*NO* Plok 'Palettes of Acrylic'

[DragonAvenger]

Remixer name: Jimmy & Bimmy

Website: http://jimmybimmy.bandcamp.com/

Name of game arranged: Plok

Name of arrangement: Palettes of Acrylic

Name of arranged song: Akrillic

Original soundtrack:

About this remix:

I've always loved the music of Plok. While the game is fun, the music is what really set it apart to me. I honestly believe it's one of the best soundtracks in the SNES library. It's eclectic and very original and the arrangements have a story-telling aspect to them. There is nothing like it out there as far as I know. While for Plok we did our own versions of both "Beach" and "Akrillic", we felt strongest about the latter one. They are both excellent but I remember lying in my room as a child and pausing the game just to be able to listen to the song over and over. That was 18 years ago .

After some research on the interwebs, we realized that there aren't many true full-fledged remixes of Plok out there. There is a cool remix of the title theme on OCRemix and some arrangements on YouTube, but that's about it. We've been wanting to do remixes for this game for over 5 years now. Finally, we've gotten around to it.

To us, Akrillic combines classic 70's prog rock elements, odd time signatures and more Doors type of stuff with its mesmerizing organs and long solos. We stayed pretty true to the original arrangement but added some orchestration and acoustic/e-guitars. For the drums, we kept the original beat for the most part but made it sound more organic and generally beefed things up a bit. I can see how people might not want to get themselves lost in a Plok remix, as some of the songs can feel rather intimidating for a remix job at first. That's how we felt at the start anyways. Ultimately, it was completely worth the journey and a fantastic experience all in all!

Edited June 1, 2013 by Palpable
closed

[Vig]

Man, you're killing me. The source is insanity. First I had to figure out if it was in 5, 6 or 7 (6 by the way) then I had to try to identify the start of the measure, then I had to figure out whether that thing in the middle is a B section or somebody having a stroke.

Once I figured all that out, I started listening to your remix. I'll say to your credit that I really enjoyed your remix in a "hey maybe I'm losing my grip on reality" sort of way. It would be really nice if I could follow along easier and maybe leave the experience able to hum the melody, but I'm not going to hold it against you. I like the energy, your biggest problem is a lack of direction. Where's the climax? Where's the ending?

Great start, not done yet.

NO

[Liontamer]

First off, pardon Vig, he's a noob at Tim Follin music. I can't agree with him saying stuff like "your biggest problem is a lack of direction" if he can barely wrap his head around the source tune. This was a fairly straightforward/cover-ish arrangement.

Mixing sounded rather flat, probably on account of the leads sounding too distant, and the panning being too wide. On headphones, it's pretty apparent. Not a fan of the snare sound either; it's too loud while also being kind of a flimsy sound.

Dynamically, this had some minor moments, but it felt like this was always stuck in second gear and never chose to deviate from that through further personalizing the performances. Points like :57, were all opportunites to do something a bit more creative with the energy level or textures to provide better dynamic contrast.

Cool instrumentation at 2:32, though most of that got buried by the lead at 2:39 and there wasn't much interplay or synergy with the supporting writing. Watch the levels of the different parts there so that they do a better job working in tandem.

3:48 does a little rinse-and-repeat with a little more energy and some added guitar underneath which at least offered something different for the finish, even if not much. The fade out didn't bother me personally, but it definitely can come off like a lame cop-out finish.

It's a pretty personalized cover, and I think I can get behind the arrangement on that level (and putting Follin bias aside). Unfortunately (and the soloing-style stuff from 2:49-3:20 made me finally realize this), the big problem for me was that the performance just feels so flat, stilted, and devoid of expressiveness. Everything's played competently; it's not as if this is poor music in any way, it's just such a dynamically flat performance. It doesn't mean this has to wildly swing the seesaw the other way with super-pronounced ups and dows and ultra-expressive Dream Theater-esque prog rock.

I'm close to passing this as a well-personalized cover, but there's gotta be more expressiveness and dynamic contrast behind this for me to be fully confident in this one. The bar not much higher than this song, but the arrangement still needs something more. I think Jimmy & Bimmy are awesome, and hope I haven't offended them, since them <3'ing Follin means I <3 them.

NO (resubmit)

That said, I thought while I could apply a little bit of these crits to "Beach Noise" as well, and the mixing was on the muddy side, that that performance there was more expressive and could have a decent chance of passing here if the mixing was cleaned up a little. I sincerely hope this isn't the last we've heard of 'em. Listen to them on their Bandcamp, Judges Decision readers!

[Palpable]

Gotta love it when Larry has covered what I want to say. The panning was strange and the drums very flat. They needed more bite for sure. A lot of his critiques about this not leaving second-gear were on the money, and having stronger drums/bass would help the energy a lot. You've got some good ideas here, but the execution isn't up to the same level.

NO (resubmit)