[OCR01066 - Castlevania "Belmont Lounge"]

This isn't cheesy at all, it's amazing. In some places it's like a cross between Castlevania and Persona. That's unbeatable.

The way this thing flows, you'd think it was orginally written as one piece. The author (Dan what's-his-face) gives these cool little Castlevania tracks a worthy second coming without resorting to doing a boring heavy metal mix or butchering the original work with a shithead techno mix.

This is basically one of the few ReMixes worth keeping on my hard drive.

[OCR01056 - Ico "Save Me (OCR Edit)"]

I don't read this forum or post any replies, but I thought I had to say something about this ReMix, coming from one of my favorite games.

It's great to see an Ico ReMix, but I can't say I like this too much. The original Ico sound track wasn't much as stand-alone music (that is to say it was meant to be heard while playing the game, not on its own -- the structure of a stand-alone track is fundamentally different than that of an ambient track) but it was great stuff nonetheless.

This ReMix is a little too incoherent. I normally hate all techno-ish stuff, because techno tends to focus on flashy effects and not on intelligent arrangement (personally I prefer arrangement to flash, such as with ReMixes like BottledMetro from Sonic 2 (sorry, I forget the author)).

It's a decent Mix, even if it is just techno-fying an ambient track, rather than working with the original track to make it more of a stand-alone composition worth listening to on its own. But it's the type of thing you listen to once then forget about, moving on to more intelligent tracks like SunkenSuite (Super Mario 64) or aneurysm's TheDarkReachesofSMW (now that's what I call a ReMix).

(I don't listen to music to "zone out" or anything like that. In fact, I'm insulted when people say that music is for "zoning out", because in a way such a statement is akin to calling all musicians drug dealers.)

I admit the ReMixer didn't have much to work with in regard to source material, but this ReMix gives me the idea he doesn't really understand the original track very well. It's kind of like how The RZA rapped over O-Ren Ishii's theme on the Kill Bill OST (a track that appeared rap-less in the movie).

Of course you're all free to insult me or start in with the "who the hell are you to say such a thing" nonsense, about how no interpretation is wrong or right and blah blah blah subjective wishy-washiness until the end of time, etc., but like I said I don't read these forums so I won't be back anytime soon. Sayounara and keep working hard.