ReMix:Street Fighter Alpha 2 "The Strongest!" 2:56

Short-but-sweet upbeat jazz fusion debut from newcomer That Andy Guy (Andrew Masson), who writes:

"I'm a huge fighting game fan, and I just so happen to be into music production too. My 2nd favorite Street Fighter game is Street Fighter Alpha 2 (next to SSF2 Turbo) and I've always wanted to do a remix of Dan's theme, because I always thought that it was the smoothest tune in the game! I never knew how to go about doing this mix until one night I had some chords in my head before going to sleep. Rather than sleeping, I decided to follow my gut and start playing around with this idea in Reason (my music software of choice). Shortly after laying down the intro, I instantly got the idea of mashing up Sakura's and Dan's themes from the game, and stayed up nearly all night/morning working on it even though I had to work! I decided to make the main themes from each characters themes the focus of the solos found in this mix. I have gotten some feedback from other ReMixers on OC ReMix before submitting this to make sure that it was the best that it could be, and I believe that I have done a fairly decent job, but I'll leave that up to you guys, I suppose, hahah!"

Mission accomplished!! For all of his pink insecurities and ridiculous male posturing, Dan really did have some slick-ass tunes, and working Sakura in too made this more of an SFA2 homage. Clicky jazz stick work intros things along with a simple chord progression, and the groove builds from there. The latebreaking, descending noodling on the synth lead @ 0'43" made me smile, as it's the type of thing I'd do, on a good day at least. Larry sums things up well:

"The stylish click-clacking percussion in the intro IMMEDIATELY grabbed my attention. What a sweet pattern and an awesome sound. Right from the jump with that sound paired with the opening synth, I got that posu yan vibe, which mean awesome jazzy/synth/fusion goodness ahead. And given that posu's collabed with Joshua Morse to tackle Dan's theme before, if you had told me the artist formerly known as po! sent this in, I wouldn't have been shocked. I'd like to think that's meaningful praise both to posu's extensive history AND to Andy as an OCR newcomer with his first posted mix.

This is mostly a Sakura mix, but there's plenty of integration and tradeoff with Dan's theme, and there ain't a seam to be found in how Andy weaved the two themes together. The attacks of the keyboard chords at :17 sounded a little stiff when they dropped in, but the sound and tone was still swanky and, once the piece filled out further at :34, the overall texture was tremendous. The bass COULD be cranked up, but it had some great body to it that beefed up the track without fighting for space with other instruments.

I hope Andy's not a stranger here and sends more great material in, because his arrangement ideas are so polished, and his sound is awesome. Everything here was super funky, relaxed, and extremely loopable, so I know I'll be going back to this mix often. Look this guy up, search this guy OUT, and encourage him to keep bringing it! Smoove. Loving this debut."

I think that pretty much says everything that needed to be said - excellent debut, ALWAYS room for more jazz and more SFA/SFZ arrangements, and absolutely hoping to hear more from Andy in the future!