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Great write-up from @Liontamer on an absolute standout track. I try to avoid superlatives of this particular nature, but for me this is going to be my definitive arrangement that I think of, for this source. I've always loved the melody, and I've always found the lyrics to be a strange oscillation between poetic and... somewhat odd. This version makes everything fit together, for me, makes all the pieces click in a way that I feel like I've somehow always needed... at one point I wanted to do my own country western vocal take (!!) on this, which I still think could sound good & is a genre equally underrepresented in the VGM arrangement scene, but some of the appeal there would have overlapped with the appeal here: taking Uematsu's timeless ballad and giving it a bit more longing, placing it geographically further south, giving it air & sand & wood & fire, making it come from somewhere a little deeper & a little further... Congrats to @CNDR, @Jorito, @Earth Kid & @chriskaudio - quite, quite, quite good; the type of arrangement I will think of & trigger related neurons whenever I think of the album itself, by proxy. You simply must give it a moment!

Categories - This was my idea. I wanted the album to be different than previous large-scale albums which seemed to just follow 'whatever works in whatever order' sort of direction. I wanted a more cohesive flow that was separated by disc. Something you can't get on a single or perhaps a two-disc album, in terms of variety. With 4 discs (not counting the bonus) to work with, there was plenty of room to arrange tracks to best fit together and flow smoothly for a cohesive listening experience. I feel every album should have a focused theme or goal in mind before starting instead of just: "we'll take whatever is submitted." Some may not agree with me, but I can think of several awesome orchestral-only, metal-only, rock-only, dance edm-only albums which have had STRONG outings because of these realized visions. So I'm very happy you enjoyed how it came out, even if the initial impression wasn't favorable! ❤️ I just now need to convince everyone for the Star Fox album the new vision there too. haha.... Listening Party - Also another idea I pushed months in advance. OC ReMix had never done these sorts of things before for any of its albums and I was inspired by the one done for a Final Fantasy IX album (not done by OCR) whose name escapes me. I was like: That's an awesome idea. So, I took it upon myself to create all the videos and push the agenda in making the party happen. Unfortunately, we had settled on a hard release date of 5/8/2023 and we were crunching to make that deadline. So, we couldn't advertise the premiere party launch until almost the last minute, because we weren't sure if we were going to make 5/8/2023 and we needed the final assurances of DJPretzel and Liontamer before we could announce the listening party or if we needed to push it back. Despite this, it was a successful premiere and everyone enjoyed themselves! Maybe next time we'll have more! Collaborations - Another thing I strongly pushed for. I promoted it up front as people were claiming tracks to collab with each other. We even made it a point to make a separate role on the collaboration server for collab-only contributors. So you could easily identify and reach out to those who could do live instruments you were seeking. It was a fantastic mix of talent that if I go on to direct the Star Fox album, I'm going to continue to push for collaborations among musicians/artists. For example: So what if most of the 'theming' might be too fast-paced or rock/metal based for some remixers to participate, doesn't mean you can't collaborate and add in your own flair to it. I can see it now: Metal Star Wolf with some Oud mixed in for good measure (as a weird example, but hey! Anything can happen with creativity!)! So, I'm happy to hear this struck a lovely chord with you. Thank you so much for these comments and I hope you enjoy the album many times over! We're all very proud of it!