MindWanderer

You're not alone in struggling through Baba is You. My most common complaint with puzzle games is that they're too easy. This game kicked my ass backwards and forwards. Still haven't finished it. This is a very difficult source tune to remix. It's weirdly toneless and very long. I think I caught enough connections to qualify, though. Very basic, old-school sound palette, but the soundscape is full and the tones are used appropriately. It's very '80s without quite being synthwave. The leads sound a little thin at times, but overall it works. The arrangement is a little meandering, but then so is the source. I think overall it works. YES

This indeed quite a long piece with some repetitive motifs, especially the xylophone arp, which takes only one break (2:00-2:20). This definitely would have been a more engaging piece if the xylophinist wasn't going for 4:23 of a 5:23 piece. I definitely disagree that it "demands your attention;" lt lost my attention very quickly! However, there isn't much in the way of copy-pasta otherwise. It feels repetitive, but without actually repeating. The soundscape is indeed rich and deep. If the idea is to just chill out and steep yourself in the sounds, it does a good job of letting you do that. It works. YES

Not sure that this needs both sources referenced, as they're nearly identical. It's a nice house take on Aloy's theme. I think the melody of the theme is easily recognizable, and it's clearly present and dominant here. I don't agree the master is too quiet. I only see about 1.49 dB of headroom here, and while it's a little quiet, I can hear it clearly at my usual listening volume. I do think the lead is too quiet in the mix; but I think most of the times when it's really too quiet to hear (like 1:19), it's a stylistic decision. I wouldn't call this a dealbreaker. YES

I'm as enthusiastic as LT about the arrangement. Great intermixing of the themes, all used clearly and cleverly played into and against each other. I enjoyed that tremendously. Unfortunately I'm not in agreement with him about the mixing. The bass absolutely dominates the mix. I have to strain to hear the leads in 0:45-1:03, 1:19-1:47, 2:15-2:44, 3:13-3:28, 3:50-4:12, 5:37-5:52, and 6:21-6:35, and even when I can make them out, all the timbre is crushed out of them. 1:33-1:47 is the worst, I'm actually using my imagination and knowledge of the source material to fill in the parts I can't hear. Those are just the most problematic parts; balance isn't ideal anywhere but the piano parts. On my fourth listen I finally noticed there was a choir in places, but it's almost completely buried. I definitely want to see a version of this get posted! Just not this version. Take it in for some loving rebalancing and it'll make an amazing mixpost. NO (resubmit)

Wow, it's been almost 20 years since we posted a The Coop mix! Unreal. I'm not a pianist, and I know some folks here have opinions about piano performance, but I'll leave that to them. What I hear is a clever arrangement that uses the melody of the source almost exactly, but utterly changes the tone into something new. The playing sounds great as far as I can tell. The recording is oddly bass-heavy. I don't have specific advice about improving that, again because I don't have experience recording live piano; you could certainly EQ it but I'm sure there's a more elegant, natural way to improve the tone. Sounds great to me otherwise. Welcome back. YES

Interesting sound palette. It uses mostly stock, vanilla synths that have been prevalent for a decade or more, but they're all used thoughtfully and produced well. Stylistially there's no reason this couldn't have been posted almost 10 years ago, but the level of competence is through the roof. And even though it's an eclectic mix of EDM, chiptune, dubstep, and metal, it all hangs together coherently. None of the huge variety of arps, wubs, or SFX seem extraneous. Great pacing, great energy, great arrangement all around. YES

My intiial impression is that this is one of the better Pixel Pirates remixes we've had on the panel. Good groove, pretty clean mixing, interesting embellishments. Production isn't perfectly clean, though. There's an instrument that creates a lot of white noise. It's most noticable at 1:15-1:29, but it's there almost the whole time starting from where it goes electronic. I can't tell if it's an out-of-control sweep, or way too much tail on a cymbal, or what, but it muddies up the whole mix. It gets even worse when the tambourine or the SFX are added (e.g. cheering crowds). It also gets pretty muddy when the lead drops into the lower pitches. It isn't selectively EQ'ed, so this causes it to overlap with the bass. 2:25-2:52 is the worst example here because there's just so much going on: the orchestral harmonizing, the crowd, and things I can't even pick out. I can't hear the vocal part Kris mentioned at all; I'm only assuming it's here somewhere. I tried several times to hear those dissonant chords, and I can't make out anything that sounds wrong to me. This is really close, IMHO. The writing is really good, and the production is passable most of the time. The cut-off ending automatically demotes this to CONDITIONAL at best, but between the bothersome white noise and the occasional muddy sections, especially the climax, which has a lot of cool stuff going on that I can barely hear, I find myself leaning more towards a NO (resubmit)

This is a great example of how to do original writing that fits right in with the original. I kept re-referencing the source tune thinking that the remix was too conservative, and it's absolutely not — the writing is just so smooth that it feels like the additions were always there to begin with. The new solos are an absolute delight, full of infectious energy. I see what Larry means about the vanilla beats, but I disagree that it's a problem that has to be fixed: percussion exists to support the piece, not to stand alone as its own interesting and engaging component. Certainly creative part-writing for the drums is a plus, but when everything else that's going on is so good, it's really not necessary IMO. I haven't played Genshin Impact, so the source material wasn't familiar to me; it came across as fine but not especially memorable. This remix is exceptional, though, and I'll definitely remember it. YES

It's a tough one to timestamp, for sure. I hear a lot of bits that sound like extensions or transformations of the arp and bass sections of the original, but Kyle can do it more justice than I can.

I'm in instant disagreement with Larry about this not sounding muddy. The bass is really loud and steps all over the spectrum, crushing the poor leads into mush. The SFX suffer even more; the laughing, chittering Gremlins are only identifiable when they're exposed, then turn nearly into static as the bass steals all their air. However, the composition is pretty darn good. The original solos are absolute fire, and I love how you incorporated synths that are vaguely reminiscent of the ones used in the movie's theme song. I have to agree with Larry about the verses feeling repetitive: it's a 15-second clip used 5 times, meaning a full minute of the track is copy-pasta in this way. I thought the bookending worked great, though. Clean up the production and reduce the repetitiveness of the main hook and this will really be a bright light in our catalogue instead of being all wet. NO (resubmit) Update 1/22/24: Mixing is much, much cleaner, great job! A few of the synths are a little too quiet, e.g. the octavo lead at 0:32-0:46 and the pad I didn't even realize was there until 1:18. I'm not doing an A:B comparison, but it didn't feel repetitive to me this time, either. And the original riffing is just so good. Feed me some of this after midnight, please. YES

Starts off with an exact reproduction of the original piano solo. It's clearly not sampled, but it's a piano solo played in the exact same way as the original piano solo. Not great for the first 32 seconds of a "remix." Then we get into the synthwave. The pads are huge, the reverb is huge. It's a wall of sound, and the lead is really quiet. You need to do a lot of leveling when the lead doesn't have as much frequency presence as everything else, and that wasn't done here. It also seems to be pretty repetitive. It's hard for me to pick out in Clementine, because it's also pretty static; everything in my visualizer is an even color of green (verses) or orange (choruses), but as near as I can tell it's mostly 3 loops of the same thing, with extra sub-loops in the first and third verses. The pads, arps, and drums are unchanged for the duration of the piece, and the only change in the sound palette after the intro is that the lead goes up an octave during the verses. So, the two things this mostly needs are: more dynamic content to keep the listener interested, both between the loops so the whole thing isn't repetitive, and within loops so that it's not set in a static groove for too long; and cleaner production so that each part, especially the leads, can be heard clearly. NO

Haven't done a Tripp remix in a while! This is pretty standard fare for her and GotW. Rambles a bit but it seems to be that the source usage is there. Not much to add, just a simple YES

Subjectively, this felt really source-light to me. Going through it, a lot of what Larry counted didn't sound like the source tune to me at all. Some of it is snips of only a few seconds long, spliced together in a weird way with long sustains. (Honestly I don't understand why Larry doesn't count silence that's part of the source material, but does count notes held for entire measures that aren't that way in the source; there's not really any compositional difference.) It might be correct from a music theory perspective, but to me it sounded weirdly unpleasant throughout in a way Der Spiegel doesn't. Lots of notes that sounded dissonant, lots of patterns that seemed to clash. And I'm afraid that to me the performances, especially the woodwind, sounded kind of squalky, and I heard some distinct breath control issues. Not surprising, since this is clearly really challenging to perform, so no shade there, and I respect you a lot of even trying something like this. But I don't think the outcome was successful enough to sound good. I hate to vote against this, because clearly it was extremely difficult both to compose and to perform, but to my ear it just doesn't sound right, plus I just don't hear those source connections that Larry does without using a lot of imagination. NO

Hm, really simple and repetive source tune. Let's see what you do with that... Unfortunately, it seems like you stuck pretty close to the inspiration. There's a more lengthy intro, a breakdown, and an outtro, but otherwise it's mostly the same 14-second hook on repeat. It's pretty close to the original in style and instrumentation, too. Production could also use some improvement — kicks are too loud, melody is too quiet, accompaniment is much too quiet — but the arrangement is the real issue here. We need both something that deviates from the source material in a more substantial way, and which is itself not so repetitive as to lose the listener's interest. NO

Nice mellow arrangement. Nice use of the secondary sources to expand the concept; they blend in perfectly, and you'd never know they were from different games entirely. All the production quality we expect from timaeus. An easy YES

Nice mellow melancholy "intro" (that goes for 2 ½ minutes). Nothing revolutionary, but good tone. Reminds me of Hollow Knight. Then it breaks into the contentious atmospheric black metal stuff, which I personally have grown to love. As usual, it's objectively a bit muddy, but in a way that's typical of the genre. Then we take the same journey again, but with the less melodic Burmecia theme. This part didn't hold my interest so much. This time it reminds me more of World of Goo, which had a serviceable but less noteworthy soundtrack. The black metal is muddier this time around: by aboiut 5:45, the lead becomes nearly inaudible, and this continues for a full minute. I expect this one to get some justifiable NO votes based around the mixing, but from me, the overall package and the genre expectations are enough to earn a firm YES

Great sounds all around. For me it seemed like it couldn't quite decide whether to be atmospheric or techno-trance, but it doesn't need to pick a lane to generally work. Either one excuses the slow burn. Good use of SFX as punctuation, which made up for not filling up the soundscape more fully. It's no Kindred, but what is? It works for what it is. YES

A cool concept and unique industrial/synth/surf take, let down by production issues and repetition. When the arrangement begins in full at 0:42, we have an acoustic guitar with massive reverb. The reverb is turned up so high that the notes are mushy. The runs (e.g. 1:25) just sound like one long note. It's also doing all the work; there's a little bit of fake brass accent, and everything else is percussion. The kicks are so loud that at first I thought that the guitar was too quiet, but so's everything else; the bass is so quiet I didn't even realize it was there at first. 1:50 adds a vox synth which is really dry and sounds overfiltered. Shortly after that, I found myself checking to see how much longer the track was, and was shocked to see it was barely half over. 2:06 loops back to 0:42, with just a change in percussion and some added brass harmonies that I can tell. The brass is a nice addition, but then that goes away and the rest of the loop is nearly verbatim. And then there's a third loop, with again fairly minor changes. There are some nice ideas, but unfortunately the track runs out of ideas at about 2:34, about 60% of the way through the track. And the muddy guitar and kicks aren't enough to develop an engaging soundscape. Please work on making all your instruments sound like they're in the same space and are part of the same or at least compatible sound palettes, so we don't have sopping wet guitar, booming 808 kicks, fake quiet brass, and dry thin vox all together. NO

I'm going to be upfront here: this gets a NO from me within the first 2 seconds. That ping-pong audio is out of control when listening on headphones. It's literally giving me motion sickness. So the rest of the remix is going to get only a cursory review from me because I can't stand to listen to it more than once. It's easier to listen to when the ping-pong isn't exposed, but it's still there and I can't handle it. I have some concerns with source usage. The groove is certainly similar, and in several places it makes use of the bass of the source turned into melody, but I'm not picking up a lot more than that. I'm not able to do a detailed breakdown myself due to the aforementioned problem, but I encourage other judges to do so. Otherwise, production and sound quality seem mostly fine. Nice techno trance tones, good full soundscape. Not a fan of the piano at 4:02+; in a rich soundscape, there's no room for a piano to breathe, and it sounds tinny. Otherwise no complaints here. I wish I could do a more detailed analysis, but it wouldn't affect my vote. NO

I didn't read the blurb, but I did see the title, so my expectations were also met. Thanks for the comparison track, Emu. I do think this remix is excessively dissonant, but dissonance makes sense with what you're trying to do here. I think Emu is being excessively nitpicky about the drums; the production could be improved, but it's a far cry from being a dealbreaker, and the stuttering arrangement is clearly stylistic and not a mistake, and I feel like it works. Solid pass from me. YES

I'm not in agreement with the criticisms about the beginning feeling underdeveloped. It's pretty representative of early chillwave. It's maybe on a bit too slow of a burn, but it has all the necessary elements and it fills the soundscape with deeply resonant synths. And if it hit full speed any earlier, it would be harder to stay engaging without cutting length or going outside the current sound palette, which I think works fine. Production could be very slightly cleaner, but it's well above the bar IMHO. I have no problem rubber-stamping this. YES

Source usage is definitely not a concern anymore. Nice industrial backdrop. I do find that backdrop to be quite repetitive, though. It's complex and interesting, but it basically never lets up. It gets morphed during the the middle section (2:15-2:39), and a few moments at the end, but even for few seconds, its essential character is unchanged. Fortunately, the track isn't terribly long. I'm not super happy with the static backing, but I don't think it's quite a dealbreaker. Otherwise, the track is creative and engaging. YES (borderline)

I love me some atmospheric black metal. Great sound, great performance. Definitely nails the brief. The elephant in the room is, as you mentioned, repetitiveness. For a 10-minute track, there needs to be a fair bit of dynamic content to hold the listener's interest. This is an issue with the genre as a whole, however, and in fact this is less repetitive than similar commercial examples. I don't like that this is standard for the genre, but I can't ding you for adhering to it. Soild work. YES

Nice, chill take. Good full soundscape. The biggest issue I have is the repetitive structure. There are some changes across the three loops, but they're not very substantial. I don't find myself sufficiently engaged for three passes through the same structure, melody, and instrumentation. The production could be cleaner. The lead tends to sink behind the pads, bass, and even drums. It has a very narrow-spectrum timbre, so it needs more presence to stand apart from the more greedy accompanying synths. I'm also not the biggest fan of the drops that cut out completely. They make me think my headphones have failed. It's a great start tonally, I just think the arrangement needs to be further developed to justify its length, and the balance could also use a small tweak. NO

Opens with some really loud, piercing synths. I can tell in the first few seconds I'm not going to be able to listen to this more than a couple of times. The ending also just sort of stops, with no resolution. It seemed a bit source-light to me, but I'm not going to be able to stopwatch it. Even after 2 listens, I need to let my ears recover a bit. Hopefully other judges will be able to provide more detailed feedback on the rest of the mix. But that one synth is enough for me to give it an immediate NO