OceansAndrew Posted April 8, 2010 Share Posted April 8, 2010 Remixer Name: Poolside Real Names: Josh Whelchel + Melinda Hershey Email: josh@poolsideband.com OR josh@jwmusic.org Website: www.poolsideband.com UserID: (Josh - 5487) Submission Information -- Game: Final Fantasy VIII Song: Fragments of Memories Comments: This song is about a real girl. I (Josh) grew up playing Final Fantasy and I absolutely loved the music, and Nobuo Uematsu has proven to be one of main reasons I am now a successful composer for games (I've written for the MTV VMA's, Ubisoft's TMNT series, among others, including the indie games Bonesaw and The Spirit Engine 2). Poolside is a project I started a few years ago as a way to express a more mainstream sound that I enjoyed, but it quickly became an electropop-mirror of what I was doing compositionally. When Melinda joined on the Poolside project we wrote a few songs together, but nothing has quite "shined" like this one, and I think that is mostly due to its genuine and heartfelt spirit - instead of singing about dancing and having a fun time, I poured my pen into a feeling that was very real and very, very strong. Naturally, this song fell into place from there. Taking the song "Fragments of Song" which was originally in 3/4 to the more mainstream 4/4 opened it up to some interesting and catchy melodies and I think we were really able to take advantage of it, as well as using the time modulation as a reason to add our favorite "glitch" sound. Production-wise we are sort of looking at a combination of 3OH!3 and one of those more modern rock bands, like Boys Like Girls or Owl City. I also think about all of those songs that become hits on the radio that have samples of other previously popular songs and wonder, how cool would it be if VGM did that, too? This is an attempt to realize that. SIDENOTE: Aquaria Composer ALEC HOLOWKA and I are both on a cancer fundraiser this year called the "Indie Music Cancer Drive," which last year featured Mustin, Big Giant Circles, and 2D Boy's Kyle Gabler (world of goo, anyone?) as well (who may come on again in 2010). Please check it out at www.cancerdrive.org or mention in posting notes (assuming it gets posted). Josh Whelchel www.jwmusic.org / (513) 549-2336 Indie Music Cancer Drive: http://www.cancerdrive.org source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv9llZE5INA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted April 11, 2010 Share Posted April 11, 2010 Fun as hell. Pure ear-candy. The melody gets relegated to being the supporting piece, but it's still there the whole time. I wouldn't be surprised if this song gets some haters on account of it being chipper Autotune pop, but fuck 'em. OCR needs more unabashedly cheery music. YYYYYES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 It's hard not to listen to this without smiling. Source is present throughout, and reading the remixer write-up adds more depth to the song as a whole. Diggin' this. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted April 12, 2010 Author Share Posted April 12, 2010 Pretty cool stuff, i like the vocal duet, and though there are few parts where the effects in the background don't seem to mesh, specifically at the beginning of the first chorus. Though the source takes a very prominent backseat to the new stuff (which is pretty much the only reason I paneled this one), the execution and presence of it throughout keeps it within what I think a remix should include. Very nice work, I enjoyed it a lot. yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHz Posted April 13, 2010 Share Posted April 13, 2010 Pop cheese factor is through the roof, wonderful. The source is in the background, and it's pretty soft, so I think it would be better if it were more prominent. It's still generally pretty audible, and it's interpreted in different ways, so I'm fine with this on arrangement. Production is definitely over the bar. I thought the male vocals were a bit overpowered in the section from 2:42 to 3:05 and could've been brought up a little bit, but that's a minor complaint. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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