MindWanderer

Whoa. Lots of faux age distortion making the whole track warble. There have been a lot of lo-fi tracks in the queue lately, but this is a whole new level. I'm surprised it doesn't have more of a crackle to make it sound like an old record. The source wasn't immediately recognizable, but after a couple of listens it sank in. I'm amused that Larry had no problems with it in the previous vote, because his usual surgical timestamping method would result in cutting out like ¾ of the notes here. Nujabes's stuff does tend to cut out pretty abruptly, with no ending to speak of, so I see where you were coming from. This track is much the same. You ended it with a mass of distortion, so it's clear the track wasn't simply cut off, but you didn't write a musical ending of any kind. It's a cop-out; while better than just ending in the middle of a note, it still doesn't do what an ending needs to do. Even a fade-out would work better. I don't like the age effect, but that's mostly personal preference. My big beef is that ending. I almost never NO a remix based just on the ending, but this one's really bad. Even the distorted warble doesn't end on the tonic, which would be so easy. Maybe not a 5-minute fix, but not much more. So I think my vote has to be the same as Larry's was last time. NO (resubmit)

That's some dirty metal you've got there. I always have trouble with these "DOOM-inspired" remixes, because DOOM's soundtrack is surprisingly clean, and these remixes typically aren't. However, it is clean enough to make out the melodies, buried as they are under the drums and chugs. I'm of the opinion that this style of mixing is objectively wrong, but the entire genre does it this way, so I can't really object to it on those grounds. The approach is creative as hell. I didn't have any problems picking out source material despite the (intentionally) messy production. Great stuff. YES

There's definitely some garage-band-grunginess to this, but I'm personally not hearing any artifacts (other than amp buzz, which is intentional) or pumping. I can see the hard limiter in the waveform, but it's far from slammed up against it; it's cutting off very low peaks but they're still peaks; it's worse in the right ear, which is definitely louder but not by a ton. The arrangement started off very conservative but introduced a lot of fun riffs in the second loop that are more than enough to count as interpretation. The ending was brief, but it was a proper ending, certainly not among the worse endings we've passed. I'm not hearing anything dealbreaking here. I find it interesting that all three NO votes above are NOing it for different reasons: panning/mastering, artifacts and reverb, and development and resolution. While I agree that the mastering and length are areas of improvement, I don't think that they're enough, even collectively, to send this back. YES

Opens with a sample from Bravely Second (a confusing choice!); given that this is a SquareEnix game, which we can't accept samples from, this is instantly a CONDITIONAL at best. That has to go, for legal reasons. I had to double-check to make sure the guitar wasn't also sampled; it's buried so deep under those massive, pounding beats that I can barely make it out. As near as I can tell, it's just a layer of these soundscape-dominating beats played over the two sources layered on top of each other, and repeated many times until it fades out. It's an interesting starting point, but it needs a whole lot more fleshing out to become an entire song. Also if you're going to put your melody in the background, whatever is lying on top of it has to be absolutely masterful; it's very challenging to pull off. NO

What's with all the lo-fi pseudo-saturated submissions lately? Seems like it's all the rage these days. Perfectly fine atmospheric hip-hop beats. I admit it does seem to beg for rap or something to fill the middle space, but as an ambient tune to chill out to, it works just fine. YES

This is pretty quiet overall. I see it peaks at exactly 0 dB, but it doesn't seem to have any compression. I had to turn up my volume by about 25% over normal. The flutes are almost inaudible. I thought the cello was quite nice in the beginning, but the ensemble violin sample is very much not; it sounds extremely fake and mechanical. Then when the cello returns at 2:56, it conflicts with the violins and loses all its nice timbre, not even sounding like a cello anymore. The brass has a better tone, but no brass ensemble is ever going to end a note all on the exact same millisecond. So I have to agree with proph: The arrangement is quite good, with a lot of nuance and creativity, but the sample quality and production fall well short of our needs. NO (resubmit)

Interesting dark tone, somewhat similar to the original, but obviously with synths, and with jarring off-beat percussion. It's off-putting, but clearly intentionally so. Great sound design. The violin bridge is indeed a highlight, and I wish we'd gotten more of Niki's performance. It sounds off-key when it's reprised at 3:12, though. The ending is pretty abrupt. Again, I imaging it's intentionally disconcerting, but it still feels unfinished. Most of what I dislike here is a matter of preference and is probably on purpose. Everything that's supposed to sound "good" does sound good, except for maybe those clashing violin notes. Strong work overall. YES

Some nice grungy atmospheric almost-metal. Nice sound design, though it's coming through a little quiet on my end. Great dynamic changes in energy. I think strict timestamping might call this a little short on source material, but subjectively it feels fine on that front. I think it's a little more lo-fi than it needs to be, but otherwise I have no complaints. YES

It's very difficult to write tunes that are strictly chiptunes while making them complex and engaging enough to be listened to as standalone music. Unfortunately, sticking to a fixed sound palette does make a track sound repetitive, even if there's no actual copy-pasting going on. I do notice the subtle variations between the loops in this remix, but they're quite subtle. 1:08 sounds too much like a return to 0:11. The fade-out ending adds to the feeling of repetition. It sounds to me like you're not sticking to an authentic GB sound anyway—to me, the reverb sounds richer than what the GB could produce, and it feels like too many layers—so you might as well go the extra mile and use more tools than what it had. Change up the synths, strengthen the kicks. It's a good start, though. NO

Some nice chill piano with a vaporwave influence. Neat sound design, and a very different take while retaining a similar mood. I think the long bridge of near-silence (2:35-3:00) is a bit much, and it starts to fade out a little early (I can hear it getting quieter about 40 seconds from the end), but otherwise I have no complaints. YES

The amount of reverb continues to improve. Toms are still a little drier than I'd like, and to a lesser extent the rest of the percussion. The tails of the chimes mix with the pads to create a bit of a mess, but I'll live. The arrangement is a little static, but I feel like the bridge arrives before it wears out its welcome, and the bridge is mostly quite good. There are a couple of slightly conflicting notes in it, but they're not too painful. Ultimately I'm not hearing any glaring issues here. The percussion feeling out of place is the one thing that really grabs my attention, and it's not to a dealbreaking level. The cut-off ending does need to be fixed, though. YES/CONDITIONAL (on extending cut-off ending)

Funny how you can often tell what track a Super Metroid remix is remixing just from the title. Some nice synthetic DnB. Classic but still effective. Very tasteful use of SFX. I'm not the biggest fan of the fake guitar, but it does what it's supposed to do. Soundscape is a little bass-light most of the time, until the piano fills that role starting at 3:25. No major issues, though. Good job. YES

The epitome of "lo-fi beats to chill to." It doesn't excite me, but it's not supposed to. I wish it had more of an ending, but again I suppose you don't really want an "ending" if you're just chilling to a playlist. It works for what it's supposed to be. YES

I never realized before that the original source from the first game has Luigi's voice different in every loop. That's so much fun. I appreciate the transformations you did to the drum samples to keep things fresh without being schizophrenic, and the changes in sound palette were a lot of fun. The overall theme is a little canned and synthetic, and I would have appreciated a more acoustic sound when possible, but it does the job. The whistles go a long way to help this, in the ending. Even the snaps help. I agree with Larry that it's a very slow build; there's no identifiable source at all until 0:42 (other than the Luigi voice sample, which is a big hint at what's to come). Otherwise I didn't have any concerns with there being enough source usage, although the breakdown from 1:56-2:14 doesn't really go with the rest of the piece, and was the most canned-sounding part of all. I wouldn't mind a less obviously-electronic take on this, but I think it's serviceable as-is. YES

What an unusual take. The source material is definitely there from the get-go, but it's not obvious until 0:29, and even then the remix focuses on the supporting elements of the source and not the melody. It's a good exercise to the listener to not just focus on the melody. The mixing is indeed a little odd. That snare is crazy loud, and the rest of the soundscape other than the sax is a little flat. The e-piano is meant to fill the high end, but it's pretty quiet when it's not isolated and doesn't have a lot of shimmer to it. The cymbals are pretty quiet, too: I can barely hear even the crashes, and I wasn't sure for a while whether there were hats at all. Meanwhile, the bass is mostly in the sub and doesn't have a lot of presence to it. But the strengths are way up there. The sax and guitar arrangement and performances are stellar. The approach is unique and works great. I think the mixing is questionable enough that I wouldn't call this one a freebie, but I also don't have any qualms about giving it a YES

The musicianship is obviously of top quality. Cyril's singing is still a little pitchy and strained, but he does well enough. The production doesn't do them any favors, though: vocals need to sit on top of a mix, because they're always going to be the primary lead, but the mix here treats the guitar chugs as at least equal to them. Especially when both singers are singing in unison, each of them only gets 50% of the total vocal volume, and the guitar utterly crushes them. The two together make a tiny wall of sound instead of complementing each other, and it's almost impossible to make out the lyrics. The finale being a repeat of the chorus and then just ending is pretty disappointing. This would be the place for a climax, and instead there's just... nothing. Still, I'm with proph. The production is flubbed, but not fatally so. The ending could stand to be a lot stronger. With those two things corrected, I think this could be a site favorite. But the instrumentals are strong, so as it is, I think it's adequate. YES

I have to agree. This is an absolute wall of sound, and not in a good "fills up the soundscape" way. By the halfway point, there's just so much going on that nothing can breathe. There are so many parts that you can just barely hear peeking out every once in a while. It's so busy that I didn't even hear the Green Hill section until my second listen, because most of the accompanying parts are kind of static: the arp, the choir, the drums, and several instruments that function as a pad are on a near-loop for minutes at a time. It also sounds like it was reverse-balanced: the beginning, when there are few parts, is quiet and sounds crushed even though nothing is crushing it, and there's a thin layer of white noise. So, same take-home message as proph: Lots of good idea, but you can't hear like 80% of it. If you don't cut parts entirely, let them take turns so we can appreciate them clearly. Then there will be some production work to do, but the lion's share of the work is just giving the composition the space it needs to be audible. NO

The drum kit is definitely the weak point, being fake and very much on autopilot. But I'm not hearing any major problems with the rest. The timing of the piano is a little rigid, but not the velocities. The jazzy piano is creative and fleshed-out enough to me that it doesn't feel repetitive. It doesn't loop until 1:27, and it's not copy-pasta when it does; the chords change around and it doesn't go long before wrapping up with a subtractive section, which I felt was a perfectly adequate ending. The SFX mostly work: I particularly liked the use of the damage effect at 1:05, although some of it (like the charge beam and power bomb) were more obtrusive. I'm just not feeling the bulk of the criticisms above; I either don't hear the issues they're describing at all, or I think they're overblown. I think the strengths of this are enough to earn an unqualified YES

Brad's right on all counts, of course. This just isn't the type of creation we're looking for. I have nothing to add. NO

Really clever idea, which you realized expertly. I had a hard time making out the vocals every time they were sung alongside the overdriven guitar, which is usually after 0:57. I couldn't make out the lyrics at all after that point. It suffers from medley-itis a little bit. The Moon "theme," at a minute and a half long, is very long for a non-musical interlude. After that, it basically transitions into an entirely separate song; it doesn't have any connective tissue with the Deathcard theme that I can identify, other than clearly being done by the same artist. If this were an album, I'd be 100% confident this was a different track. I love everything else about this. The medley-ish-ness of it is my one big hangup. Our standards say, "Medleys must sound like a single song, not multiple songs pasted together." This absolutely sounds like two songs pasted together, if not three. I can buy The Moon as an overly-lengthy transition, but the Leshy part doesn't sound like it's part of the same song as the Deathcard part, at all. That makes it a standards violation. I would pass this in a heartbeat if it were submitted as two different songs. Unfortunately, as-is, I feel like I have to vote NO (please, please, resubmit!)

How did this not place well? I'm immediately checking out that month's DoD results, because it must have been one hell of a competition if this placed poorly. The musicianship is great, the construction and aping of Pink Floyd (without containing overt direct references) is well-conceived, the production is mostly top-notch (though the overdriven guitar makes it gets crunchy and distorted in the climax, 4:08-5:28, and there's an odd spike in volume around 5:00). It's hard to believe you're as inexperienced as you claim. I do think that the vinyl crackle SFX is a little over the top, especially going on for as long as it does. And the voice acting is not the best, but when you're working with FFVIII's cringe-worthy dialogue, there's only so much you can do. You're well-justified in being proud of this one. YES

I'm immediately struck by how much of a better soundscape this is than the previous version, as far as I remember it. Reverb on the pads and chimes is a little over the top, but the percussion is still pretty dry. The snares are a little dry, but the toms are very, very dry and sound out of place. The saw lead that starts at 1:09 is also much drier than the rest of the soundscape. The bass is a hair dry, but it didn't bother me until repetition started becoming a problem. Speaking of which, it's still pretty repetitive. Everything up to 1:10 takes strictly an additive approach, each couple of loops adding an instrument or a few notes. The percussion loop is "complete" at 0:40 and repeats until 2:15. The main hook, which first plays at 0:34, plays an awfully large number of times total, and I personally got very tired of it. at 3:39 it returns to the same concept as the beginning, which is fine conceptually as a bookend, except it doesn't really expand on the theme and goes on for another full minute. There's no climax or anything, it just winds down the same way it built up. Overall, kudos on the substantial improvement, but the same core issues remain: Reverb on the instruments is inconsistent, making them sound like they're not in the same space, with the chimes and pads at opposite extremes; and the overall arrangement is too repetitive, with insufficient variation to retain the listener's interest. I encourage you to keep working at it, though, as this was a massive leap forward. NO

Very pretty. Does a good job of being lo-fi chill without being repetitive. Great sound design and production. No complaints from me! YES

I try to be open-minded about Hudak pieces, but I was reminded in another vote that we need to be careful to judge all submissions on their own merits, not taking the artist under consideration. In that light, the mono-left section is a dealbreaker, but it's not the only thing that concerns me here. If you're going to use a retro FM synth palette, you need to be firing on all cylinders to create something either novel or period-appropriate, and I feel like this falls short. It's promising up through 0:41, but then it starts to ramble, with leads and harmonies that don't match up, and leads that are sometimes buried. 2:05 and onward has this problem as well, with leads and accompaniment that often don't play well together. The breakdown at 1:09-1:30 doesn't work for me, either. It's lengthy, minimal, bland, and doesn't seem to serve a structural purpose. There are a lot of really cool ideas here, as I expect from Michael. The general idea, of an energetic synthwave take on these sources, is sound. When everything is firing on all its '80s-inspired cylinders, it sounds great. When it gets noodly or experimental, it sounds less great. I don't think the creative structure was an experiment that worked well; even if that mono section were shifted to center, I think Brad's and Larry's criticisms about energy and pacing were dead on, and I'm not sure if the dissonance I'm hearing is a result of "detuning" or just mismatched part-writing. I'd want both of those matters to be addressed if we see a revision of this back on the panel. NO

I'm afraid I have to agree with proph. This is a very long burn: it's nearly 2 minutes of intro, 3 minutes of a static loop, and a minute of wind down. The synths are bland and quiet, and the overall sound is flat. I don't really have anything to add that Brad didn't already say, so just read his critique and take it to heart. NO