OCR04599 - *YES* Journey to Silius "Level Three (Pulse Mix)"

[Liontamer]

I was a bit torn on submitting this one, but my inclusion of the piano section in the breakdown and how much it reminded me of so many of my older OCR remixes pushed me over the edge. Hope you enjoy! 

As for the game itself, Journey to Silius is yet another in a long list of stellar NES games that I have no recollection of from back when it came out. I think that by the time the game was released in the fall of 1990 I was already playing Genesis games and only kept an eye out for the highest profile Nintendo games coming out on the NES at that point.

I'm so glad it was eventually added to the Switch Online library so that I had an immediate and simple way to check it out. As expected, it was pretty fantastic but my terrible platforming / run and gun reflexes were tested to the point of frustration pretty quickly, though I was easily able to see what a cool game it was.

For a NES game, it looked great, and I could absolutely see the "Terminator" roots in the design. But from the opening screen, it was the music that grabbed my attention. It's incredible to be able to stumble upon games that came out over 30 years ago and still be blown away by the music once you start playing. The soundtrack was fantastic late-era NES fare, reminding me of some of the best Capcom music from the time. I definitely knew I wanted to cover some of Naoki Kakoda's excellent work for "Pulse."

I ended up selecting the Stage 3 theme music and decided to use sounds that are a little more associated with some 80's or more recent synthwave aesthetics. Something about 80's music and the soundtrack to a would-be Terminator game just seemed to go hand in hand.

Thanks so much! Enjoy!

 

MkVaff

Mike Vafeas

 

User ID - 6
 

Journey to Silius

"Level Three (Pulse Remix)"

Stage 3 Theme

 

[MindWanderer]

MkVaff submitting a Journey to Silius mix? What decade are we in?

Well, apparently the right one, at least for music. Mike's lost none of his touch; this is the same sort of EDM goodness that brought so many of us onto this site in the first place, nearly 23 years ago. Classic sounds, but some sounds are classic for a reason. Production is crisp and clean. The kicks are pounding perhaps a little too much for my taste, but otherwise everything is firing on all four cylinders, just as it should be.

YES

(This could stand to have a better title, though.)

Edited August 8, 2023 by MindWanderer

[Liontamer]

The piano from 2:44-3:25 was my personal highlight, so I'm really glad that soft touch was there to change up the energy of the track and prevent it from feeling too similar over time. Solid dance transformation with some more tricks beneath the surface.

YES

[Gario]

I think we all love Journey to Silius, here, and this is a very cool arrangement to go along with this. The pumping electronic drums and bassline carry the arrangement very well, and the piano in the middle provides some solid breathing room and breaks up the track right when it was getting static. I enjoyed the arrangement overall.

The production could use some work. In it's less dense moments it sounds fantastic, pumping with the beat, but when things get more dense (such as at 1:09, and especially at 1:50) much of the backing instrumentation gets buried behind that overcompression, with those intricate arps and such sounding like a pulsing pad. I get making music that pulses like this, but the track is arranged in a way that begs for it's individual parts to be heard. It's not *terrible*, but a lot is lost in the mastering of this one. It also feeds into the idea that the arrangement is static outside of the piano part, because while more textures and such are added throughout the arrangement no one can distinguish them from the rest of the sidechained instruments.

I like it, and I can see this passing regardless since it's damn close in my book, but I think either the overcompression needs to be corrected or some of the background elements get cleaned up to better fit the style, because right now the arrangement is sidechaining all of it's textures into a static mass of pulsing sound.

NO

[prophetik music]

initial hit sounds just great. melody intros at 0:15, and is pretty straightforward the first time through. gario's right in that there's a ton of fun background content through this entire first section, and the heavy sidechain reminds me of the corel prison mix that haroon put out 20 years ago. i didn't mind the hard sidechain through this section.

there's a break at 1:31, and we're back at it at 1:50. this section is very close to the first representation of the theme outside of the melodic doubling (and eventual tripling) until we get to the B section which has a direct countermelody added into the rest of the mix. this is still quite similar to the earlier section.

there's a hard cut at 2:44 for a piano interlude, which was both needed at that point and unexpected. it's nicely written and builds back up nicely to a final blow through the B melodic material before toning it back at 3:53 and reducing down to a final hit.

this is mastered beautifully. we rarely get tracks that have such a well-defined freq spectrum. the remix sounds awesome and the kicks are appropriate protein-rich.

this is a piece of cake for me. i get not being into the heavily-sidechained sound, but the arrangement is fine and the track's overall sound is great. nice work.

 

 

YES

[Chimpazilla]

I love the heavy kick and deep sidechaining on the bass right away, but when the first lead comes in at 0:13, I can barely hear the kick anymore.  That lead (or, two leads, one an octave higher than the other) is way too loud and has zero sidechaining (or, not very much sidechaining) so it is just dominating the soundscape, drowning out the percussion and backing arps.  At 0:41 there is an additional lead sound added, that one is nicely wide and heavily sidechained so that's good, but overall the combined lead is too loud and feels pasted on top of the soundscape instead of nestled into it.  It is actually a bit fatiguing to listen to in this condition.  It doesn't help that all the leads used are very heavy in the high-mids.

The piano breakdown is lovely, although it feels almost too sparse following such a busy section before it. I wish the breakdown had just one or two extra elements in it like maybe a percussion loop to keep it attached to the rest of the material.  Not a dealbreaker, just a comment.

I wish a few more varied timbres had been used to keep this mix interesting, as the writing is on the repetitive side.  An instrument changeup, primarily for the lead, would have helped.

This is very borderline for me and I'm actually fine if it passes as is, but I feel that the leads are just too loud and too dominant, and that one lead (or the two-octave layered lead I mentioned) needs a touch of sidechaining (or, more if there is some now) to tuck it into the mix better than this.  The mastering sounds fine to me, my issue is mostly with the volume balance of the leads and the level of sidechaining of the leads.

So, the other votes are saying "too much sidechaining" and here I am asking for more sidechaining.  I honestly think that what Gario is hearing as a "static mass of pulsing sound" is not from master overcompression but from too-loud and under-sidechained leads!  Call me crazy, but that's how I hear this!

NO (resubmit, borderline)

[Emunator]

I actually am hearing a fair amount of sidechain compression on the lead synth in here - especially the release tail on the lead synth, I can hear plenty of pumping. It's most prominent in the final chorus of the arrangement. I think it might just be a volume issue, like Chimpazilla said, and that the synth is occupying a similar frequency range to much of the other instrumentation. It could probably do with a little more sculpting and some volume drops on the lead.

That said, there's a lot that IS working about this track. The sound choices are all cohesive and gel well together in a retro OCR fashion, but with a bit more body and depth than I would expect from something from that era. The piano adds a lovely throwback electronic character. The beats are meaty (protein-rich is something I've never heard used to describe drums before but am in LOVE with that turn of phrase). The overall mastering is beautiful, even despite the balance issues. I ultimately came out on the affirmative side on this vote, and honestly it wasn't even borderline for me. This is good stuff!

YES

[Gario]

2 hours ago, Chimpazilla said:

So, the other votes are saying "too much sidechaining" and here I am asking for more sidechaining.  I honestly think that what Gario is hearing as a "static mass of pulsing sound" is not from master overcompression but from too-loud and under-sidechained leads!  Call me crazy, but that's how I hear this!

I think I hear what you mean - if some of the elements were more sidechained then there would be fewer instruments unintentionally dropping in and out due to overcompression. I think we're on the same page, here; if this was fixed with more direct and intentional sidechaining to give instruments space that'd probably help address my concerns, too.

[Chimpazilla]

That is exactly what I'm saying, Gario!  Ironically, additional sidechaining will help clear up any unintentional master pumping.  That two-octave lead is the worst offender, to my ears anyway (plus it's loud).

 

[DarkSim]

THIS is what we want. More techno! You've got a couple of verse/chorus type runs through of the source material, a breakdown, then a final chorus and outro. Classic stuff, but with more modern production. Read: loud as hell.

Immediately, it's a pumping groove. Love the synth tom fills, and the layered saw leads. That first 'chorus' at 0:41 sounds great, especially as the pad and arp begin to emerge around 0:55. The arp has some filter automation on it too, keeping the sound evolving as it plays through. The second verse/chorus run-through initially sounds similar, but there's a really nice countermelody running in the second chorus. I'd have liked something similar in the final chorus as well. As it is, the middle of the track sounds a bit more epic than the end.

I like the break section, but it's very sparse and could have done with some more ear candy in there. Not a fan of the 'popping' sounds during the break, which just sound like artefacts of sidechaining and not particularly intentional.

Nothing groundbreaking here, but nothing serious enough to hold this one back. A solid, slamming, synth symphony from Silius.

YES