OCR04758 - *YES* Castlevania: Symphony of the Night & Metroid Fusion "Gallery of Mysteries"

[Emunator]

Artist Name: Moebius

My idea was to turn the two selected songs into a Periphery / Tigran Hamasyan - inspired arrangement. They feature time signature changes and polyrhythms derived from the two inspirations.

Since Environmental Mystery is very short I decided to use it both as an ostinato figure that plays almost throughout as well as the main motif in the section at 0:55.

Collaborations on this arrangement:

VARIA: synths
pixelseph: guitar
paradiddlejosh: drums
Cyril the Wolf: bass guitar, mastering

Everyone also contributed a lot of feedback in the arrangement and production phases.

[prophetik music]

opens with some synths and a heavily distorted lead bass tone (reminds me a bit of billy sheehan). drums are hard to hear outside of the cymbals - they're doing some neat stuff but i can't really pick them out. the marble gallery melody really works well with this kind of aggressive, forward-driving approach. 0:55 is kind of a transitional section, and then we get another instance of the melodic material at 1:09.

there's a big rising tone and then it drops off for a break at 1:33 with some fun tempo synced synths. i can finally hear the drums for a bit and they do fun things! there's a bunch of proggy band-synced elements before we get back to a consistent 4/4 groove at about 2:00. this goes through the main section of melody from marble gallery and then references the end of it near the end of the track. there's some rising action and then it's over - not super prepared, but fitting given the way the original ends.

this is indeed mostly marble gallery, but that's at least partly due to how simple environmental mystery is. i had trouble picking out the elements of EM actually - i'm assuming the early repeated arp pattern was a highly-transformed version of EM, and i can hear it a bit near the 1:00 mark, but that's it. as an arrangement of marble gallery, though, i think this has no issues with source usage.

this is a really fun dash through the melodic material. the melody of marble gallery is sufficiently twisty that playing at the speed demonstrated here is impressive, and the various rhythmic elements really work together to make a fun whole. i wish that the drums parts that weren't cymbals were louder, and that there was a touch more rhythm guitar, but i appreciate the aggressive nature of the arrangement and the excellent performances of the musicians involved. nice work.

 

 

YES

[Liontamer]

Well, shit… that certainly fuckin’ rocked…

Get outta here!

YES

[MindWanderer]

Definitely a piece made by some folks who know their metal, loud and proud.

The arrangement seems a little thrown-together, almost collage-like. Starting the melody on part C is really confusing.

The production sounded hollow to me. On the bass end, there's a thinly-produced bass and an even thinner kick that I can barely hear. But on the other end of the spectrum, the lead guitar plays pretty high, the cymbals are awfully hot, and there's a synth arp further adding to the highs.

I'm actually on the fence about this one. The arrangement is, overall, a lot of fun, and the performances are great. But after a dozen listens, the high-centered soundscape is just too piercing. I can see this going either way, but for my vote, I'm going to have to send this back for a rebalance.

NO (resubmit)

[Chimpazilla]

Awesome mix of these two themes, and the performances rock!  Great arrangement, although the ending is a letdown, it is so abrupt.

I have to agree with MW though, the production is not doing this any favors.  The volume balancing is mostly ok, but there is a significant lack of lows in the track, causing the bass to sound extremely weak, and like MW, I can not hear the kick AT ALL.  The snare is there but it is so weak.  I'm on the fence as MW is, because the arrangement and performances are so strong.  But this is not the best mixing iteration of the track.  It will have so much more impact with the lows coming through and the kick and snare really audible.  That said, if the project files were gone, I would change to YES to have this arrangement on the site.

NO (borderline, please fix the mixing and resub asap)

edit:  Changing to YES based on the last thing I said, but I'm going to share this feedback with the artist and see if we can get a better mix.

YES

Edited June 9 by Chimpazilla

[Hemophiliac]

So I actually think the Environmental Mystery part is actually playing as a fast piano ostinato throughout most of the track.  It's just buried under all of the guitar/bass/drum chaos all on top of it.  Piano/synth just doesn't cut as hard or as powerfully as any of those other parts.

Can't hear the kick very much unless it's double pedaling between other notes or during the intro where there is less going on. Actually the splash/china/crash are just so much louder then the rest of the kit, that kick really needs to come through more especially in this genre. 0:55-1:10 is also just chaos and I have no idea what I'm supposed to focus on there as a listener, but you whip (with a whip sound?) us out of it back to sanity.

This just barely squeaks by for me, and I feel like I'm in the same boat as Chimpazilla on this one. The mixdown certainly has problems, but the arrangement is tremendous. Also need to highlight the awesome performances from pixelseph and Cyril. The arrangement is good enough to pass despite some flaws in production.

YES