Apollyon

Let me begin by saying the three of us are delighted to see this made it onto the site and have collectively laughed our collective arses off at the idea of writing a deeply analytical submission email for six minutes of flatulence. I believe NuPharazon in particular suggested we could still submit such a ReMix under the title "You Asked for It", although I'm not sure I'm willing to put in the amount of effort it would take to craft a lengthy piece of music from tuned flatulence. Souperion: We're quite pleased you like the ReMix, and pleasantly surprised by the positive reception it has received in general. You're pretty much the target audience here, as we put it together primarily with Metroid (especially Prime) fans in mind, although I also believe Twilight Princess in particular indicates that the tastes of Zelda fans are more diverse than many people (and Nintendo in particular) estimate. PhoneticHero: I'm relieved that you (and presumably others) can pick up on the noise elements in the final export; we did a lot of production contortionism to try to keep them perceptible but subtle. The final export was over a year ago and my memory's a bit hazy, but I believe I ultimately put more time into sound design and post-production than composition/arrangement elements, because that's just appropriate to Yamamoto's work in particular. I'd be thrilled to see a Prime-themed patch for Serum, or indeed any plugin I can affordably get my hands on; as much work went into this, I'm not entirely satisfied with certain of the elements we created (particularly and especially those damned alarms), and there are parts in which I would rather have had something more authentic and directly derivative. LamanKnight: I'll admit I didn't expect djpretzel to include the entire (excessively comprehensive) submission email, but as we included it mostly to provide context for fellow intellectuals (who comprise the majority of the OCR community, from what I've observed), it's certainly gratifying to know that people are getting something out of it. Also, I love linguistics in general, half of Nu's planned ReMixes began life as clever wordplay, and Yargami eats, sleeps, and respirates puns. You're in good (or possibly deranged) company. ;) gravitygauntlet: We actually don't use preexisting MIDIs; while I'm sure there is plenty of talent in MIDI sequencing, I'd rather trust my own ear and interpretation over that of someone whose music background I can't know. That being said, you're spot-on about the guitar solo being as close to the original as humanly possible - I basically plopped the Echoes sound file into a track, cut out some of the frequencies I didn't think contributed much to the solo itself, sequenced a guitar part over it with Ministry of Rock 2, and then mangled it a bunch in post-production. As Yamamoto writes a fair amount of industrial noise music, we collectively decided to treat the atonal elements from the original as carefully-selected compositional elements, particularly the guitar solo he reused (albeit almost inaudibly) in Corruption, and thus we were much more cautious about altering them than we were with the much more easily recognizable melodic elements. I do share your (and several of the judges') misgivings about that part of the song, though; it actually took the three of us quite a few iterations to reach a consensus on how it should be implemented, with Yargami suspecting I had put too much focus on the gated pads, mangled string section, and atonal choral work (the latter of which is regrettably quite inaudible in the final product as anything more than, well, excessive sound compression) and NuPharazon being concerned that our early exports excessively buried the guitar solo (her favorite element) amidst the rest of the very flooded soundscape. That being said, we're glad you can appreciate the rather nonsensical production methodology we ended up with, which was also a subject into which we put a lot of thought; industrial music is all about raw, visceral, in-your-face crunchiness, space music is about saturating the soundscape as much as humanly possible, and thus combining the two basically means accelerating two mutually exclusive philosophies at each other and hoping something interesting happens when they collide. I suspect that works better for CERN than it does for us.

Absolutely phenomenal, Audix. Listening to this one alongside your other two, this one beats out "Days' End", and gives some damnably ferocious competition to the excellent "Devastation's Doorway". Music like this makes me hope some of the composers occasionally look for fan remixes of their work, because I suspect Mitsuda himself would be exceedingly impressed; I would think drastic, unorthodox reworkings of the source material would be well within his tastes, judging by his work on Brink of Time and Creid. As to the merits of the actual song itself... First off, I honestly have to wonder how long it took you to select a tempo; I just tossed the track into Audacity and played with the speed a bit, and it seems to me that any faster or any slower, the track loses a fair amount of impact. In other words, you seem to have found the ideal tempo for this song, the rate that keeps the action moving without going so quickly that the listener misses some of the subtler details. I particularly enjoyed the way you emphasized the Magus section of the "Ocean Palace" theme; emphatic, but tasteful. Also, the section from 2:38 to 3:00 is just bloody overwhelming, and in a good way - the soundscape is about as saturated as you could get it without losing the overall picture. Uncertain whether or not I could realistically call it the "highlight" of the song; as with your other two remixes, this one is immersive (even habit-forming *laughs*) throughout, without one particular section standing out as the best moment of the song. Excellent, excellent stuff, Audix; I am granting this one a prominent position in several dozen of my top playlists as we speak. Just bloody remarkable.

Just looped the song half a dozen times in WinAMP, and I must admit, I am absolutely blown away by this one. This song is easily one of the top three in the original series, and you guys not only did the song justice, you turned it into the kind of epic anthem I would expect to hear at the end of a movie (perhaps with a sunset view of Monstropolis in the background?). This one is up there with DarkeSword's "Stranger in the Desert", Star Salzman's "Tickle My Wily", the Megas' "The Annihilation of Monsteropolis", and Sixto and zircon's "Nuclear Flash" collab. Simply brilliant. Six stars out of five, no question.

Wow, most impressive. I enjoyed "Alpha" greatly, but this one is actually the better of the two, in my opinion. I have always felt that ambient music in videogames is greatly underrated (Riven being the ultimate example, of course), and this mix manages to capture the feel of the original songs while still giving off that strong atmospheric vibe - almost an Oxygene feeling to the first thirty seconds, actually. While I am only slightly familiar with Marathon's music (what little there is of it, anyway), your interpretation of "Under Cover of Night" (my all-time favorite Halo theme) is truly flawless, something that will undoubtedly find its way onto a number of my regular playlists. If I had to choose a highlight, I would say the best part of the song is the brief section from 2:01 to the end, when the strings come in over the "Under Cover of Night" theme. Truly priceless; that part alone boosts it above "Forerunner Mix (Alpha)", although only by a slight margin. Excellent job; this one rates up there with any of the "official" remixes of the song ("Dream Again" being the best thus far, in my opinion). Please keep making these; we need more material like this!

Hmmm... The vast majority of the music in Hiroki Kikuta's Seiken Densetsu soundtracks could be considered "ridiculously happy". A lot of Koji Kondo's old stuff is rather chipper as well. Jun Ishikawa has written an enormous amount of light-hearted stuff, although it can get old fairly quickly.