ReMix:Contra: Hard Corps "Maximum Contra Overdrive" 5:20

Класс! The early 90s are strong with this one, as newcomer Black Ace (Alexey Bakhmetyev) provides our first featured arrangement of Contra: Hard Corps for the Sega Genesis, heightening the eurodance feel further & making you want to scream "Mortal Kombat!" or "I've Got the Power!!" or perhaps even *both*. We didn't get artist comments, but this basically takes an already sample/fx-laden 90s-aesthetic source and stays in that wheelhouse while upgrading the overall sound quality considerably & augmenting the writing to match. Sir_NutS spells it all out for us:

"This is a pretty good adaptation to the kind of eurodance style & artists I used to listen to as a kid such as 666, though it has a slightly more aggressive edge closer to Eisenfunk. The production is a bit iffy for me, specially in the low/low-mids where I felt the mix got quite muddy and busy at some points, but other than that most of the synths and various embellishments are clear. The filtered 303-like arpeggio reminded me of some preset sequences in Propellerheads' Rebirth, which was the first music tool I got my hands on, and here they sound true to genre. The arrangement isn't too far from the original but it does vary in structure, and the differences lay in the adaptation which works really well. Overall this is pretty solid and super hype."

While fun, the original source tune gets muddied a bit with clashing-spectrum FM blurpage (technical term), so this incarnation also just makes things a bit more discernible, which is appreciated. This soundtrack has some devoted afficionados, and definitely put the Genesis' sound hardware to work, so it's great to see it represented on OCR. Congrats to Alexey on a debut mix that fully embraces the aesthetic, gets the blood pumpin', and recalls the days when inserting plentiful vox fx samples/woooos into four-on-the-floor synth dance grooves was not only socially acceptable, but thoroughly encouraged. Fun!