Posted 2012-06-04, evaluated by djpretzel


Larry explained that the hold-up on this track, from 2009's Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption, was his fault - oversight, mostly, but it's also harder to judge ambient/atmospheric tracks like this collaboration from Children of the Monkey Machine & audio fidelity. It's been awhile since we posted something from Mr. Newman, whose distressed soundscapes take some getting used to but pay off with very ornate, layered textures and arrangement that's embedded deep within tortured strata of sound, but always present. Jay writes:

"This mix is a part of the FF4 OCRemix Project: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption. It was originally started by CotMM sometime in the summer of last year but didn't really pick up until we started talking online and he asked me contribute some live instruments to his track. From there it took on a life of its own and went through many different revisions to get to the one that you are hearing.

My goal for this version was to make it accessible to others in a very dramatic way. The song builds in a long drawn out crescendo over the period of about 5 minutes. If you allow yourself to take in the drama of the story, where the song is played during a scene where the protagonist unbeknownst to him sets a peaceful town on fire, I hope you can feel the fear and anxiety that we hoped to build amidst this engrossing dark and burning intensity. "

CotMM adds:

"I think it's a fun take on what was otherwise an oddly upbeat jazz bit given the original source scene...I wanted to do something original, brutal, and edging toward unlistenable, but not quite there. While the track ended up being much more mainstream than my original concept (which would have been more inline with the extreme drone metal genre like 'Nadja' and 'Sunn O)))'), i think it's still a nice addition to the project, bringing something edgier than probably most of the other tracks."

Any of our newer listeners who haven't been exposed to Matt's work will no doubt find it quite different from the vast majority of OC ReMixes - more texture-oriented, more distorted, darker, and less about discrete instrumentation & more a cacosphere of motion. With this shorter version that Jay's helped out with, there's a bit more direction & focus, resulting in a piece that's a single, ever-intensifying descent into, well, evil. If anywhere in the universe there existed a perfect mathematical opposite to Kenny G, this has gotta be it, or close. A truly dark, disturbed vision that lent some weight & variety to Echoes, and a good example of a collaboration where a restraining, editing role helped channel the arrangement.

djpretzel

Discussion

Latest 11 comments/reviews; view the complete thread or post your own.
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Yosh1PrisMa
on 2020-03-28 02:27:55

my brain is collapsed by this song, i think don't understand how works this remix (point of view: or is very complex to interpret)

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Necrox
on 2015-12-09 00:37:42

Another slab of haunted, distorted ambience. It moves subtly and demands attention yet it's not any more difficult than other stuff he's done. The crescendo of the whole track is madness. Guess this is the end of the CotMM catalog for now. Good stuff.

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timaeus222
on 2014-12-26 17:32:13

This was probably really tough to write. I gotta give props to you two for stringing together these distorted textures so well. Great work.

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Black_Doom
on 2014-12-25 13:00:43

Well, this one is certainly weird. Actually, it took several times to find out what the heck is going on here. At first, I found it not quite fascinating and I was thinking "WTF? How could this pass the judges panel?" But every new listen made this sounding more melodic and I started to love the subtle piano licks, choir, industrial percssion, guitars blended with dark ambient textures and of course the heavy atmosphere of this one, which becomes heavier with each second. And the it suddenly explodes and drops. Wow. Super creative thing.

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Lady Shinigami
on 2013-02-06 07:27:01

I wasn't too thrilled with this for about the first minute. I'm very much a person geared toward music that makes me want to move, so even though I do like ambient/atmospheric stuff as a genre, it doesn't always keep my interest for long.

Around 1:05 or so, however, I just suddenly got slammed by a sense of premeditated violence and malice, and that carried on to the end. The explosions really punctuated things, to the point where I experienced a brief but very intriguing sense of disorientation, perhaps as one might expect from an inhabitant of the village in question, who has abruptly found his/her world engulfed in flames—a sort of "Wait, what's going on?"

So mission accomplished, I'd say.

~LS

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Crulex
on 2012-07-21 11:06:35

Sometimes it's hard for me to get into ambient mixes because my mind tends to wander, but this is very well done. Creepy, dark, ominous, it just fits the scene it came from. The build-up works best for ReMixes like this one. Very nice take on Bomb Ring.

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Bahamut
on 2012-07-04 08:44:42

Dark and ominous, this song oozes suspense of a disaster about to come and when it hits, it is slow and methodical - this is the hallmark of CotMM these days, making music that eats at your soul slowly but surely. The song is well-crafted and all of the elements help execute this creeping attack on the psyche.

Great job by CotMM and Jay here!

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ZealPath
on 2012-06-07 18:36:47
One of my many favourites from EOBLOR. The ebb and flow of the creepy, gritty build-ups is very enjoyable - I especially like the first half. Extremely fitting to the scene in the game. The extended bonus tracks from CotMM on the album are also quite excellent to listen to.

Not to be lazy but this is exactly how I felt about this song when first listening to Echoes years ago, and I would doubly echo the part about the extended tracks on the bonus disc, Spiraling Decay for example is really something else if you just let it sink in for the full 35 minutes.

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evktalo
on 2012-06-05 03:27:22

One of my many favourites from EOBLOR. The ebb and flow of the creepy, gritty build-ups is very enjoyable - I especially like the first half. Extremely fitting to the scene in the game. The extended bonus tracks from CotMM on the album are also quite excellent to listen to.

--Eino

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audio fidelity
on 2012-06-04 18:05:34

Wow! I can not believe you posted this after so long! I was convinced it was lost in the pipeline.

Glad to add a different kind of track to the fold and it was a real pleasure working with Matt. He's as nice as they come.

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djpretzel
on 2012-06-04 17:48:10

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Sources Arranged (1 Song)


Primary Game:
Final Fantasy IV (Square , 1991, SNES)
Music by Nobuo Uematsu
Songs:
"Bomb Ring"

Tags (6)


Genre:
Ambient
Mood:
Aggressive,Dark
Instrumentation:
Electric Guitar
Additional:
Time > Tempo: Slow
Usage > Halloween

File Information


Name:
Final_Fantasy_4_RDX_Necklace_OC_ReMix.mp3
Size:
7,862,442 bytes
MD5:
35d496a483ad49acc8e3b4e7aabe5a05
Bitrate:
225Kbps
Duration:
4:36

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