[djpretzel]

This remix is a dramatic departure from my first submission because Secret of Evermore, unlike guardian legend, is not about a half-humanoid, half-spaceship creature who is destined to battle fish, jumping mushrooms and false teeth in order to stop a star from crashing into the earth. Secret of Evermore is much more serious [except for the occasional attempt at humor] I also have a TREMENDOUS amount of respect for Jeremy Soule. This is a medley of two songs "Halls of Collosia II" and "Ivor Tower Town" with a brief quote from "flying". It's all live piano. Enjoy!

[Liontamer]

http://www.alpha-ii.com/snesmusic/spcsets/soe.rsn
"Collosia, Chamber 2" (soe-45.spc) - :01-1:43, 2:00-2:37, 3:50-4:42
"Flying" (soe-63.spc) - 1:44-1:59
"Ivor Tower - The Town" (soe-50.spc) - 3:07-3:35, 4:43-end

Comparing this to something like "The Trail in Concert", I realize this is also not an overly complicated piece that a piano prodigy would be wowed with. Like I contended when debating kuroikaze's anti-Spekkosaurus rant over at Ormgas.com however, "Arguing over whether or not The Trial in Concert is a complex piece is interesting in a vacuum, but nothing beyond a fool's errand in the context of whether or not it's enjoyable and why, given the nature of the audience here." I really feel that line of thinking applies here with "Anachronism" as well; there are many redeeming qualities here beyond what you would find with unreasonable, virtuoso-level scrutiny of the piece.

The style could be more complicated, and the playing could be sharper on the timing at some points, but this was otherwise solid work. As a listener, the solo piano functions to me as both an instrument and a genre of music, which is one of the advantages of deciding to do a remix this way when the execution is on point. In both respects, Sam does a great job of transposing Jeremy Soule's originals from a drier, mystical feel into a fairly emotive, romantic setting with sharper, pluckier sounds and noticeably grander energy than the source material. The abrupt nature of the ending was the only real problem I had with this one, but that wasn't much in the grand scheme of things.

The arrangement of these source tunes was fairly straightforward, yet I found that (beyond the inherent sound change the move to piano brought) my favorite part about this mix were the constant subtle shifts in tempo during the "Collosia, Chamber 2" sections. Shnabubula added a lot of personal flair in the execution of this piece and it shows. Good effort transcribing this to piano, and I sincerely enjoyed the outcome.

Maybe Sam will end up as another ReMixer, like JigginJonT, who debuted with electronic material only to surprise everyone with a piano-centric body of work. I don't recall feeling as strongly about Shna's Solstice mix over at VGMix, "Shadax the Blue", but with this mix here I at least know I'm looking forward to whatever else Sam puts on the table.

YES

[Protricity]

UMMMMMM
SO.........
UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

YES?

YES

yes.

[DarkeSword]

Nice concept, nice execution. Nice work.

Can't get much higher praise around here than that. ;)

YES

[GrayLightning]

I kind of wish there was more emotion and soul in this piece, but that's a personal opinion. The standards of OCR are quite high when it comes to piano solos and this definitely is one of the best submitted this year. Well done arrangement, performance and execution.

YES