djpretzel Posted September 15, 2005 Share Posted September 15, 2005 Title: Dance of Aquarius Artist: majeliss Remix of Sonic 2 Aquatic Zone Well, this is a dance piece with some psytrance influences (mostly bassline) and Euro like voices. The remix is pretty basic and follows the generic style of trance/Dance except with more of my favorite PSY-ness. It's suppose to be an Epic piece, though i'm pretty sure the vocals and the ethnic percussion made it epic enough. And if your familiar with the wild pokemon battle theme, you'll noticed the original melody from start to finish. Merry part. -- Kudos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted September 22, 2005 Share Posted September 22, 2005 Pretty interesting mix, at least compared to most techno mixes we get. One thing I gotta say.. the voice clips were REALLY REALLY lame. Please ditch them. A lot of the sounds were kind of cheesy, also, like the ethnic percussion and 'booms', as well as the ultra-basic bassline and portamento octaved supersaws. It's almost a parody of the genre in how "poppy" it sounds for lack of a better word. That's not a terrible thing, but I do think more could have been done in the way of production and sound selection to make it less cheesy and more 'serious', perhaps. That said, the arrangement is pretty solid. The original theme (or parts of it) are apparent in different areas of the mix. Nonetheless, keeping more of the original progression, rather than relying on the goofy cliche stuff, would have been nice. Not to say that original material is bad. I very often encourage it, and I think that the variations made on the original theme are good. However, original material should be sensible in how it fits in with the source tune and the rest of the arrangement. I felt like for a song that wasn't even 4 minutes, a lot of time was spent on stuff that didn't really advance the arrangement and that didn't have to do with the original. Overall, this is a good effort, but I feel like it needs more cohesiveness of arrangement. The interpretation factor is there, and the production elements aren't too bad - but more tuning and polish would really help. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted September 22, 2005 Share Posted September 22, 2005 http://www.zophar.net/gym/sonic2.rar - "Aquatic Ruin Zone" Decent intro, though rather sparse. The claps at :33 were a good example of that. There's a lot of above average genre stuff going on, but the overall sound is very flimsy/tacky. "The Dance of Aquarius" voice clip at :50 sounded really ghetto, like it was recorded on a crappy mic and then given some weak effects. Way too amateur and trying too hard to sound serious; no offense against you or whoever recorded the clip, but it just sounds like a young teenager recorded it and thought it would sound cool and epic. All things considered, very minor issue, but still meh. Source melody was brought in at 1:16, but the synths used on counterpoint didn't mesh well up to 1:43. There's a lot of good, non-generic ideas here for the track atmosphere, but the production is very, very vanilla and leaves the track sounding unremarkable. What the hell was that "Dance of Aqarius" clip doing in there again at 2:23?!? Then you started doing all these effects on it at 2:26 to make it a focal point of the track, when it sounds straight-up beginner-ish. Meh. All the vocal stuff is just too corny and not well-integrated into the track. Can't believe that got brought back in there; turned a minor issue into a significant one. Regardless of any of that, the main thing that put me off was that the source material wasn't an integral part of the track. Some places where the melody was used in a straightforward manner almost felt like the melody had been stapled on top. Certainly not so with the more creative arrangement like in the intro. Pretty liberal mix going on here. I can hear all the connections involved, but they start going on excessively liberal tangents. You need to actually develop the melody here, not reference it 4 or 5 times and never develop it. Complete lack of a transition at 3:06 which was very abrupt. Melody felt stapled on at 3:21 as the beats behind it had nothing to do with it, just like 1:23-1:43. It was better at :40 when you had the other beats also arranging other instrumental lines from the original in a much more noticeable way. All in all, decent, but a very disjointed track. No real sense of direction or development of the material. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The wingless Posted September 29, 2005 Share Posted September 29, 2005 *LIGHTNING ROUND* -Lame, ubuiqitous [sic] unintentionally hillarious vocal clips -Source material used too sparingly, like canteen water in the desert -odd transitions at points -lack of focus, cohesion, or integration NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrayLightning Posted October 2, 2005 Share Posted October 2, 2005 I wasn't feeling the vocal fx either. The mix seems to have too many ideas not fleshed out enough. Every few minutes a new concept is introduced but it doesn't seem to lead into anything. There is a lack of cohesion here. My other gripe in the mix is it relies on the basics. You have one or two elements going then it's supplemented by basic drums and perc. The synth designs were aight. But they sounded rather vanilla to me. I'd like to hear more personal flair with this aspect, especially since it's so integral to this kind of mix. This is fun, catchy and a nice effort, but it needs more work and polish; particularly in the concept and execution. Keep at it, you're putting out promising works. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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