them off. I was back and forth on the synth voice for a while...but now I like it. I just wish the song would've kicked off a bit harder after it (just a bit more intense)...although the song is great this way too :-)

Nomura Limit:

I had pretty big expectations for this song too since Zircon most likely the remixer who's songs I like most consistantly (also Flying Heaven = My Fav. OCR remix ever (seriously)) Ok, now that I'm done being a fanboy. Got just what I wanted from this song. Intense sections mixed up with mellow bits to make the intensity stand all that much more. The end seemed a little weird to me though. It's like this really intense fight where suddenly the combatants are like "Good show old Chap" and walk away. Not bad, just surprized me. Kind of a nice little quirk actually.

Son of Chaos:

Here it is...my fav. song on the project! I don't know what it is about the song, but it's just epic. Makes me shiver. Vocals are awesome...songs like these make me wish that I didn't suck so bad at writing music.

Lunatic Moon:

I remember hearing this song in a preview if memory serves correctly...The begining part actually reminds me a lot of the intro to Spybreak by the Propellerheads. The transitions from intense to soft flute bits seem kind of abrupt...but the one at 2:18 is really cool. I really enjoy this song towards the end (after that bit at 2:18). Nice work.

Onto disk two? I must say that after disk one, disk two wasn't quite as enjoyable for me. Not that I'm saying it wasn't good (lot's of excellent stuff in there). I had really just gotten into the right mood after listening to Son of Chaos and Lunatic moon and then was kind of struck by the sharp transition. When I listened to it again later I liked it a lot better.

Short Skirts:

A very nice laid back song. The title and the song don't quite seem to fit together to me...but we all have different word associations so it's possibly just me. Pretty relaxing. Nice to listen to while working.

Valse Aeris:

Waltz? Hmmm, not really my stuff. It's certainly well put together though. Everything sounds good...which is actually really impressive because it's hard to get brass especially to sound right (well at least it is for me anyway). Oh, ok I forgot about this part. I like it later inbetween the waltz sections. And after the second waltz part. I'm sorry man, I just don't like Waltzs...it really has nothing to do with your quality as a remixer. So basically the parts that didn't have the pronounced 1-2-3 I really liked.

Embraced Empathy:

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I had such a funny movie playing in my mind when this song started. I just envisioned the FF:VII cast shopping at a grocery store. I couldn't help it. It's good stuff though.

Serenity:

I like the vibe this one has going. I really enjoy thinking about things will listening to these sorts of songs. They really lead you down an interesting thought path. Vocals fit nicely. I have to say, I usually don't like vocals...at all. But I like them they way you did them.

Life Without Parole:

Very dramatic. I think Dhsu did an excellent job on this piece. I usually get really annoyed with piano remixes because the melody tends to get repedative...but I didn't feel that in this song. Also, I think it's great that the song was so dramatic but it didn't get carried away. To me that's the different between...say a good film score and soap opera music.

Scenes from a Memory:

I just didn't really get into it. Nicely arranged and the production quality is good, something about it just didn't click with me. The melody (which is probably because of the source tune I'm thinking) just didn't seem to progress enough for what I usually like...but that's mostly personal preference. I'm sure a lot of people will like this song.

Golden Fields:

Very nice mellow warm sound from this one. Make you feel comfortable...or at least if make me feel at home sort of...I didn't really grow in the country though. Just has a nice vibe is my main idea here.

Crystal Sermon:

I wasn't all that fond of this one. Again, it really has nothing to do with quality. It's just not really a style I listen too often. Although, I did like the bit around 1:35

Chasing the Storm:

I really enjoy electronica with piano like this. The begining actually reminds me of some of the Bioshock music (which I got from Overcoat's Blog thiny...thank you soo much for running that free music thread!!!!). Usually if anything I prefer the latter half of a song, but I actually like the first half better in this one. The second half is fine, I just like the feel (not literal) of the first part better.

Sephiroth's Wake:

Creepy stuff. Very good mood setting music. It's especially fun to listen to this stuff when your alone at night in the woods or something. Nice work.

Jenova Celestial:

Sometimes in the project I feel a little bit lost. From watching advent children I had the idea that Jenova was this freaky alien being thing...but this song makes me think of 80's pop music videos. Which is ok...but not really what I expected from the title of the song. It really would help sometimes if I knew what was going on in the game when these songs played.

Mark of the Beatsmith (I'm assuming it was supposed to be "Beatsmith" and not "Beathsmith?"):

Some great individual parts (and I love how you ended it) just I guess it seems to me that the source wasn't as strong as I usually like. I mean that the source melody wasn't that strong, not that your arrangment was to liberal...I have no idea if it was or not.

Onto disk three. Or...hmmm, I'm getting hungry...I'm resume this review after I eat something. Ok, I'm not staring to death now. On with the review.

Disk Three:

Suco de Melancia:

Reminds me a lot of monopoly. I'm not sure how or why...but it just does. I remember it for such an occasion.

Daydreaming Again:

I think this is very nicely done. A lot of laid back guitar songs like this overdo it and end up just being cheasy. Just relaxing. The title fits very imo. The section at 2:00 I like a lot.

Alien Exploration:

A bit too cheery for me. Seems like vacation music. Like the kind you see on comercials for "Come Visit ___ Island" and then you see the happy family doing fun things in the next few shots. Oh, 2:20 I like though. Yeah, from that point I like it more.

Golden Feathers:

I'm sorry, I just didn't feel it. Probably the source on this one? It seems very familiar...but I can't figure out why...and whatever it reminds me of makes me dizzy.

Midnight at Club Corel:

Another monopoly song...I don't know what it is with me an monopoly. Whatever. Not really my type of music, but you did a nice job arranging it and the production seems good too.

Ahead on our Rave:

Reminds me too much of happy hardcore music...which I don't really like. The steady 4/4 beat just isn't my thing. Seems like you did acheive the style you were going for though. I do kind of like how you incorporated the piano bits into the song though...but this just isn't the genre I like.

Kweh:

Err...seems a lot like the Golden Feathers song...do they have the same source? I guess my issue is with the source tune then. It sounds like...there is a really quiet dissonant chord playing in the background or something...or maybe that's someone else's music I'm hearing...hmmm, I'm not sure.

The Crossroads:

I like the begining...once the vocals get started I don't like it as much. I usually just don't like vocals in songs. I like the chorus though. It makes me wonder what the original sounded like...it must've been fairly different?

Fading Entity:

It's the steady beat again that I don't really care for. Really on songs like this it's just my own preference and not anything to do with the quality of the song itself.

Frozen Landscape:

I like the percussion here...especially the sticks clicking together. Yeah, I really enjoy how the percussion is sequenced together here. I don't really get into the other parts of the song that much...but awesome job on the percussion!

Disk four. I went into disc four really expecting it to rap up the project into a nice package. I think it does so very well.

Sleep my Sephy:

Oh, ok, it's by the same remixer as Daydreaming again. Pretty much the same stuff I said on the other one applies here. I'm mostly talking about your style in general though...because on songs like these I don't think that the actual song matters as much because it's not as melody driven.

Collision:

It seemed just a little too...busy? In just a few places. I just didn't really get the arrangement in those sections. The other sections are good though. The percussion is pretty good stuff too. Ok now that I've listened to the whole thing again, there are only really two parts where it seems a little bit to much. Other than that, I really liked it. Nice work.

Airships make me happy:

Similar style to the chocobo song it seems to me...but I like this one. I actually already used it in a video I put on youtube. Don't worry! I gave you / ocr credit...although I doubt all that many people will be viewing it, but rest assured! I like the fusion you've got going with the slower parts and the more chiptuney sections.

Hydrophone Breakdown:

hmmm...the begining seems really familiar...specifically the submarine sound...hmmm...whatever. This reminds me a lot of the song in AC where cloud drops his phone in the water...although I mostly like this one better. Or maybe I'm remembering the wrong song. The only issue I have is the kind of constant crash symbol that's going on in sections. It gets a bit grating...to me anyway. But aside from that, a really enjoyable song.

Omnislash:

I really like the melody and harder edged guitar parts you have here...but I didn't like the percussion as much...it just seems...like it's missing something maybe? But it's not a big deal. Really strong stuff :) I like the transition around 2:28ish a lot too...and then when you transition back into main theme is nicely done too. (that was the one bit where I did really like the percussion for a short time).

Rare Square:

Really immersive. Draws you in, in a good way. Parts of it almost remind me of spy movie music...the music really conveys urgency to me...and I think it does so very well. Awesome job.

Jenova Returns:

Maybe I really do have the wrong picture of Jenova? Hmmm...it's just that this happy type music always plays when the song meantions her....oh, well here it's a bit darker. I'm so confused! Actually this song itself is a little confusing for me...it seems to switch around a lot...but I'm pretty sure that was intended. I kind of like it though (the switching)...sometimes. It switches a bit too often for me personally...but still a nice piece.

Begining of the end:

I love those bells. Has a nice upbeatness but doesn't lose the idea that drives the song. I gotta say though, the sections where the main intro theme comes back are my favorite.

Black Wing Metamorphasis:

I like the beginning bit and especially how you fuze the chiptune with the more real sounding strings / brass. The beginning of this song would make an awesome ringtone. Unfortunately...the (live?) choir isn't really my cup of tea...it seems a little cluttered / odd in those sections. But the rest of it is pure win. The first part after choice reminds me a lot of Nightmare Before Christmas for some reason...I like it. The first time I heard this (original) song was in Kingdom Hearts actually...so I probably haven't heard the original version.

The Golden Ivories of Gaia:

What can I say? The job of this song is really to rap up the project. Perfect. I don't think you could've ended the project any better.

Wow...that took me a long time to type / listen. Hope my review was helpful in some way. Thank you all for working so hard on the project. Oh! If I missed something (like skipped a song or something), just let me know and I'd be happy to fix it. Or if I said something crazy and you don't know what I meant.

Okay. Bye.

If there's an error posting this and I have to start over I'll probably kill something.

[Lynx Raven Raide]

first off, saw the name Materia Junkie when the songs were (accidently?) released on the site and came up on my RSS feed and instantly thought Yuffie!!!! then was disappointed to find it was 'Under The Rotting Pizza'.... ah well

Man this, as we say down under, fully sick mate! I am loving what i am hearing. have to ask though, was REAKTR.1 supposed to be on there, cause that came up in the RSS feed, with Final Fantasy VII (as opposed to the normal 7), yet it isnt on the track list from the torrent. anyway, i am seeding the lot to help you out

[Thin Crust]

I thought Reuben Kee was in on the project.

[zircon]

No, while he was invited and completed several WIPS, I was unable to get final, tweaked WAVs from him.