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awww... the profanity's a bit much for some? that's cute too bad my ability to manipulate the english language eloquently is not hindered by it...

there is something to be said about music that is accessible to those who are not familiar or not impressed by its present genre. its no shocker that most people think new age is just a series of bell twinkles and cheesy string sections. we've all heard the yanni blasting, we all know how funny enya sounds to everyone who still thinks you need to have pipes like christina aguilera to be a beautiful female vocalist... but there's this guy named thegraylightning who will keep smackin you in the face with music that can make a grown man cry... no matter how seemingly soft it may seem. let me first say that freemind is an extremely talented pianist. it is fitting for a track titled eros to be performed in part by a greek pianist but moreso by a guy who seems to have the touch for the sort of delicate softness of romance; this is a piece that could not have had some key junkie bangin away at ivory with fancy classical runs, etc. this had to sound ethereal and that means it had to be played ethereally and shoot me running... i think that's what he did. extremely impressive. this guy is good. and then there's gray. good god, man. i remember when this guy first started putting stuff up. i remember very distinctly a track that nearly knocked me clear off my feet - tears of a swordsman. and i thought to myself, this guy is really REALLY REALLY good. it was funny back then because he used the standard tones of his synth rather than fancy soundfonts like most of the community. and he got a lot of flak about it. but then there was this inescapable sense that he had an extremely refined sense of musicality... that he put things together with a very calculatted touch... not like what most people think of new age music... everything goes where it was meant to go. the strings are very yanni, no doubt abuot it. that is a soft spot for me as i am a huge fan of yanni's orchestral work and think it is alot harder to write strings in that style than it is to write them in the more traditional classical approach of writing string. this is admirable work. also. the way the structure of the track ebbs and flows... this is an emotional work. eros, indeed. i dunno, i'm ranting about how i feel about this track and that can lay waste to my entire afternoon so i'm out of here. if you haven't listened to this yet, change that. ~weed

i guess this isn't a bad time to chime in. by the way: lyrics. let me get a few things out of the way - i'm definetly not white, kids. in fact, i grew up in the ghetto in south sac with a predominantly black group of friends and essentially being egyptian and constantly picked on by misinformed suburban kids who wouldn't know there was more to a country named egypt than camels and sand if it bit them in the ass, my only recourse was to be taken in with those who considered me and accepted me as one of their own. those are my brothaz. they're my niggaz. the word nigga itself, in the context i've grown up using it and hearing it used in, is a vernacular term directed at persons in a friendly manner (take note of the fella who walks in at the beginning of the track while i'm smokin a bowl.. thats my nigga perry ellis.. he actually had climbed in through my living room window when i was first recording the track and it was such a natural event that i had to leave it in.... he hollers at me "weed, nigga... whats up nigga?" he isn't calling me an african american slave. he isn't maliciously attacking me with a "ghat" - in fact he had walked into my room with a couple 40's, a ridiculously bright hawaiin shirt on and two extremely hot white chicks behind him. you're an idiot if you don't understand the meaning of nigga. ... like it was mentioned before, its alot like how white boys go around sayin "duuude... broooo" and sound ridiculously retarded. i think the message of this track is getting lost in the whole argument. there has been this longstanding misconception amongst some of the members of this community that there is some sort of rift between ocremix and vgmix. we're a fairly obscure community... and we got to stick together. what pretz is doing with ocremix is an awesome thing that everybody needs to recognize. the same goes with the staff at vgmix. this track was recorded last summer when vgmix 2.0 had not yet gone live and there was a growing tension amongst some of the kids in the community about whether or not vgmix was a valid site or if you could depend on it for good videogame arrangements. i started to see people getting polarized by the whole argument and it was starting to get very irritating... so what better way of addressing the issue than with an arrangement about a game that is the very epitomized message of friendship. for those of you who are not familiar with asterix, its a game based on the popular french comic about two gaulois (to whom the french are descended) fighting back against their evil roman oppressors. they are a ridiculously dorky duo (very odd couplish) and in the process of their many adventures, asterix (the short, slightly smarter one) gets in trouble with the romans and is taken away... obelisk (the big dufus one) goes after him to save his best friend... his homie... his nigga. in alot of ways, the arrangement is an opportunity for us to show that we can combine flawless instrumentation (ubik is the man... don't even question it) and orchestration of lyrics to a purpose... the lyrics are in fact about the game (if you've ever played it, you'll recognize a few cute nuggets of goodness snuck in) and not just a series of rhymed words for the sake of rhyming them. this isn't really about bustin caps and rollin on dubs, 4:20 nigga!. this is about friendship and about sticking together no matter what. till the end of time. that you can, through the convenience of a videogame, travel across distant lands, dark dungeons and tricky booby traps... to your death itself... for a friend. for your nigga. one luv, y'all. peace. ~weed

this is good sstuff. a definite change of pace. i dig

i wanted to extend my thanks to everybody who commented, reviewed and/or emailed me personally about this track. this was a very personal and intimate work for me and i'm genuinely warmed by such a positive response. for all those wonderin, yea its definetly vincent's theme. the piece is about dark places and the things that lie forgotten in the morbid shadows of rooms and minds... as is the rest of the trilogy, i suppose but "transformants" more so know wats funny? pink floyd and queensryche happen to be two of my most prominent influences and over the course of my life have been amongst the bands i've listened to the most. i'm thoroughly flattered by their mere mention; they are idols of mine. again, thank you. ~weed p.s. Part III of Trilogy of Dark Places will be this year's halloween indulgence... the track is currently titled "Of Disparity and Reason" and is the final installment of the halloween-themed trilogy. The first two installments were "Of Darkness and Legend" and "Of Transformants and Brevity"

weird... there are certain stretches where i'm left layin on the floor and screaming because the guitar is ripping my innards out and hanging me from them... impressive soloing. the transitions are funky as hell and tho i don't understand their purpose or lack of presence altogether, i do think they add character. i don't know. these guys are sick. and that guitar still hurts my insides. ~weed

well.. there are definetly some good ideas here but i'm afraid the best of them may be concentrated in the beginning and the end - basically the arrangement of the windmill theme. it's well written but everything else is a jumbled mess. you can solo but not very convincingly. the biggest question for a guitarist is when to and when not to do something... there's alot of the "when not to" goin on here... my main concerns are with the transitions and some of the phrasing is just a little odd. but what i do like... excellent little runs between 2:10-2:26 that i wish you had cleaned up a bit cuz they showed a lot of promise. there are times where you exhibit a clear understanding of jam lead and there are other times when the song walks around headless. the cry baby section is interesting but again i sense a taste of disparity and gratuity in it... the tone is nuts, of course... but we expect that from the cry baby; i'm actually recording a track with a cry baby solo of its own... can't blame you for using it. again, i guess my biggest qualm with the mix is its lack of coherence as a piece of music.... it has fine details to it that will perk my ears up but then as a whole, bores me. you are a good guitarist, dude - i hope you write something a little more engaging next time, i'd love to hear more of your work. ~weed

bow before the graylightning enuff said.

excellent jazz phrasing, awesome tone and a very well thought out arrangement of the original, i think. i especially like the way it flows between 1:30 and 2:00 - brilliant trot into the solo which incidentally is craftfully played - reminds me at parts of lee ritenour and at other times like a morose santana... europa-like... i'm not sure how to characterize this tone but it is brilliantly used (despite being a standard acoustic/clean tone combination, it still stands on its own two feet regardless and manages to offer something slightly unexpected but difficult to pinpoint..) good work, bro ~weed

"it doesn't go anywhere" that was about as ignorant a thing as you could have possibly said; because its not goin anywhere for you (maybe all that is at your disposal for "sound travel" is a fuckin tricycle) doesn't mean it doesn't go anywhere or that its a weak work of music... graylightning is one of the most talented and knowledgeable new age composers in our community and if you are into the genre, you probably already know that. this piece was a winner and deserves to be here. excellent work, bro, again, your chord progressions are crafted, you are getting better with choosing your tones to match the music... the atmospheric embellishments that you do with strings is very remeniscent of an RTS, kinda like age of empires... it has a very OLD feeling to it and the sweeps between 1:40 and 1:55 are good stuff as far as the judges debate: there cannot and should not be uninamous decisions very often when it comes to a work of art because even if something is deemed a great piece, it is unlikely that everybody agrees on its quality/integrity/purpose. as far as whether the system works, that should be in another forum and not here. i'm glad the song went through because its a great work of art. p's

at first listen, i was unsure whether i was hearing an experimental venture into new places for this community or the confident workmanship of refined art. from the very first drop, my mind expanded to match the intensity of the ambience. this is a well conceptualized, arranged and executed work of art by DPL and crew. Fluss der Liebe has the tone of an introspective monologue... i would be curious to know what the piece means to its creators i was surprised that when the piano came in, i was not caught off gaurd. freemind's contribution rings loud n clear in perhaps what is the best fitting piano ive heard in an ambient new age vg arrangement in a very long time. excellent match to the much more synthetic and overpowering pads in its background... which incidentally had a very intoxicating progression - i love the tonal structuring you guys did with the synth chords and the piano lead. you can sense graylightning's style of orchestration and chord voicings throughout the song and the tone is reminiscent of tears of a swordsman. amazing stuff, man. 1:55-2:00 is GOLD. at about 2:30 is when israfel's contributions are most felt - need i even say that michael dover is quite adept at writing engaging orchestral accompaniment? the deep strings and well written orchestral drums of that section drive the whole section to what is truly an epic climax at 3:50. you can pick out each part of the piece per contributor very well which is one of the aspects of it that attracts me the most; its almost as if you are able to visualize each individual's contribution simultaneously... not very common in collabs. excellent work, gentlemen. ~weed

amazing work. i'm speechless. i see alot of me in this guy except i see it about 10x refined. i love this song in its present raw form - it works perfectly. i disagree with the title but that is a matter of preference of the artist ~weed

well the reason it seems like an original with added guitar solos and FFX hymn is because, essentially, thats what it is. i'm the original guitarist who worked on this track with jared and saw this piece develop from a writhing sonic fetus . this was an original track by jared which transformed magnificently into FFX goodness as an excuse for a collaboration between mr. hudson and myself what can i say? i am awfully bias in reviewing it: it is the sickest tune on this site, right now, hands down. let's just say, it takes a drummer to write drums that good. the strings are used exquisitely and the piano that assists the track down from its peak and through the breakdown is smoooth... very VERY smooth. altho i would have preferred the tone-fiend approach i had in my takes on the song, the guitar was extremely well played and well arranged (for the person who mentioned it, yea, its playin along the hymn rather than the original) - that last solo is GOLDEN. and the production is what we've come to expect of hudson studios. all in all, an excellent piece regardless of how much vg is in it and how much of it is jh ~weed

i'm not a fan of the genre and in fact, for the most part, try not to listen to most stuff of this style however, this mix is one of my favorite arrangements ever and by far my favorite breath of fire arrangement. There is no doubt that anytime this guy touches a tune, its gonna be good, but i didn't know it would be this good. i got this song a loooong time ago, like over a year but i hadn't yet commented on it. the introductin is very beautiful, the piano evokes a melancholic mood better than even some of the more popular "sad" remixes. the intricacy with which its arranged is spectacular... sets the mood for the rest of the tune. the transitions are the key to this piece, i think. the transition into the synth at the very beginning caught me so off gaurd i nearly cried with joy. in any case, the groove is moving, it is constantly moving forward - the drive of the tune is strong and willed. very good synths and a very persistent bass presence. in the end you feel in the song and a part of the beat. its not a coincidence that i looked down at my body and found that i was dancing to it before i realized that i was. excellent work of art, and if anybody hasnt gotten it already, go get it. ~weed

greatest. piece. ever. ~weed