ReMix:Machinarium "Smashinarium" 3:48

Our first Machinarium ReMix! Very cool! DarkSim continues his trend of mixing unmixed games - which I'm loving - and follows his Dennis and Mario Golf mixes up with an arrangement of the soundtrack to this unique, multiplatform adventure game:

"A friend recommended me this game recently, and whilst I thought it was a little pricey for a point-and-click adventure, it did come with a complete soundtrack as part of the purchase. Really good of them to do that, and it's totally worth it as the music is superb. The game's set in a pretty bleak, surreal world inhabited by robots, but has a tremendous amount of charm, and it's set to a beautiful sonic backing that I just had to remix somehow. The 2 source tunes I chose to remix I felt complemented each other well, as Pipe Wrench Dubstep is a great upbeat source for a chorus, and Clockwise Operetta is a fantastic mood setter, with a solo or 2 in there to play off in a breakdown. I'd been listening to PrototypeRaptor's "Penultimate" album for a month before making this and so I decided to try and emulate his style for this track - a tall order indeed, but with my own spin on it I feel I succeeded.

I took a slightly different approach to arrangement here in that I only listened to the sources a few times before trying to regurgitate the melodies from memory, thus capturing the feel of the song rather than the exact notes. Hopefully it paid off, I think I managed to get a similar sound and stay true to the atmosphere of the game whilst channeling the 2 sources into an electro-house ReMix.

A note on the production - this was made entirely in Ableton Live Suite 8 with no external plugins or VSTs. I really like Ableton as a workstation and highly recommend it! I abused the 'Corpus' module a lot in this track to get some of the metallic sounds, and 'Beat Repeat' was used for some subtle drum effects in the absence of dBlue Glitch."

I feel like DarkSim's doing everything right as a relative newcomer to OC ReMix - three mixes, each distinct, each from a different game, with each game previously unmixed. It's not critical that he maintain that pattern, but I think it establishes an openness to source material from different platforms & game genres that is both admirable & compelling. This may be his best mix yet, in my opinion, as he channels PR and incorporates elements of that harder style very successfully; Deia writes:

"It's great to see some mixers reaching out to our less-than-known games to find and show appreciation to. Both sources here are pretty cool to listen to, and I definitely agree they make good companions for one another."

Palpable adds:

"Very cool, creative sources - they really make me want to check out the game. Your remix is creative too, a dark dancey track with swooping FX and a breakdown that skitters like skeleton fingers. I thought the source was kind of loose at times - either that, or I wasn't fully getting how it was used. There was enough for me to recognize from both sources and I feel ok with that. Have a YES."

Indeed. I not only dig the mix, I dig the mixer's attitude, approach, and source selection, and I'm betting that more than a few fans of Machinarium and its soundtrack will, too!