ReMix:Nemesis 3: The Eve of Destruction "Follow the Sun" 3:41

SHMUP time! Jorito (Jorrith Schaap) leads a powerful posse of performers with this epic, stirring orchestral arrangement of Nemesis 3 (part of the Gradius series) for the MSX:

"This track goes back a loooong way, all the way back to August 2014. At the time, I just acquired a new orchestral sample library and was experimenting with it. That experiment turned into the first minute of this track, but I shelved the track since, and it was all but forgotten until the free round of PRC arrived at the end of 2017. I remembered this track again and figured it would be a good excuse to dust it off and give it another go. I did manage to finish the arrangement in time for the compo and ultimately won that round.

However, I wasn't 100% happy with it just yet. I was planning to polish up my MIDI some more and submit it to OCR, but when I posted the track on Discord and John Stacy reacted with a "Hey, this sounds nice to play on," I started thinking. While I would love to have my arrangements played by a real orchestra, chances of that happening are slim. So I went for the next best option: go on a recruiting spree, try to get as many live performances in the track as possible, and incorporate and layer them with the samples. The performances by John, Damian, Gregory, Dave, and Ryan really added a lot of life, depth, and nuance to the track and improved the final result greatly. Good result, good vibes, making new friends, yeah, no reason not to be pleased with this one!"

Full credits:

• Arrangement, production: Jorito
• French horn, trombone, trumpet: JohnStacy
• Oboe, English horn: Damian Nguyen
• Piccolo, flute, clarinet: Gamer of the Winds
• Bassoon: DS
• Vocals/choir: BardicKnowledge

Source usage:

Most of it is pretty easily recognizable as "Follow the Sun," with the 1:28-2:34 part heavily leaning on "Memories," transcribed into a different key and with some liberties taken to make it sit nicely.

Jorrith is a very effective evangelist for making collaboration/recruitment a standard consideration on each mix; he's consistently heightened the impact & polished the sound of his arrangements by reaching out to wind, brass, vocal, guitar, and other performers and involving them, and this mix is no exception. Some familiar names with mixes of their own appear here, and I think several thousand bonus points should be awarded for having FIVE collaborators/performers across TEN different instruments/parts. The mind reels. The mix itself has some more sparse, deliberate sections, but is mostly a suspenseful & adventurous affair; Larry Oji writes:

"The source usage being dominant easily checked out from the primary source tune alone, so there was no need to timestamp this. Good rise in the energy level returning back to the main source after the second theme interlude was done. Not much to say beyond "nice work" in terms of fleshing out these original songs. Nice job to Jorrith and the entire team!"

From the bells & pizzicato intro to the more bombastic conclusion, the integration of parts, the energy, and the diversity in part-writing make this a fun ride. I agree with Sir_NutS that they also managed to keep the mystical "Konami Spirit" alive throughout:

"As always, Jorito delivers a great, detailed arrangement that also sounds pretty clean. I love that this retains that classic Konami feel to the music, almost as if this was the version of this track for a modern remake. The addition of the real instruments just help lift this track even higher, as the lines are perfectly delivered."

What he said; Jorito continues to rep the MSX on OCR, loud and proud, and I think we can all use more Konami SHMUP VGM in our lives. Not only a great example of extensive collaboration & integration of recorded parts into a symphonic whole, but also a much-needed dose of Gradius/Nemesis for 2019 - bravo to all involved!