Digital Coma

Hi all, This is Digital Coma, the "director" or organizer for this album. It's been more than a decade since I was last involved in OCR and Kong in Concert feels like a lifetime ago, but I thought I'd drop by and say a few words after all these years. It's pretty neat to see that KiC still has an audience almost 12 years on. Looking back, it's safe to say that I didn't always know what I was doing with what was to be the follow up to OCR's very first remix album. We did things on the fly, we struggled to put together a team, and there were plenty of mistakes made along the way. But what started out as a small summer side project with no lack of naysayers and haters ended up a surprisingly big hit, and in the end we had a solid homage album whose impact in the community I'm happy to see continues today. I won't say much more since I like that there's some legend surrounding how everything came together. But I do want to give thanks to everyone who's enjoyed the music over the years, and a special thanks to the remixers, djp, and OCR for making it all possible. Cheers, DC

I think the proper jazz classification for this would be "a mess." The arrangement is packed with slight harmonic and melodic expansion ideas in its short time span that's mostly clutter, and the instrumentation is GMIDI grade. NO

A successful attempt at straying completely from the original theme, too much so in fact. The drumbeat is horrible. At least the instrumentation is thorough. Short and basic original song. NO

Marble Dancefloor had simplicity going for it, but it doesn't work the same here with autopilot drums, clashing harmony parts, uninteresting synth choices, and extreme repetition. NO

Don't like the canned audience noise. The thought that comes to mind is "mish-mash": instruments doing their own thing that happen to be playing at once with some random soloistic parts mixed in for good measure; a clashing and directionless arrangement. The "solos" in particular irk me as they have no place in the song and simply come and go, especially the weak Amiga sounding synth at 1:54 and again at 2:20. Some riffs and passages would be pretty cool if they were cohesive and were developed. Ending is just more of that hackneyed audience noise. NO

A rather sparse medley in minor of many themes. I wouldn't mention the average quality of the samples if each didn't stand out so much in this thin arrangement; very little texture. More notably, the takes on each theme are conservative and are barely developed before the song jumps to the next. Mediocre. NO

Simplistic and generic usage of synths, repetitive, and unoriginal. NO

I don't think recording this arrangement on four separate pianos worked out very well - trying to commingle each "line" hurt the already fragile dissonance and sometimes created plain dischord. The actual performance of each layer is obviously fine, but together the four turned out a little messy. Interpretation and arrangement are okay, but development between each idea and theme sounds short and incomplete. Not too resolute, but going on the side of NO

Very nice art. Did Ari make those CD cover pics or did someone else? Someone else, we don't think it was Rob Saunders.

I'm posting for Ari - grab the full cover package including jpegs here: http://supertux.com/~aasulin/ROTC_Covers.rar The final covers that weren't released are also included; direct links to them are: http://supertux.com/~aasulin/rotc_front_final.jpg http://supertux.com/~aasulin/rotc_back_final.jpg

Supertux was down earlier, is fine now.

I remember this. I told him a year ago not to submit this and to stop submitting in batches.

I'm almost sure you used a midi of Fear Factory to make this because of how you left the notes unchanged and just restructured them. The trance surrounding the original song's melody is very weak and simplistic and the melody itself is sequenced badly, such as the sluggish organ starting at 1:56. So some (not even all) new instruments playing the exact same notes in differently ordered patterns with incredibly sparse drums and synths for support. Very weak. NO

X100

The mix is very, very uneventful from beginning to end, and it's encoded at 96kbps for no reason. Nothing else to add.

This seems to be the only song from the game that's mixed. Uh, the guitars are just covering the melody for a while. Not sure what you two are talking about arrangement. OK, some ska-ish change-up at 1:30. Now we have an original bridge. Now back to covering the melody. The percussion is constantly on auto-pilot. The guitars are lacking in high-end, low-end, and clarity; played well, but not mixed well. For such a recognizable and covered melody, I would think that more variation and deviation would be in order for rearrangement. The song only begins to offer something new when it's half-way done. Good ending though; there's the variation I wanted in the rest of the song. NO

Something went very wrong in the mixing here; the instrumentation is completely lifeless. Organs are very floody and the synths, bells, and piano are dry and stiff. There's just no attention to the sonics. Besides that, the arrangement doesn't offer much new beyond slight comping on the same Matoya melody. Not a good attempt at dance, or Cyndi Lauper maybe? NO

GMish harpsichord doesn't cut it. Start and stop transition at :50 is ugly when it should have been smooth. Very good interpretation of the theme, but the arrangement lacks in development and fluidity. NO

This is what you call shrill. Very very bad piano, very very bad strings. Random drum fills. And it repeats itself. NO

Was there any point in making a sequel to Yoshi's Island? Piano patch is bad. String patches are okay, just sequenced terribly. This sure is sparse in instrumentation for a symphony. Lots of original material that has nothing to do with the theme. Very empty. NO

The Synth guitar LEAD is suitable, but the bass synth guitar is shit. The key of the song is muddled by bad notes in the lead, and there seems to be timing issues too. Drums are on auto-pilot. Repetitive. NO

Very nice use of stereo, the ambience benefits. Production is super all around. Instrumentation is light but effective; although the acoustic guitar strumming is pretty cheap, piano and strings are great. Why is the sudden percussion at 4:08 chorused/flanged? Doesn't fit it at all. Too much use of reverse at 5:00 continuing until end. There, I reviewed your original song. You developed the ambient source material nicely but in a completely unrelated direction; that's not rearrangement. NO

Nice opener, I'm ready to go to sleep. Wait, the rest of the song is just as soporific. Just noticed this is encoded at 96kbps. afk NO

Gotta love that synth pad and bass. Nevermind, they just repeat. Orchestration does nothing. This is like a quarter of an intro for a song. NO Cool, it's the same as the menu screen original. Great attempt at expansion.

This is basically a repeating pattern with a piano lead that occasionally solos (which reminds me of bliss). No development whatsoever. Distorted synth gets old, stacatto two note bassline gets boring. Now I'm listening to the original. No surprise, there's nothing to it. If you're going to pick material like this, your mix obviously needs to develop in an original direction while staying true to the "theme's" spirit. NO And don't try to gip the submission system again. No one "needed" to scratch your previous mix, which some of us already spent time voting on.