OCRA-0053 - Final Fantasy IX: Worlds Apart

[The Orichalcon]

I'm slowly reviewing and editing my reviews of the album's tracks. I just wanted to post my first impressions.

 

katethegreat19 is above and beyond the standout on the album. "Tribe of the Sandy Treehouse" is by far my favourite track on the album, which is ironic since the source material is my least favourite piece from the OST. Brandon Strader has to be applauded for the contributing three amazing tracks to the album as well.

 

My favourite tracks from first impressions, in no particular order:

Tribe of the Sandy Treehouse

Vamo all Django
Lunar Rebellion
Craic in the Castle Walls

A Rose in the Storm

Spirits of Gaia
Four Score and Six-Eight
Miles and Miles Away
Zero World
Arxidopitra

 

I'll probably post a full review up in a month's time once I've had a good chance to listen to all the tracks properly.

[Kizyr]

I still need to listen a few more times through to give my full opinion, but so far I must say most of the tracks are just amazing. It's really what I hoped for.

 

One thing specific though:

The version of Poolside and Amanda looked a lot strange to me, not fitting to the original mood of course, and it was a kind of sacrilege to me. 

I went to sleep, woke up and I suddendly found myself under the shower screaming "I'LL WAIT FOR YOOOOOU UNTIL OUR SOOOOULS ARE TOOORN APAAAAART".  

 

Ok seriously all of Poolside's songs do that to me, too. I was singing "Shine Tonight" in the shower for weeks after that was posted. KF

[Genoism]

Amazing album!

 

My absolute favorite are (in no particular order)

 

You and I

A rose in the storm

fixations

vamo alla django

in the hall of the gangster king

save the queen

to be forgotten

freyas theme

doomed lovers

zero world

ambitious whispers

[pmac]

I listened to this a few times, you guys did great. I'm not sure who controls the mixing + mastering of the whole album, but the tracks fit very well together. Briggs starts out with a really strong track that captures the wayward feeling of journeying around FFIX's overworld, and each track continues strongly. The genres vary heavily but it certainly works, where each track generally has a genre that reflects it. 

 

My only gripe is the track "Birth under a Blue Light." It really fails to capture that unique two-sidedness of Zidane being an adventurous vagrant, but at the same time is a soulful, rich and thoughtful character. The acrostic, dark fuzz of an arrangement really fails to capture that. 

 

Also, where is Kingdom of Burmecia theme? The Burmecia theme is one of my favorite themes of all time, it's honestly very surprising of all tracks to cut, the organizers thought that that one would be appropriate to not include. 

[Mirby]

I was singing "Shine Tonight" in the shower for weeks after that was posted. KF

I hate you so much right now. I must listen to that song just because you mentioned it.

@pmac: There's Unforgettable Silhouette, in which the Burmecia theme is incorporated into. Same with Freya's Theme. It may not be the entire one, but they got the two songs it's part of. Perhaps they didn't feel the need to remix the whole song because of that?

[Josh Whelchel]

I hate you so much right now. I must listen to that song just because you mentioned it.

 

 

This is how we'll take over the world.

[Xanadite]

Listening to the whole album right now. Seems really nice. Been lurking the site for years, but I decided to create an account just now.

Fun fact: Arxidopita would translate to "testicle pie" in Greek (source: am Greek). Neat track though.

[80hd]

I know it has already been mentioned numerous times, but as a lurker since ~2009 who has used ocremix as a treasury of amazing works to facilitate my creative works by drowning out the world around me and immersing me in things familiar yet not... I feel compelled to share my thoughts about one piece in particular... To Be Forgotten...

I was an avid fan of the FF series from the day the first installment available to those of us in the United States landed... VI was the last in the series I could truly dedicate time to... by chance, laid up after surgery while overseas in the Corps I was able to enjoy FFVII thanks to a friend... By the time Final Fantasy IX was released, life had already overrun my perimeter and was running roughshod directly over my very soul.  I barely got into VIII before it was swept away by a lack of free time... long after IX came out, I finally found time to play through it... but there's something lost in adulthood that can never be reclaimed, and though I made it through the entirety of the game it just did not resonate with me like I am sure it would have had I chance to be injected into the timestream at a different point.  The one part that always stuck out to me was Freya and Burmecia... the score captured this so perfectly, and was the one artifact that I carried with me from my experience with the story.

While I appreciate several pieces on this album (The Knight of Woeful Sorrow is excellent!), To Be Forgotten is simply stunning in every way.  I cannot even begin to fathom the level of effort creating a monument like this entails, but please know that I am in awe of it every time I hear it.

+1 Soul Touched

 

 

[Clem Fandango]

A lot of the music I listen to on this site is for games I've not played in a long time but they're still imprinted on my memory. So it was interesting to experience the FFIX album after having recently replayed the game thanks to COVID destroying the possibility of many other kinds of leisure activity. The thing that stood out in playing the game, compared to all other FF games, is the sheer variety on the soundtrack, and I think this album does such a great job of showcasing that.

Some of the tracks are kind of in the vein of the source material, just presented in a fancier way - the Zaghnol hunt music, for instance, you could put the track from this album right into the game and would notice little difference. Others are a lot more out there, and that's fun too. If I had sat down before I ever heard this album and written down thoughts on what I hoped for certain tracks, there's a 0% chance I would have said anything like what ended up for "Not Alone." The same is true for a lot of the tracks with vocals here, whether that's the lament-filled interpretation of the Dali theme, the intense performance behind "Not Alone," or the ethereal sounds of "Unforgettable Silhouette."

I had a new appreciation for IX after this recent replay and now that I've listened to this album again after that replay, I feel the same way about it, too. Another great effort from everyone involved.

[vroom]

Extraordinary album. on par if not better than voices of the lifestream...but this one has more variety obviously. whereas i find balance and ruin too much out of character.
A pity there was no kickstarter CD offering for this one :)