ReMix:Skies of Arcadia "Blue Skies, Pirate Surprise" 3:15

We cycle back for more Arcadia Legends as OceansAndrew (Andrew Luers) delivers a high-energy dance/rock jam with guitar, synths, some great variety, & pep to spare:

"I wanted to take the Blue Pirates' theme and make it have dance and rock elements. I think it turned out pretty good, and it was fun to work on.

This was a fun game that I enjoyed a lot in the early 2000's, even though the encounter rate was super high. It was fun to explore and find cool hidden places, and the constant battles were made bearable by me doing 5 pushups for every battle. Literally thousands of pushups later, here is the remix!"

BrOA got swole fighting sky pirates - you can too! This is generally straightforward, clean, honest, & fun-loving rock/pop, but there are some less orthodox modulations in the middle, and I especially dig the gated guitars & processing/modulation on the synth lead at 0'28" - s'nice! Album Co-Director Modus (Zach Long) writes:

"This was the track that Rotten Eggplant auditioned with, by mastering OA's track, and he killed it. The positive vibes of SoA are all captured here. Fun-loving rogues just, you know, risking their lives robbing empire ships, possibly causing harm to innocents. :D See, but that's the cynic in me that took hold over the years, as mentioned by Darkflamewolf in their introduction to the album. SoA never fails to bring me back to youthful ways of thinking, a cartoonish and fear-free view of the world."

"Good" (read: morally palatable) pirates have been a mainstay in Western pop culture for quite some time now, and it's always interesting to see how plundering (and the far less savory things that often go along with it) is made into... affable rebelliousness :) DragonAvenger writes:

"It's super upbeat, as per Andrew's style. The one section that kinda gets me is 1:39, because it feels a little out of place. However, it also creates a pretty neat contrast to the section before it, and it leads well into the next section."

The key change/modality is certainly unexpected & should get your attention, but I think it makes the mix more substantive/memorable than if everything were 110% copacetic and predictable. It's nice to have some instability in the midst of the (generally) sugar-sweet, almost J-pop vibe. Fun, motivational stuff from OceansAndrew - get started on those pushups!