Gwilym

this is very good - last time a remix by a prominent game composer was posted here and hyped up, it was shit. but this definitely deserves the praise it's receiving. i don't like how much attention it's drawing compared to the other arrangements, but i can understand why it's getting it. it's a very nice variation. my only real complaints are that it should be longer, and use more of the original theme. but it's good. a few technical issues, but they only become apparent while wearing headphones, and sound more like problems that arose during the conversion of the track to an MP3 rather than anything that happened during the song's production. and yeah, i'd like to hear jesper do something too. i personally think he's underrepresented not because his work is lacking, but because most of it is a bastard to remix. i've tried.

i can't get into this track. obviously it's made a lot of people happy, but to me it seems amateurish, aimless, meandering and, frankly, boring... sorry. there are some nice little modifications to the original theme, and a choir sound that i like, but aside from that nothing holds my interest. it's not really bad, but i feel nothing when listening to it, aside from faint boredom. two major nitpicks though: -the piano is too mechanical. every note seems to have the same velocity*; it needs humanising. -the 2:32 section is too human. every note seems to be syncopated; it needs quantising. mm. *despite the fact that the volume of the notes varies

i really like ff3j's soundtrack, and it's nice to see it getting some well-deserved attention. unfortunately i don't really enjoy this track. frankly, it bores me. it's all done fairly well, there's nothing to complain about; i just find it generally uninteresting. after the first few minutes, it's pretty obvious where the song's going to go, and it doesn't really deviate from that. which is not a crime in itself i suppose, but it's just ...'not enough' for me. there's nothing in the track that makes me want to listen to it; it just takes up seven minutes of my life, during which time i find the track to be too flat/weak for it to make me get up and dance, and too obvious for me to sit there nodding wistfully and going 'oh yeahhh.' respectable effort, however. aside from 'hooks', it's not really missing anything major, so it's not an uncomfortable listen. just a long one, and not one i want to repeat many times. i've listened a few times, and tried to get into it, but for me it's not a keeper.

this is really nice, though i'd like it more if it went anywhere. plus i don't see the mystery as to which song this is ('reunion')... it's pretty faithful. a lot of new stuff, but it never deviates that much. good song. p.s. bits of this kinda remind me of bits of the music to 'elevator action returns'. ^_~

try 'composition in q', by disturbed.

thankyou!!!

i heard this when disturbed first posted it at vgmix, and it's been on my playlist pretty frequently since then. not quite as frequently as some of his other offerings, but there's no real reason for that. this is a very nice track and has stood the test of time nicely. (assuming (rashly) that this is the same version) when it comes to disturbed's work, i'm often hard-pressed to say anything more detailed than 'i like it's good'. i'm a pretty crap piano player myself, a- no, scratch that, i'm not even a piano player. and as such i can't even begin to say whether this is a technically impressive work or not. i don't think it matters, it sounds fantastic, and i think that the fact that there are no gratuitously superfast arpeggios or scales running all over the place works in the song's favour. no misnotes either. that...string, though. it doesn't sound right. perhaps it's been repaired for this version, but in the one i have, it seems somewhat laggy, and much too thin. reverb might help this, but i think that the section in general needs more to it. i'm not thinking of a full-blown string arrangement that stands up on its own, but something that compliments the piano more than just a single note following the lead would be nice. ahh...i shouldn't dwell on this nitpick though. it might not be there anymore. very very nice piece. don't think it sounds particularly 'tragic' myself, but its definitely... poignant. still. sweeping. still. greyscale. it's nice. ~gwilym p.s. though i swear to 90% christ that this song wasn't in the game. my brother and i used to play it constantly, and completed it about fifteen thousand times, and not one note of this song sounded at all familiar to either of us. i guess it has to have been one of the many 'sound test-only' tracks that the game had. i think i recognise the name. well, obviously i do, otherwise the song wouldn't be here. (and if it was in the game, WHEN?).

fantastic. i really enjoyed it. perhaps after i've gotten to know it more i'll come back and post some more detailed comments... there were a few short bits that sounded a little strange, but it was the sort of thing that could have just been the song not liking the low bitrate. musically, nothing sounded strange to me at all (i'll grant i don't know the super metroid music very intimately though), and the ending was beautiful. though i was a little saddened when i discovered it was the ending, cuz according to winamp there were still 3 minutes left. but i got over it, because the ending works very well as an ending. great work!

fantastic fantastic. even by quinn's standards. despite the new addition of the guitar, this is unmistakably quinn - utopian, futuristic... with a similar atmosphere to his previous mix 'mamabrain' - and with surprisingly few similarities to his previous (also excellent) serpent trench mix 'software escape.' which is part of what makes this song so great - can you think of anyone who would describe the original serpent trench as 'futuristic utopian?' i doubt it. and very few people could manage such an about-face of genre without butchering the song. quinn has. quinn rules all over you. but...unfortunately, he's fallen victim to one of his old problems. the FADE-OUT. now i don't inherently dislike a song simply because it fades out at the end, but like many of his other songs i've had this complaint about, the song fades out while it's still going, rather than just playing an outro loop. sure, it's basically just repeating itself at that point, and 3 minutes is a perfectly respectable length for the track, but the fade-out still irks me every time i listen, and it's the only particularly important thing that stops the song from being 'perfect' to me. plus there are a few technical issues. the frets, for instance - they don't usually bother me, but if i put the volume up too loud they can become quite piercing. too much high-end, i guess. and the drums, while programmed very well, simply don't match up to everything else. all the other samples fit perfectly, but the percussion has a distinctly keyboardish quality. the rest of the song deserves better. but it really isn't a nagging problem, just something that could be improved. and, quickly, a bit more individual praisery: 0:00 - short understated electro-soundfuckery intro = 0:23 - HOW DO YOU DO THAT. adding a perfectly blended chorus to what used to be a dirge... i'm very impressed. 1:45 - very nice section; reminds me of tekken 2. the phasing on the guitar works very perfectly. strange how a 'guitar amateur' such as yourself can be responsible for the only guitar work in a vgmix that i've paid particular interest to, eh ah yes. very nice song indeed. not my favourite quinnsong, but i have over fifty of them, not one of which do i not like, so that's hardly a criticism. i'm becoming more and more convinced that quinn's name is a guarantor of quality. i hope i'm not alone.

quite nice. doesn't quite capture the SH mood for me, but no remixes i've heard have done, so i didn't really expect it to. the idea of using the guitar for the song is an interesting one, and in some ways it has worked quite well...but not well enough if you ask me. the lead sounds downright bizarre throughout the song, and not in a way i like. can't quite put my finger on what it is; maybe i just plain dont like that instrument choice. sounds goofy. the bass on its own sounds pretty cool, but it's always slightly out of time with everything else. it's probably on purpose, but i don't like it much. the percussion...i dont like. the samples are a bit crap to start off with, and the way they're controlled just doesnt suit the song. it's a sort of hip-hop/dnb/rnb combination which just sounds odd. and near as i can tell, there is absolutely NO volume control on any of the hits. meaning every hit sounds identical. on the whole it doesn't quite come together as something i'll listen to, but it's a mix that shows creativity, and i respect that. i just think it woulda sounded way better if it came out about a year from now, when you've honed your skills, and learned new ones. :] p.s. the sounds at the start and end were really neat, even though i know you just sneaked into my house and stole them from the prison remix i started (seriously, the sounds are VERY similar. eerie)

despite my review, i would look forward to this

found it quite boring actually. like everyone else who played the game, i loved the original - my problem here is that the style it's been remixed into is very close to that version, just ...worse. less masterful; less special. i find the arrangement to be quite sterile; they're nothing particularly interesting going on that wasnt in the original piece... and i think there was a lot of room to add new stuff; i kept hoping that the song was gonna break off into, at the very least, the same theme played with different instruments, but instead the song just went on and on, with the only particular variations being some awkward drum fills. sorry, i just plain don't like this much. seems more like a live (almost impromptu) cover than a full arrangement to me. but i must give praise for the synth sweeps and warbly things. they're really excellent, and a great extrapolation from the original sounds. very good work there. i just think a bit more time should have been spent on making the arrangement of the actual song more interesting. but that's just me. there's nothing really bad in the mix; no bum notes or anything. probably a very pleasant listen for anyone who hasn't heard the original. it just seems bland to me, is all. the end.