ReMix:Deus Ex "Sadevakio" 5:26

Mr. Keskitalo presents a Deus Ex mix that embraces the original soundtrack's MOD origins but upgrades & augments things more than a bit, with an electronic arrangement that transforms and undulates in cyberpunkish ways:

"Hi! Here's a resubmission of my "UNATCO" theme rearrangement. This piece is a part of the PC ReMix imitative. Here's another People's Remixing Competition piece from me. I started this one way back in PRC199 which was a very popular round. I've since extended the structure and spent hours and hours tuning the arrangement, mixing and effect automation in Renoise. To get started in the competition, I grabbed Mazedude's "Zombies Ate My Tracker" for the sounds - he has the .IT file available on the American Album site. Thanks for that! Many of the samples are actually 8-bit samples from various old school modules, which I took as a challenge to make them sound good. After hours and hours of (very educational) tweaking, twisting and polishing, I'm not sure if I'd do such a challenge again. I like the resulting tracker aesthetic, hope it works to other ears as well.

The title "Sadevakio" is Finnish for something like "The Rain Constant," trying to make some sort of a wordplay on how it's always raining in cyberpunk settings.

The main riff from the source is used practically throughout, altered to 3/4 in the intro and outro, and transposed lower in the middle 4/4 part. The melody at 0:23 in the source is used from 1:40 onwards pretty much to the end (where it's altered to 3/4). Also, the figure at 0:31 in the source is used here and there, usually at an end of a part or some other transition/breakpoint (for example at 0:34, 1:57 and 2:17... that might be all the cases, actually).

...A thank-you list: All the commenters from PRC199. All the Workshop forum commenters. Dj Mokram and Pleiade for supportive feedback. Gario for noting the source/MIDI discrepancy + Workshop mod review. Rozovian for the Workshop mod review. (Gotta love the Workshop mod reviews. Extremely useful service.) My fiancée Pirjo for support, critiques and insights once again invaluable to me and for the development of this piece. Many thanks for the excellent (& diverse!) feedback in the judging thread. I've addressed most of the issues one way or the other."

Eino really embraces compos, the music-making process itself, revision, analysis, and also writing/providing us with superb background & context for his work - much appreciated! I love the concept here, because it's essentially ReMixing a MOD-based soundtrack using modern equivalents, and it retains a good chunk of "that sound" while simultaneously modernizing the soundscape AND updating the arrangement to match. I'm also gonna award him with +1500 bonus points for a pretty rad mix title. Judges felt there were some rigidity, transition, and focus issues even in this final version, but agreed that the overall package transcended them; Palpable writes:

"This does a whole lot on a micro level. I hear these little change-ups here and there that give this a restless energy. That's important because the song doesn't have a particularly strong direction. The little detail work makes up for the lack of strong melodic focus - it almost comes across as a cinematic electronic song in that respect. Ultimately, I enjoyed it."

Diabolus in singulis est... and Eino gets those details right in a way that makes this almost as much of a sonic tribute to the game's score as a compositional homage. Good, transporting stuff that suits the rainy & dark habitat of DX like a glove!