OCR04380 - *YES* Metroid Fusion & Metroid Prime "Serene Spacefish"

[Emunator]

Contact Information

• Remixer Name: ExperimentalSoundLab
• Person Name: Jamie Anne Leibowitz
• Email: 
• Website: https://soundcloud.com/experimentalsoundlab
• User ID: 25506

Submission Information

• Name of game(s) arranged: Metroid Fusion, Metroid Prime
• Name of arrangement: Serene Spacefish
• Name of individual song(s) arranged: Serris Battle, Sector 4 (AQA) Aquatic Level Control Zone, Phendrana Drifts Main Theme

Source Breakdown:

 

Serris Battle, arpeggiator - Starting at 0:26 and through the rest of the track, highlighted in solo at 4:11

Sector 4 (AQA) Aquatic Level Control Zone - 0:34-0:40, 1:52-1:59, 2:25-2:32, 4:40-4:46

Sector 1 (SRX) - Source track very briefly at 0:49, not included in arranged songs because it's a direct source pull

Phendrana Drifts Main Theme - 1:33-1:36, 2:48-2:52

Serris Battle, slow rising melody - 1:59-2:13, 3:04-3:18

 

I've been sitting on this one for more years than I care to admit, but the announcement of Metroid Dread and the fact that Metroid Fusion is vastly underrepresented on this site finally pushed me to hit the submit button. Be the change you want to see in the world, right?

 

This started out as a much more energetic track, but I needed to slow down the source to make sure I was getting the right notes in that arpeggiator sound in the Serris Battle, and when I heard it slowed down my plans changed As it is now, the main focus is that melody with some small snippets of other Metroid soundtracks building up a bunch of layers in a (mostly) ambient track.

 

Part of my hesitance to submit this track was the very limited source material usage; it takes recognizable parts of the source but generally only very small bits of it, especially at the end where technically the arpeggiator melody is still there but it's more background while the featured part is original composition.

 

There's a plot to this track! The beginning section is Serris sleeping peacefully in its tank, a pleasant dream to the rhythm of its heartbeat, interrupted by a vision of Samus in Sector 1 (that's the sort of glitched radio interference around it). Serris falls back asleep and its dreams grow increasingly violent as it is infected by the X. Finally, the last major section is the actual battle with Samus, ending with a fall off and a brief moment of peace calling back to the beginning before Serris fades away.

 

Hope you enjoy!

 

[MindWanderer]

Thanks for the source breakdown.  None of the three source tracks have a ton of melody, you treated them all liberally, and they're interleaved through the whole thing.  So the breakdown saved us a lot of time trying to figure it out.

The result is a rich, chill soundscape that checks all the boxes.  I'm not sure that it fully tells the story of a sequence that ends in a battle, as it's pretty mellow throughout, but that doesn't matter for our purposes.  I'm not crazy about the static section, but I understand the decision.  Otherwise I don't have anything to criticize here; it's just a solid job throughout.

YES

[prophetik music]

i love music plots. thanks for the breakdown.

there's lots of fun sound design in the first minute. i appreciate the care taken to have lots of interesting percussion when they come in, since there's not a ton going on elsewhere. the steadily-increasing amount of distortion is a great touch that helps build intensity without just layering in more volume. 

there's a great build that starts around 3:18 in terms of intensity of timbres. it moves to a great payoff section that is nonetheless probably a bit too loud compared to the rest of the track.

the arrangement elements are definitely there. the breakdown is very helpful as they're fragmented, but once you know where to look, you can see them.

this is great work. there is a lot of nuance going on.

 

 

YES

[DarkSim]

Serene indeed! This is a very slick, well-produced piece of electronica that is definitely something I'd listen to playing Stellaris, No Man's Sky, or any kind of space explore-em-up. The sound design is excellent, and I love how you've used the stereo space with some lush reverb and delay to create a vast, expansive soundscape. It sounds amazing on headphones. The glitching and percussive elements are reminiscent of Phrakture's work, as is the style. Funny how you were considering a faster tempo, when you accidentally landed on this idea. It's a real winner.

I only had a couple of nitpicks with this one. The gating effect at 0:41 sounds like buffering, which might be intentional, but it just made me think my computer was lagging for a split second during playback and it broke my immersion for a second. Perhaps a slight smoothing on the gate might sound better, or a more natural rhythmic pattern. Also, some of the timing on the lead during the (excellent) solo felt a little off. These things only stood out to me because the rest of the production was so tight, though, so once again, great job on that.

All in all a really immersive listen, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening on repeat.

YES

[Liontamer]

Absolutely love the intro; sound design's awesome and the idea of slowing down the tempo's cool as well. Nice weaving in of other source tunes as well. By 2:00, I was wanting this to go other places, so thankfully at 1:59, the "Serris Battle" melody briefly arrived. IMO, this goes in one gear for too long, so I would have gotten to 2:39's section at 1:59 instead, but that's not a big issue. The contrast of the soundscape being so ultra-clean after 3:22 was odd for me; a different kind of padding would have worked better, IMO, and made the overall texture and tone of the track seem more consistant, but again, more of a personal taste thing as opposed to some sort of big flaw. Interesting concept, Jaime Anne, welcome aboard!

YES