[DragonAvenger]

After roughly two years of off and on work, here is a remix of Akira Yamaoka's "You're Not Here" from Silent Hill 3, entitled "Lacrimosa Profundis".


This track was a collaboration of Children of the Monkey Machine, with guitars by Steve Pordon and vocals by Brandon Strader.
The 8mib limit does affect sound quality slightly. Higher bitrate versions are available upon request and will also be posted with a conspicuous file name and easily linkable on the CotMM.org webpage upon acceptance and posting to OCR.


Steve and I both enjoy working on Silent Hill music, and I've wanted to do more vocal tracks recently, so this seemed like an ideal match. Doubly so since the lyrical content is not specifically gendered. Steve and I began working on this track sometime around December of 2009. It wasn't until later February of the next year that it started to sound like the current version, however. By June of 2010 the instrumental structure had pretty much resolved into it's final form. It took several false starts with a few other individuals, myself included, before Brandon stepped in for the vocals to arrive at this release version. I hope you enjoy.


Children of the Monkey Machine / Steve Pordon / Brandon Strader
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDCktKqHBGQ

[DragonAvenger]

Brandon sounds absolutely possessed in this. It's pretty weird. Kinda cool, but pretty weird. So, honestly, I'll admit that I don't like this song at all, but, judging as objectively as I can, I'll see what I can do.

Overall the source is slowed way down, and with Brandon's vocals processed the way it is, it's kind of a mix between him being possessed, and listening to a vinyl at too slow of a setting. For a game like Silent Hill this would fit in quite well, so I see the intention of what is meant here, and I think for the most part it achieves what it sets out to do.

What I find a little too over-the-top is the screen noise you have in place over everything. It's fine to use it, but right now everything is so overpowered by it that it's really hard to hear anything else except the noise you have going on in front of things. I'd say it doesn't need much, but it does need to be brought down a little. I'd also consider bringing up the overall master gain on things a tad, to even everything out and open things up for more clarity.

Good luck on the rest of the judging, I'm going to throw my vote for conditional, but I'll welcome the other judges opinions on this, and may change my vote after.

YES (conditional on balance adjustment)*Changed
EDIT: Based on a discussion of conditional votes, and the amount of work that should be required of the mixer to fix them (IE very little), I'm going to change this to a NO (resub).

[OA]

The mixing here is really weird, and not in a good way. The drums are moosh, and all i can really here is screeching, with some guitars and brandon in the background. The song itself isn't very interesting to me either, but that's neither here nor there. There's a lot of detail put into this, but the balance isn't there yet.

No

[halc]

really digging this source tune. there's some cool ideas in this, but without going into too much detail (I find it hard to with this piece :P), I'm not comfortable passing this. the mixing, regardless of what aesthetic you were going for, just sounds like a mess to me. the vocal processing was interesting, but everything's so washed out, it's hard for me to enjoy this much on an objective or personal level when I can hardly make out any of the instruments over all the noise.

NO

[djpretzel]

This was supposed to be for a special mixflood; I'd like some more votes on it so we can confirm our position and provide Matthew with the feedback required to make it passable...

[Emunator]

I'm just posting here real quick to cosign with Drew, he covered exactly what I wanted to say about this. I feel like it's just too difficult to make out any details here and really get a feel for what's going on because the noise is so strong.

NO

[Liontamer]

Personally, I love the arrangement. Once you compare it to the original, the differences are appreciated. Cool tempo change, taking the faster guitar rhythms of the original and slowing it down to be the foundation of this mix.

Gotta agree with the production criticism though. The intention is good, and we all know Matt, Steve, and Brandon are great at what they do, so hopefully none of them take it as an insult.

In the beginning, the intentional static/artifacting quickly became too pervasive in the song once it picked up at :15 and just sounds messed up, despite us knowing it's 100% intentional. It ends up sounding like the file's unintentionally corrupted.

Brandon's vocals coming in at 2:44. You definitely have to know the original to appreciate that fully, because you can't obviously tell what the spoken words are in this version.

I was tolerant of the mixing for maybe the last 2 minutes, especially because the static wasn't as noticeable. At least according to Winamp's visualization (not pretending it's cutting edge ), it just seems like whatever instrumentation was always screeching in the mid-range was too dominant in the soundscape and ended up crowding out too many of the other elements of the piece seemingly beyond what's necessary in terms of technique and crafting this overall sound. Basically, I'm cosigning with DA; her vote nailed the standout issue, IMO.

If the mixing was similar, but without the static interfering so much and without the blaring mid-range crowding out the soundscape, I'd probably go with this in a minute. Obviously this is a more noise-oriented track meant to have distant-sounding instruments and muddier leads, but it's not constructed in a poorly done way, so stuff like the vocal and drum placement sounded fine to me. All of that is purposeful and not inherently detrimental. I just felt the balance among the parts should be refined.

I really hope we can post this in some form and that it can be done in a way where Matt, Steve & Brandon remain pleased with it and don't feel they had to compromise their vision. I think it can be done, and hope they'd be willing to go for it!

NO (refine/resubmit)