zykO

ah, nice, you're familiar with the sword of truth... awesome, bro! yeah, i didn't really like that about it so far, either... however, you should watch the free 30 minutes of it on i-tunes... its free and the ten minute thing you watched was actually an abridged version of the actual first half hour which is considerably better.

sure it is, bud... it's ABC

yeah, the spread cremated me this year... this has been a tough year for betting, though, so there's grains of salt everywhere! still, how BLEH. here's to a strong second half surge! haha

they're going to butcher a lot of it. i don't think we're going to have all that rape and testicle eating, either.

http://www.legendoftheseeker.com/ now many of you might have already heard about this new syndicated tv series that's starting this weekend on ABC called The Legend of the Seeker. i'm imagining that a good contingent of the people that visit this site are probably into the fantasy genre so i figured i'd mention it... watch it. i am a huge fan of the novel series upon which the show is based. i've been reading the sword of truth novels since terry goodkind started writing them and they've not disappointed. i love the fantasy writing genre, in general, and consider myself adequately knowledgeable and well-read in it and i have always thought that goodkind was spectacular at making the completely unbelievable and fantasy sort of elements of the genre plausibly human... the world he creates doesn't really alienate you and deals with real world issues seamlessly... set in a world painfully like ours except with a little magic and we all love magic, right? i've never read a fantasy series whose characters were more painfully human than the sword of truth and the ending of the whole thing twisted my pickle like you wouldn't believe. if you do research on the book, you'd probably know that there is more to it than just a fantasy novel and it isn't just a story of good v. evil, either so it's worth picking up if you're interested.... additionally, there is now this show... the 1st half hour has been available on i-tunes for the past few days and i've watched it and i think it's gonna be good. it marks the return of syndication and of fantasy in a day and age overrun by reality TV and cop shows. those worried it'll be another xena should know that this is considerably more serious in tone and far better produced. only a couple more days!!!

i aint played in over 3 years

no, anso, i'm a timbale and this is my vulnerability encased in sound. a haunting source made to sing you gently to sleep. yes, motif pianos are the shizznizzle and this is no slouching arrangement. you don't belabor it with originality without losing the essence of the source and you deceptively stay very close to the original without it ever sounding like a cover. gorgeous work i live at a city corner, it so happens. i'm staring out my window at downtown long beach through blinds and i see lights and palm trees. this piece soothes me. YES

absolutely beautiful a very moving, engaging and sweeping interpretation of a dead horse suddenly risen to run unhindered through strings and bagpipes and some thick drums. this sounds straight out of braveheart. the chants do sound a bit out of place but not as an orchestration element... sounds as though they're mixed out of place, rather. either way. i can't complain. this nearly brought me to tears at a point, it was so revealing and real. YES

i love the intro. when the familiar CT groove comes in with the dnb drums, the synth is a bit too warbly for its own good and distracts me while listening. the drums are cool and i'll give this track at least the acknowledgement that it is good DnB. i don't like the arrangement of the source into the DnB structure, to be honest... i don't think it meshed well.. it sounds forced and out of place. the drums sounded for stretches to be a dnb loop of some sort but you certainly know how to work the bass in a dnb track. unfortunately the backbone completely overwhelms the lead synths. the arrangement is a trip. i think that is what i like the most about the track. it goes to nice places artistically and the spoken word is a very nice touch. there are times that this drifts into a sort of transient psychedelic place which is usually what amateur dnb artists fail at doing... their dnb just sounds like drums and bass which is considerably a different thing for anybody who is familiar with the genre still, the lead synth is incredibly critical to the track and it is buried too much. bring it out, vary up the drumwork just a tad and keep kicking ass YEScond.

actually the clean tone guitar work wasn't the problem... it was the dead distorted tone that came in and tagged along with the piano step for step. the lead work later on was completely out of place with the accompaniment... particularly the e-piano which sounded to clash with the guitar. the drums came in a little too late to salvage the track but even when they did, they were far, far in the background and didn't mix in well with the other instruments at all. the one saving grace for the track, however, is that the arrangement idea is a good one. the source is a very good source for what i think you're trying to do here but the drums are not engaging enough for the sort of breakbeat, driving thing you're going for... the piano takes up too much of the center stage when in reality, the piano isn't what pushes the track forward... it would be the drums and maybe the guitar... and they were the two things most poorly handled. still, this has potential but for now, it just doesn't engage the listener enough. i can see that you guys are going to eventually be very good once your craft is honed. keep at it. in fact, i still wanna see this done right so rework it and resubmit this shit. NOresub

there is never an end to the ice cap remixes. and better yet, there is no end to the electronica ice cap interpretations... has anyone ever tried, say, any other genre with this source? =) something tells me the answer is too obvious for me to have even bothered with the question still, this does have something a little more unique to it. it has a sort of rolling synth rock feel to it even if there are so many arpeggiated synths and pads. the lead work is so good that it almost singlehandedly makes up for the uber-verbed drums and the predictability of the track. the original sections were a very much needed break from the standard ice cap fanfare. there is certainly some concerns with the practically nonexistent bassline which is a big no no for this style of music considering how groovy and driving it is. i don't make it a habit to question artistic discretion but the bass really doesn't have much bite or presence at all. still this track is killer and i will give it a conditional vote on the premise that you dry up some of that reverb on the snare and bring out the bass a bit more. excellent stuff for such an overdone source, friend YES

wow like others have said, i had no idea this was gonna get up and obliterate me the way that it eventually did. this is a very fine take on the source, it has a great deal of dynamic and energy to it... it speeds up, builds into a frenzy, is complex through-out, interpretive, sounds great in the soundfield and all in all is creative as hell. but its soooo short its killing me... such a tease, you are, sir. fishy said it best... it bounces cheekily and the staccato is FEVERISH. i can feel my own temperature heatin up haha short, yes but this is a brilliant couple of minutes and a sure thing for any rygar fan. no question about it: YES

succession of witches is one of my favorite ff8 tunes and this certainly does it a ton of justice. the lead synth sounds a bit awkward in moments throughout this but i'm seeing how this is clearly the intended effect here especially with how the quirky synth instrumentation compliments the funked out rhythm. very funky stuff you got here... too short, in my opinion. hard to get into it when it ends as soon as you do. otherwise, this has it goin good. YES

hey thanks for the mention, friend in fact, i wanted to just point out that, while all of em are not on this site in particular, there is a series of tracks surrounding that "Of Transformants and Brevity" track that are also kinda spooky.. it was a trilogy but when i released "Of Twilight and Redemption" here at ocremix, it became something other than that haha i release these every halloween for the past several years (i missed a couple years, to be honest, though) and intend to pick the tradition back up... *wink* if you're interested just let me know and i can upload them (if you're familiar with Of Transformants and Brevity, most of them are along those lines). here's what they are: Of Darkness and Legend (Legend of Zelda) Of Transformants and Brevity (Final Fantasy VII) Of Futility and Hope (Diablo) Of Twilight and Redemption (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess)

of course, guys, this is inevitable and that time is coming where a lot of these guys are gonna start droppin. RIP Rick a brilliant artist.

he immortalized something i once said about him by using it as his sig quote for a long while: "Anybody who has a problem with GrayLightning has a problem with themselves." Don't know what happened to the fucker but he was one of my closest friends and yes, it is very weird how he just POOF

haha gray one of my best friends from the scene; we had lots of aim conversations. however, having been someone to do so myself, i can relate to the escape. it has a certain "into the wild" feeling to it but it is entirely realistic and plausible.

do you sleep? are you my twin? there are like only a handful of people i can say write as prolifically as this and it is indeed a short list. you have another few tracks you're hiding from us, don't you... well this is great. i am a real sucker for ff4 music and while i'm partial to ff7 material, you do very well to mold the two together. it's almost as though they're from the same soundtrack... it does get muddy. anso referred to it as thick... that's a good way of lookin at it. the stringwork is brilliant so it sorta offsets the mixing but it's still discernable. the instruments are great. i looooooooove that sine wave. its killing me. sooo, what else you got? YES

andrew, this is ridiculous. it's so good, it's almost a no-brainer. i don't think there are any arrangement controversies here and the production is top notch. i love animal crossing music because it is such an enigma of WTF and brilliance at the same time. i always tell myself i'm going to do an animal crossing mix but i'm afraid to mix my own insanity with the soundtrack's inherent insanity. but i, too, am tryin my hand at it for Joe's project the drums are very nice. the guitar work is subtle but sweet. the synths, especially the sliced, syncopated ones are cool as hell. i love the leads. oh you YES

these guys said it better than me: great use of the soundscape. one of the hardest things to do, i think, is present something that is expansive to the point that it takes over your head while you're listening. the intro of this sounds more like the theme to beastmaster than it does super metroid. the instrumentation and the orchestration here are ridiculous. this is very well arranged. i have to agree on the sample quality. some of the instruments do sound very thin and cheap but not in so much a defeating way. somehow you stuffed a lot of music into 3 and a half minutes. this probably should have been about twice as long but you never sounded rushed. very nicely deceptive. YES

haha COWABUNGA! raw. that's about the best way to describe this track. smart idea and actually that is the most badass aspect of this. the drums are way too loud in the mix, that's for sure. don't pan your lead guitar so far right if you're going to have such an empty soundfield. there's like a big gaping hole between the guitar that is hanging out in my right ear and the drums. the arrangement on the other hand lacks too much. they are fairly straightforward and the transitions are barely even there. the problem with medley's a lot of the time is that when all strung together, there is very little coherence. this happens here and when coupled with the terrible mixing, it grows grating. that said, i don't mean to say that your track lacks in EVERYTHING. your playing is great. not enough passion in your playing, as evident by the lack of any vibrato or any embellishment... this is just like an arcade soundchip haha. you have to vary up some of the things you're doing on the guitar itself. the energy is there in that sort of ghetto garage sort of way and you certainly know how to write rockin bits of music but you have to do something about the mixing and the arrangement in general. NO

It's hard to do something different and fresh with a source that has been done to death and Ice cap certainly has been. However, speaking in terms of genre, this has been a common treatment of the source... another trance track would have to do something that is entirely fresh. This had some great ideas, no doubt. The break in the middle is probably one of my favorite parts of the whole thing. However, just when i was about to really start enjoying it (i felt the first half was just too repetitive), I was met with more of the ice cap theme. In fact, while we're having all sorts of controversy about tracks not having enough source, there is such a thing as too much source and here, there is almost nothing other than that short iconic ice cap phrasing repeated over every conceivable stretch of texture in this track. some of the iterations are neatly accomplished through slicing and stuttering but not nearly enough to validate repeating it over and over without bringing in fresh elements. there is nothing wrong with being repetitive and it is not a genre bias. good trance incorporates complex melodies with a changing soundscape. this is close because the idea is good, the overall sound is good... but arrangement here is what lacks. NO

This track has an unusual aptness at validating its title. Listening to this almost convinces the audience that they, in fact, can see in heat vision. The track has a sort of polished tint to it, reminds me a lot of older Darkesword music.. The overall tone is crazy cool. The arrangement isn't as bold in parts as one might like it to be but it does plenty of original things on its own with the source so it isn't any kind of concern. In a sense, there is a fearless manner to the arrangement in that it tackles the source and doesn't mind reiterating it differently each time that it is rather than falling back on original sections to fill it out. Production is great although the drums sound distant and disengaged. I can recognize the drumkit, it must be the Hammersound acoustic drumkit, because I've used it more than a few times. This is by no means a poor use of it but it does fall back of the mix a lot. Other than that, I think this is a great way to coordinate the presentation and release of the project. YES

yeah like how he is a cards fan and isn't sure if THE BEST HITTER IN BASEBALL is hurt or not. and can't even spell his name. and yet still talks shit hahahahahaha

well, i won't say it is any surprise that harden is hurt... in oakland, he was almost always hurt. however, this is not "hurt" in harden's world... the cubs are commited to being cautious with him and i think that's what this is zambrano is almost back in the rotation. he, too, has an inflammed shoulder from throwin so damn hard (both z and harden put a ridiculous amount of mechanical strain with the way they throw... ala kerry wood and mark prior... is this a cubs thing? haha) but, what, missed a start or two? they're certainly beatable without z and harden but even in spite of their losing streak, the brewers have also matched their slump with one of their own so the cubs aren't pressing to get these guys back immediately. they'll just need em in a month and i'm certain the reason they're being shut down right now is so that they'll be there in october. plus it's a good time to get those bats going. hitting is contagious and they hadn't been hitting particularly well as of late, relying on all that pitching. well this might be a blessing in disguise for the cubs. i saw parts of the the rays/sox. this is going to be a test of will for the rays. this is very uncharted waters for them but i'm proud of those guys; they're real ballers.