Zandar The Weeble

Opening's a little weird, but when the bass kicks in at :41 it just locks down the love. I can't get over the awesome "garbled" synth at 1:10 either, THAT is a beautiful thing. bLiNd just stacks it up like a sammich to the lead around 2:15 but the setup is well worth it and very enjoyable. The funky synth bridge/industrial noise echo at 3:15 is just amazing. The whole piece has a "hazy wavering heat vision" or "liquid metal" effect to it and it's fantastic. An absolute must have. 9/10.

Opening's a little weird, but when the bass kicks in at :41 it just locks down the love. I can't get over the awesome "garbled" synth at 1:10 either, THAT is a beautiful thing. bLiNd just stacks it up like a sammich to the lead around 2:15 but the setup is well worth it and very enjoyable. The funky synth bridge/industrial noise echo at 3:15 is just amazing. The whole piece has a "hazy wavering heat vision" or "liquid metal" effect to it and it's fantastic. An absolute must have. 9/10.

I still love this mix. Barrel Volcano is one of my favorite themes from SMRPG and this one shows you can get a lot of a little. I'm not too terribly fond of 40 seconds worth of fadeout at the end, especially of a classy understatement like this piece, but that's just a personal thing. However I was very impressed by the :56-1:07 transition to bring in the piano, shows some discipline. The 1:56-3:24 piano outro to the synth lead messing about is GREAT stuff, especially the bring back around the 3:00 mark, but then the long fadeout bugs me. I still give it an 8/10 tho.

Holy. Mother. Of God. This is brilliant. RCR is one of my all time favorite NES titles, and this track is straight from my mental image of "RCR The Movie". My lord this is wonderful stuff, from the opening to the transitions around 1:20 - 1:36, and the stuff at 2:20 is just making me nod my head. It's Grand Slam with a trash can to the grill, and don't forget the Egg Rolls. 9/10. Easy.

Hrmmm. This one doesn't do it for me for some reason, except for the beginning of the middle section (0:54-1:30). After that it's just too space for me to deal with, the transitions go on way too long and the middle section overstays its welcome, then takes too long to get back into the groove at 3:04. It's a competent piece technically, but...I don't feel it. Pretzel is right about the original lending itself to this genre certainly, but most of the focus on this piece is in the middle, and that's not the part of the original I would have chosen to focus on. Whatever floats your boat, as they say, but I'm firmly in drydock on this one, not because the piece is built wrong, but because it doesn't move me. 5.5/10.

HAHAHA man this is hysterical. I personally don't have any problem with people covering stuff from one game in particular as long as the source material is good (and let's face it, FF6 is outstanding.) The visual image I get from this piece alone is worth the mix for me, it has Cid running around the lab, and for some reason there's Servbots in there. Servbots make everything better. This is damn solid, shows excellent humor and creativity, sticks with the theme all the way across, and the ending where the the mix throws a rod at the end with Cid sighing mightlily, I nearly fell out of my chair. MOST CLEVAR ENDING!!1!! As others have said industrial isn't my cup of tea, but this one is so well done and funny that it's in my playlist for sure. Wasn't a huge fan of Kekfa's trumpet, and the section from 3:00:3:23, but again this piece is just killer anyway. Good form, old bean! 8/10!

Well, either yer a fan of the SID or ya ain't. Since I grew up on the C64, there's a spot in my heart for any SID remix on something that frankly has been done to death round here. You gotta admit, the whole point of the thing was "oldschool", even older than the original, and it works. It's not stupendous aural bliss overload or anything, but it's short, it's sweet, and ya know what, it's not bad, it does exactly what it sets out to do, a retro take on a tune that's been played around here several times. 6.5/10.

After seeing harshrealm bump this one up, and reading Antonio's glowing words, I popped this in, for I *DID NOT GET THIS BACK IN FEBRUARY*. I missed it. Didn't bother. laziness, I suppose. There's nothing I can say that Antonio hasn't already said, frankly, other than the old line from 3rd Bass' "Pop Goes The Weasel" Complex structure like a pyramid. And like a pyramid, this one will still be around long after I'm dust. There's a couple things I'd change, but I wouldn't dare to commit the act of changing anything. Again, . Really, I'm just right now at the towering beauty of this one. sick, toxic, insanely mad skillz. You never know what's gonna get bumped round the Clock. Bad me for missing this the first time. 9.5/10.

If there's ever the "Symphonic Clock Work: OverClocked ReMix Orchestral" album, I know what tracks #1-#12 are going to be (which should save on printing costs, just cut and paste "Molding of Destinies" a dozen times. I don't have one single complaint about this one, other than...no I don't have a single complaint about this one. It's got it all, from the sweeping orchestral sound, bass pizzicato, swelling crescendos, emotional highs and lows, and the transitions from piece to piece are professional. The 1:43-1:57 transition when Schala's Theme comes in on the bass line from Chrono Cross, then slides with a cymbal crash to the Chrono March as 2:28...ye gods. I am not worthy, I hope to stand in the shadow of people who might be someday. This remains one of the best pieces of work on this or any other vg music site. Period. You would be criminally remiss in the lack of having this one on your playlist, punishable by law in the great state of Weebleland. 10/10.

Welcome back to ReMix Chef and today's Chrono Cross Battle. Fukui-san? "Yes Zandar." We have The Pancake Chef in the kitchen today, and we're seeing a dish called "Just Chill." Is this easily the Chef's best dish since Arab Painting? "Yes Zandar. The key is the blending of ingrediants to complement the main ingredient, Chrono Cross. Dash of this, smidge of that, pinch of this other thing, and mix till smooth. I love this one, and it's got to be one of my personal favorites from the Clock." Oh I agree. Fukui-san. The entire piece is absoultely hauntingly, almost painfully evocative. You can toss this into the soundtrack for Chrono Cross and you'd find a place for it. What are the highlights of this dish, Fukui-san? "Zandar, as you said the entire dish shows balance, style and elegance. At 1:36 with the high synth brings in a snip of the opening theme of the game, Chef style. 1:58 with the bass, drums and melodic bells there for a good 20 seconds is just a staggering example of the subtle elegance of the piece. A sure winner in anyone's musical meal, I give it a 9/10." And there you have it. We'll be back after this.

I orginally thought they were way out of place, then I realized it was there for contrast to the guitar, and as such work very well.

Mmmm. I gotta admit, I could have done completely without the first 2:15 of this. There's too much overdrive EVERYTHING and nothing "normal" to ground it. Well, the bass line from 1:21 - 1:47 is almost there, but the way cranked kick drum from 1:48 -2:10 made me want to commit MurderDeathKill on something. I understand the building theme of this one, because the payoff at 2:18 on is really really nice stuff, but when this song builds a solid if not beautiful house, it uses a sledgehammer on the more delicate parts of the frame. Still, the last 60% of this is pretty good. But man...I dunno. There's a lot of work that went into this one (it's obvious) but this one doesn't do it for me, the first 2 minutes really really grate on my nerves while I love the rest of it, evens out in the end. Little high, little low. 5/10

The strings gave the heebie-jeebies when I first heard them, they screamed "BAD ANIME BACKGROUND MUSIC" at me and I almost lost it. But thankfully the strings stay low for most of the track and the professionalism of all the other aspects of this piece more than make up for it. Besides, even I gotta admit it makes a nice contrast to the lead guitar. Guitar/drum/synth work just proves once again that if I spent all the money I've spent on games on music and mixing equipment instead, I'd get laid a hell of a lot more than I do now. The organ is fucking genius, especially at 2:20. Go buy yourself a round for that one, and another one for the bass showing off in the first :25. The more I listen to this, the more I like it. God I love you guys. Really. I wish I had any sort of skill at this. Oh well, there's always the mid-life crisis. 9/10.

Gotta go with orky on this one, choir needs to come in MUCH earlier or not at all, but at 2:14 when the strings come in along with the choir, it works very well. Overall this track is silky, and the drum loop works well with both the lead trumpet and the elec piano/bass, the lead in "Lost Woods" has driven me NUTS for almost 10 years, and this frankly is the best reconciliation of it I've heard in a long time. Nice perspective work, stays in theme, low-key all the way across. It's a little overly loopy and doesn't click until the last :30 with the choir, but I'll tell ya what, skillz are possessed. They may not be mad level yet, but they are there. For a first submission, this ain't bad atall. The Weeble wants more. 7.5/10

Wow, nobody jumped on this one back in May? This is one of my favorite tracks from the Clock hands down, combining "Fear of the Heavens" and "A Boy Aims For Wild Fields", two of my favorite tracks from Secret of Mana. I personally thought SoM had some of the best music for the SNES, and I remember this game very fondly for it. The beginning is a normal orchestral redition of "Heavens" and maybe people didn't go all the way through this one, because it's well done, but ordinary until McVaffe throws the switch on the beat into "Wild Fields" at :49. With the familiar acoustic guitar line over the drum line, and some piano work setting up the transition into the flute lead at 1:38, this one really takes off, and it's beautiful as McV breaks it on back. 2:26 switches us back to "Heavens" with the continuing breakbeat, and we get a bassline to go along with the flute. Little problem with the bass at 3:10 just before the end, but it's pretty good overall. A bit slow starting, but worth the payoff. The slippy drum beat doesn't step on "Wild Fields" at all, and the section from :49 to 2:25 is just all-star material, especially the piano from about the 1:14 mark to the 1:38 flute entrance. 9/10. Yes, it's that good and one of my favorite pieces of Clock work (heh.)