Ionyze

This is a great arrangement. Pixie's vocals are reminiscent of Evanescense. She has real talent. The male vocalist hit his notes and can carry a tune, but his inflection and the timbre of his voice is just a little square. I enjoyed the piece.

This brooding, powerful piece was an excellent selection for a trance remix. Blind is truly talented, and his technical polish has matured a bit since "Fear Factory" from the Donkey Kong Country project.

This song is noteworthy for the awesome tone of the lead. It's very hard to make a lead that is substantial enough to carry a melody but still satisfying to the ears without getting repetitive.

I love remixes that don't water down the melody of the original material. And what a sin that would be with Castlevania! This remix deserves its praise for tight arrangement, for a great new presentation of a memorable CV melody.

I prayed and prayed this would be finished after I heard the WIP. It only takes until 0:14 to discover that Beatdrop knows what ingredients to use, how much of each, and how to best mix them. This is a good piece. It's got a style of its own, with a strong bass and a hard synth lead with some high-frequency distortion.

Pretty good. Simple and sweet, like the description promises. Polished in overall composition, but some individual elements seem just a little neglected. The drums really have no acoustic meat to them. The vocalist hits all his pitches and harmonies, but I agree that the song would be more enjoyable in a slightly higher key. This reminds me a lot of Star Salzman's "Dreams Come True" mix from MegaMan X, with maybe slightly less energy and acoustic polish. Overall fun to listen to. Makes me wish Star Ocean saw American store shelves back in the day.

Some have knocked it, but altering the prelude arpeggio and giving it to soft middle brass works great here. I love it all, and I tolerate the snare.

This well-titled mix is the best release of the month so far. Orchestral and rock ballad. Some have accused it of trying to be two songs at once, but I disagree. I find it to be a symphonic rock ballad with an extended ampless intro. As far as the orchestra goes, the horns sound better than the strings for once. French horn and middle brass really shine here. The solo violin and the string ensemble are unremarkable. I have yet to hear a convincing orchestral snare sample, and this piece doesn't make much ground there. Too much high-frequency, not enough of a sustained sound on the snare. The rock is where it takes off. The violin takes the Prelude melody, with french horns doing an imitation of the harp arpeggio, all over a shimmering string pad. I will disagree with djpretzel, and instead compliment this particular choice of arrangement. Very well done. The violin and flute counterplay in the middle act of the rock section works as well. Goat's axe finally shows up in the final act, and the transition is very easy to swallow. The composition is truly inspired. Nothing canned here, just a soulful solo over the Prelude melody. The song finishes epic, with an amazing repeating chord progression in the final minute. One listen to this one justified the title.

There we go. That's how pop/jazz is done. I call it "jazz" because it has an element of tonal freedom that lands it just this side of unpredictable. I call it "pop" because it still retains enough melody for easy listening. This song will lead me to this remixer's other work. He's obviously a master of weaving subtle touches into a professional-grade tapestry. The koto sample is a bit rough around the edges, but it fill the staccato runs well enough.

This is currently my all-time favorite OCRemix. There are some remixes that have great flavor -- immediately listenable, even if they don't have lasting appeal or depth. There are others that have soul -- unique and important remixes, even if they won't make your mix tape. Here's one with flavor and soul. It's sweet pop from an inspired hand. No empty production here.

AWESOME job adapting the original theme into a seamless-smooth backbeat for mellow rap. This is well done. I found it accessible, and R&B isn't my favorite style.

Heard this one on the audio stream, now I'll have to download it. A definite keeper.

This is a good mood piece. Listen to it twice to fully appreciate it. It's based on one of the less memorable themes from FFVIII. Really, though, it takes enough liberty that it would be hard to identify out of the cold. The feel of the piece really matches the final disc of FFVIII, where this song is heard. This is not something you will sing along to, but it's obviously the product of a skillful remixer.

So Beatdrop is just dropping his efforts because he might not make the album? His song was my favorite WIP by far. Sounds like an overreaction. Anyway, I have some input on the format of these album projects. We waited for years for the Sonic 2 collab to finally come together. The results were mixed. There were definitely some gems, but others were filler-grade. Instead of sticking to the "one track per song" quota, why not measure them by quality? It looked like there would be two awesome Battery Zone remixes. Wouldn't it be better to have two awesome remixes from one song than a filler-grade cover of a separate track?