OCR00416 - Radical Dreamers "Dark Promise"

[Ginnsu]

Radical Dreamers 'Dark Promise'

When I first got a taste of DarkCecil13's work, I must say that it was kind of bland. It had a very strong flavour of poorly done tracker (see modplug) work. Don’t be expecting any of that here. I get the feeling that DarkCecil13 has gone to great lengths it improve his style to a point where it is sure to be appreciated by many. This mix merges a very tasteful jungle drum beat with an excellent soft chime and xylophone melody. Add this too your Radical Dreamers flood collection.

[mDuo13]

I was all set to give this ReMix a fairly bad rap, and then I heard the last 20 seconds, done in a music box melody. The percussion is decent, and the background synths are good, but the whole mix lacks some of the creativity found in other remixes. I love the bongo beat in the beginning, which seems to fade until it is nearly gone. The background synths aren't quite moody enough, and the whole mix seems like DarkCecil13 is holding back. The reserved nature of the song is somewhat made up for with the music box at the end, but I would have preferred it if DC13 really expanded a lot more. I bet if he re-did this song now, with all the skill he's gained over the last year and a half, it would be much better. Even so, it's worth its spot on the site and deserves to be a part of your Far Promise collection.

[jordex]

Ah wow... Reminds me alooot of that movie Donny Darko, I love it! Just the bass line is a bit weird, other than that I love it!

[Dionyseus]

I love the humming tune that starts in the beginning until approximately 1:27.

[OceansAndrew]

A bit bland overall, it has a few new cool ideas, and nice percussion, but overall it is a little too similar to the original.

The mood is well done, but it's not near as interpretive as it could be. I would have appreciated

The music box and pizzicato strings are well sequenced, and the textures provided by the percussion make this more than a straight sound upgrade.

[DragonAvenger]

This is a strange mix. I like the percussion, but it doesn't really fit with the melody. Same with the background. The music box section is nice, but I've heard similar things many times, so it's nothing new to me. I feel like it's too many parts thrown together that aren't really locked cohesively together.

[Kizyr]

The best part of this piece is the percussion, and perhaps the background strings/'humming theme' (sorry, can't quite tell which). The melody is good, but then again that's mostly on account of how closely it fits the source.

Main down-sides are that the last 30 seconds seems a little tacked on, and the first 30 seconds I'm kind of waiting for it to get into the main theme or something substantial already, leaving only the one minute in the middle to really enjoy. KF

[DJMetal]

"Dark Promise" indeed. To be perfectly honest, I liked everything about this mix. It's sorrowful, remorseful, and maybe a little blackened. And the music box at the end...man, it just feels right. Enough of my gushing, though.

It is a little conservative when it comes to the melody, but with a source as good as this one's, it doesn't bother me much. It does feel a little restrained like mDuo13 said, but to me that simultaneously adds and detracts something. On the plus side it keeps things simple and I think that this mix benefits from that bit of minimalism, but on the downside it feels like you could have made a much more complex and interesting piece with this as the foundation.

[Evil_Cronos]

The mix begins rather slow and leads into a deeper sound compared to the source. It's interesting and well done, but not very memorable. The music-box ending is the highlight of the mix and is very good. Perhaps the track should have began and ended with this music-box style, which would have done a good job of framing the song. Overall pretty good, not my favorites but still a good job.

[justinj212]

working my way up OA's list of songs to be reviewed, I finally get to listen to something I've actually played! Very nice and subtle piece, has a good emotional feel to it. I really like that music box theme at the end, goes very well with the concept in the title. Brings to mind a music box held to remember an old promise.

[Bahamut]

Ah, one of the songs from the Radical Dreamers wave from before I visited the site.

I'm not terribly high on this song - it sort of just relies on the power of the original melody without taking it further. Production-wise it hasn't aged terribly well either.

[42]

This really shows its age; it's more focused on stylistic rather than arrangement variations. As such, it does have a dark, damp, distant, cavernous, foreboding vibe to it. Ultimately, this (and pretty much all the other Far Promise wave from way back when) are all nice little showcases for the theme but when compared to modern day remixes just feel average and simplistic. They're in no way bad, but there's just better stuff out there nowadays.