m68030

Sonic Adventure 'Taikal Drum 'n' Ragga' Mmmm.. Juicy. I like. Wonderful skittery drum lines and a beautifully crisp lead instrument gives this track a wonderful atmosphere. McVaffe continues to kick my ass with no remorse. Cool.

Tecmo Cup 'Razors Theme (Guts Mix)' A nice dance track. I wasn't too big on the vocal bits, but they fit well. It feels kinda long though because it's a simple theme, but being a technoy thing, that's all well and good. neat.

I had fun writing this one.. As the ID3 states, originally I wanted to write a slow peaceful stringshit track. That idea quickly disolved when I realized the first chord sounded like the overworld theme. Ideas are so fleeting sometimes. it was very quickly downhill from there into my usual realms of laborously tweaked distortion and destruction. One day I'll do something that is beautiful and delicate. This would have been it, if I hadn't just gutterf*cked it half way though. The transitions are quick and dirty.. I sort of threw it together as I went along. "Hey, that sounds sort of line this theme, and that one sounds like this one..." and Hey, this doesn't sound half bad. I dont really think DJP likes my style, which is fine, because he at least puts up with it. (: And I think enough of you get a kick out of my little head trips that I'll probably keep churning out the dirty bits for you for a while to come now. Anyway, I'm done ranting.

I know i've given Praz a lot of stife over this mix... it's not that I don't like it, because it's really a great arrangement and shift in style, as he's stated... My problem is that it just feels like it's falling ever so short of the beauty of the original, and that pisses me off violently because it's so damn good, but there is that one undescribable something that keeps it from being jaw dropping. It makes me fustrated to even think about it, i love the original so much, and this is such a great arrangment, but i'm repeating myself now and starting to get fustrated, so I'll stop.

Zillion 'Inside the Roadhouse' Dum dee dum dee dum dee.. Such a bouncy little bass line and a wonderfulicious chippy lead line that makes me want to slap someone. It's amazing, i can actually listen to this one with headphones, a first for a djp track. Cool.

OCR00673 - Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross 'Molding of Destinies' Beautiful. I really enjoyed this one. Nice and smooth. You know the monkey machine isn't always a hardcore industrial grind your ass on a rusted cog fan. No, sometimes I need something just flat out gorgeous to listen to. and this would definitely fit the bill.

hostile but cuddly? Like a giant concrete teddy bear that can rip your arms off but knows no reason? I dunno, but this remix definatly has some nice stuff going on. The break beats are particularly hostile sounding. Very sharp and fast. The lead synth has sort of a smooth coldness to it.. I wouldn't call it very cuddly. Maybe around the 1:33 mark when the drums walk off stage left it becomes a little less evil hostilish. It's a little more cuddly there.. but we already know it has teeth, so I'm not gonna go rubbing up on it. nice work.

Final Fantasy 'Hostility' Probably one of Pollard's rougher sounding mixes. The patches used just don't seem to be up to the caliber we've all come to expect from him. However, if you're looking for a good mix of FF1 battle music you don't have too many options, so don't turn your nose at it so quickly.

Final Fantasy 'Beginning of the Fantasy' Nice combination of heavy drum thumping with swelling and sweeping strings. A harp covers a lot of the melody, occasionally stepping aside for other strings to build up the theme. A shame it's only 3 min long.

Final Fantasy VIII 'Liberi Fatali Overhaul' Matt Pollard really knows his stuff. This is a great example of how throwing a drum track over an original can sound great. And since he's better than just slapping down some dirty looping he builds on it with a chippish organ patch, sort of a dirty saw wave thing. Chewy.

Robocop 'CPC Zone' I love chip tunes. Absolutely adore them. And it's almost 6 minutes long! Slowly developing into a ravenous dance track with an acidic bassline and happy-go-chippy leads that chirp and blip all over the place. OCR needs more music like this, but I doubt people really appreciate them. I do, and I wubbles it.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 'Dub Island (Bashment Riddim Edit)' Great arrangement here, with wonderfully clean instruments. I particularly enjoy the steel drum section. It's a little too precise to really capture the loose impromptu feel of a Caribbean steel drum performance, but that's ok, because something fast and wild just wouldn't fit into this machine tooled track. I like.

Ninja Gaiden 'Vengeance' It always depresses me to hear a song starting off with shredding guitars and be less than 12 minutes long. I'm depressed a lot. Anything less than 6 minutes just doesn't give you much time to develop anything. This is a straight up guitar cover that fades out much too quickly. Go ahead and grab it. You'll enjoy it, while it lasts.

Secret of Mana 'Time in the Clouds DX' An interesting mix.. moving around trying to decide just how it wants to go.. switching between orchestral sounding arrangements to soft ballad, then to piano and back again. The instruments don't sound half bad either.

Dragon Warrior 'Thou Art a DJ' Ah yes, the classic four on the floor dance track with the 2 measure long snare rolls and stabby lead. indeed it may be the backbone of modern electronic dance music. If that's your thing, then this track will do it. A great theme done in a cookie cutter genre.. Not the highest energy mix I've heard, but it's not terrible.

Bionic Commando 'ASSAULT' *Insert obligitory comment about how djp can't hear high pitched noises here* An early djp remix, this one is another classic djp track. djp's style is usually pretty easily picked out among OCR tracks. Nice instrumentation and arrangement that feels very much like the original NES sound in timbre. Almost like someone ripped out the CPU in an original NES and replaced it with a 50Mhz RISC or something.. interesting.

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 'AmIEviL Dark World' A little bit more straightforward electronica than many of AmIEviL's other tracks, this Dark World mix is short and a little less refined sounding then many of his other works. However the last 50 seconds or so, when the lead line finally breaks in, it's a nice solid feel. A shame it's only the last 50 seconds or so when this one really shines.

Final Fantasy VII 'Costa del Sol DANCE' A wonderful Latin salsa mamba whatever dance track. The piano has a little swingy up beat feel, and minimal vibes give this a nice open loungy feel. Feels like it would fit in just fine at a club or bar in Costa del Sol.

Tetris (GB) 'CheDDer' Thud thud thud thud. 303 303 303 303. Hi, I'm a dance track, and if you can't tell, i'm going to make it very obvious. Go find a DDR pad and play Tetris with it, this song playing. I'm sure that'll make you feel better.

Shadow of the Beast 'Journey' Such a nice clean sound. Very open and broad. The piano and bellish pads have a wonderful ring and blend together quite well. The drums also do not over power the rest of the sound. It's a little fragile sounding, but it's such a great arrangement it just fits together. Cool.

Castlevania II 'Bloody Tears Inspired' Very nice interpretation of the Bloody Tears theme. The original aspect puts a nice spin on the theme, building off of it in a totally new melody, but still maintaining the feel of the original. Neat.

Legend of Zelda 'Essential Links' The reverbing on the drum lines causes a constant hiss from the higher bits. The rest of the remix is a simple synth cover of the classic Zelda theme song, backed by a simple bass line, and later a timpani support line. Nothing too fancy.

Super Ghouls'n Ghosts 'Ice Mountain Symphony' Mythical sounding strings and flutes start out this light hearted cover of the Ice Mountain theme. I rather enjoy the ethereal quality of the instruments and theme. They fit together very well. A shame this one is so short, but you can only get so much of a good thing.

Punch-Out!! 'Dream Fighter' Excellent work from Scott here. The reverbed piano intro plays on the intro theme before bringing the original theme in a pizzicato string lead. It all sounds soft and smooth. however You might notice how hard the piano sounds. That's because he's about to bring in some classic Peeples 'tear your ass up' break beats. Great opposition in the smooth strings and piano and hard hitting beats.

Final Fantasy VI 'The Atomizer' Whatever Mustin was on, i want some of it. This three-car pile-up of movie clips, guitar shredding, and saxophone seduction is probably the single most bizzare thing we've heard out of Mustin. Check out the Haunted Hell (IncuCujoKonda D. Bros Mix) for more Mustin weirdness. Very cool.