ReMix:Double Dragon II: The Revenge "Tag Team" 2:43

Birthday #2 from yesterday's shoutout gets his own mixpost today, as judge & ReMixer extraordinaire
Sir_NutS (Paul Michael Molina) teams up with frequent collaborator Jivemaster on a short, sweet, Double Dragon 2 synth-pop treat that the Brothers Lee would dig:

"Sup, guys, Mike here with a new sub, this time featuring some Jivemaster goodness on the vox. I started this remix after I evaluated a remix of this song on the panel. After listening to the original Stage 2, I found that I liked it quite a bit, and also found it weird that I couldn't remember this Double Dragon 2 song from my NES days (I guess I'm getting old).

I decided to take the synthpop approach with it. It has a retro sound, but not the usual style I do, which is more towards spacesynth/Italo; this one is definitely more pop than anything. For the arrangement, I kept most motifs but expanded upon them with extra harmonies and variations, as well as some soloing. I've been incorporating more of my keyboard performances on the songs I've made in the past year and I feel I'm getting a better hang of it with each song. Or at least it's taking me less hours to learn a melody now.

For this song, I used my newly-acquired Roland JU-06, which is a hardware synth that emulates the legendary Juno-106, one of my favorite synths of all time. I used it for the bass, chords, and pads, more specifically, while the leads were mostly patches I made on Serum and Synth1. I'm very happy with the results, and the fact that the Roland JU-06 is so good I don't need to layer things with it anymore; it's just the single patches I created, with some mixing effects on top. All tied up on a neat Bitwig package. Enjoy!"

Mike's been killing it lately, and I think you could attribute some of that productivity to the kit he's been playing around with & the enthusiasm that's generated for him, from Bitwig to dedicated hardware. At 2'42" this one is brief, but rocks an assertive synth-pop groove with a lot of presence on each element, especially dat kick. Joel's vocoded, barely intelligible singing seals the deal... this sounds like the ending theme from a 1980's action/sci-fi B-movie that MST3K might riff on, and I mean that as the highest praise :) Synth solos are short but full of nice slides, and I love the call-and-answer FX and eventual falsetto @ 1'30". Chimpazilla sums things up nicely:

"I've heard this track several times as it has developed and I love it. Great sound design, great energy. I love Joel's vocals, I think they fit into the soundscape nicely. The arrangement is pretty conservative but the remix provides some really creative interpretations and the track is mixed really well. Fun listen, recommended!"

DEFINITELY fun whenever these guys team up, as mentioned Mike's on a roll and doing all sorts of new stuff and all of it has been consistently dope, and I too had forgotten this DD2 track, so it was nice to get some flashback feels & see it repurposed like this. Great stuff!