ReMix:Chrono Trigger "Zeal Feels Good" 6:06

Zeal MAY "feel good," Greg, but if you Zeal more than three times a day, your body will lose precious electrolytes & you'll be quite sore. Or so I've heard. Gario continues our "new workshop moderator mini-flood" with a CT mix that is ALSO his official OCR debut, so props there. He opens with the now-obligatory "Yes, another Zeal mix" mea culpa:

"Another Zeal remix. What is this, like the thirteenth one? Alright, I'm not normally a sucker for overly remixed tracks - I generally try to avoid them, in fact. However, much like another popular track I remixed a year ago it was due to the tides of the WIP boards. There were a bunch of Zeal tracks popping up out of nowhere, and I thought it would be funny to make yet another one appear on the board. Turns out that what started as a semi-joke track for me turned out to be very, very smooth and sexy, so I decided to give it a nice production spit-shine and give it up to you guys.

This remix can be considered a homage to another remix of the same track - 8-bit Zeal by Nespus on OLR - so you can expect some sweet 8-bit tones in this one (you can even hear some sections that are very similar to Nespus' track - this was intentional to honor his track). The style is very much reminiscent of halc's 9-bit style that he has going (congratulations on becoming a judge, by the way), although it's comparatively subdued. There's some bit crushing effects placed on the drums, and some compression effects throughout the track to give it the warm, comfortable tone that permeates throughout. I thought the record needle (from freesound.org) would be a nice touch to really set the old, warm tone that those gramophones tended to produce. The track is fairly long, but it flows from one part to another so well that I didn't have the heart to cut too much of it away. I hope you all feel the same way about it. Please, get lost in this track - it really is meant to be a feel good piece."

He actually summed it up pretty damn well - it's Zeal, the halc vibe is noticeable, and it's just a comfortable, enjoyable arrangement. So what did halc think?

"oh wow, yes. really, really digging the soundscape, this actually strikes a bit of a GaMeBoX vibe to me. I freakin' love those chiptune arpeggios. cool gating too. I thought the overall volume felt a little low and the mix could have been slightly brighter in the highs imo, but those are just broad nitpicks. I think this song is fantastic."

Strong praise, but I'd tend to agree that Gario does a great job of capturing the aesthetic, and the gramophone adds a nice ambiance to the snap, crackle & crunch (sorry, pop) of chip textures. Excellent debut that, while it doesn't exactly reinvent the oft-tread source, does do a wonderful job of dressing it up to the nines in an approachable but classy lofi/chip tuxedo.