ReMix:Golden Sun: The Lost Age "What I Want to Say" 3:22

We've come to the end of our Golden Sun: A World Reignited flood, and the end of the album as well, with a completely unique final track surprise unlike anything we've posted in 20 years - our first k-pop style ReMix!

Our first featured arrangement from Vylent (Darryl Cummings) has him collaborating with the very talented Spy Girls (Anny and Zini) from South Korea on an idea originally proposed by TSori, who also contributed lyrics and trumpet. I've learned to expect the unexpected, over the years, but this one caught me off guard in the best of ways... it's not just k-pop, it's really good k-pop, which also injects some of the album's themes of live brass parts & epic motifs. Darryl writes:

"Hello, Vylent here. This track was a weird one for me. I had just turned in my first remix for the album ("A Heart of Stone") when TSori came to me with the idea of creating a K-pop-style track for the album. I had never done anything even close to K-pop in my portfolio, but I was up for the challenge. To keep this brief, I ended up creating a track with a sort of duality; mimicking a Latin/pop style with the bouncy lyrics that I would hear from a lot of J-pop (different regions I know, pleae don't hate me) tracks while mixing my familiar epic-stye orchestra that I love to create.

I actually had created the entire track with a variety of Vocaloids which I was quite proud of, but TSori (who also performed the trumpets featured) was working behind the scenes to get actual singers for the track.

When the vocalists (Spy Girls) had recorded and sent over their parts (from Korea!), I was actually blown away with the quality! The rap section (TSori's idea) was executed to a degree that I wasn't expecting and all of the main sections and harmonies were performed very well. I barely had to tweak the vocals sonically when I recieved them. This ended up becoming a memorable experience I was glad to be a part of!

• Vylent - arrangement, VSTs, mixing
• TSori - trumpet, lyrics
• Spy Girls (Anny, Zini) - vocals, lyrics

I'm just still kind of in awe of how this came together; it's like a mini project/story *within* the larger album project. This was Darryl's first attempt at something in this genre? The lyrics were collaborated on internationally? 어서오세요 Spy Girls, who write:

"Hi! We are Anny and Zini of Spy Girls from Korea! We are very excited to be working on this wonderful project. It was very fun. Thanks to Logan, we look forward to meeting new viewers. We make new K-pop videos every week and we also have original songs. You can see all of this on our YouTube channel. Please visit. Thank you!"

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/unitspygirls
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/spygirls0905
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/unitspygirls

If you dig this track, check out their links for more! TSori (Logan Thomas) confesses:

"K-pop is my ultimate guilty pleasure... or at least it would be if I felt at all guilty about it. I really wanted to work a K-pop track into this album, but with electronic instruments being, WELL, outside my skill set, I knew I was going to need a lot of help. Vylent's catchy and somewhat bizarre track on the Arcadia Legends album remains one of my absolute favorites, so I pitched him the idea of doing a K-pop track, and he was glad to give it a try. I got pretty busy with other tracks and directorial duties, and, before I knew it, Vylent had put this great arrangement together himself! He helped me to find a place to bring in some live trumpet and also made some room for me to write a short rap, a staple of K-pop. The end result kind of blended K-pop, J-pop, and Vylent's more typical style into something new. That left me to do a bit of recording, write lyrics, and recruit a singer. When it came to the lyrics, I wanted them to be game-specific, but also very stereotypically K-pop. So we got Mia singing to Alex about his betrayal in a way that could really be just about any teenage girl singing to a stupid boy. Add some stereotypical phrases like "there's no more crying," a couple random English language lyrics, a girl power rap, and you have yourself some K-pop lyrics! Special shout out here to my friend Kevin, who helped me fix several grammatical mistakes in the first draft of the lyrics!

Almost as soon as I started mulling over the idea of a K-pop song, I was looking at YouTube K-pop covers in search of a singer. Finding the Spy Girls, Anny and Zini, was like striking gold. They were both obviously talented singers, with excellent senses of musicality. They had several thousand followers, but still replied to every comment on their videos. They also both seemed to have outgoing, friendly personalities. I figured all of that together would make them the perfect people to ask, and I'm happy to say I was not disappointed. They tweaked the lyrics in a handful of places to make them flow a bit better and came up with their own harmony parts. Then, their recordings just blew me away. Anny's voice was a perfect fit in both the "cutesy" first verse as well as when she belts it out in the chorus. I asked them to give the rap some attitude and, wow, did Zini ever deliver on that. "Fierce!" is the only way I can think to describe it.

"What I Want to Say (하고 싶은 말)" was a blast to put together, and I really look forward to getting to work with Vylent, Anny, and Zini again. Enjoy!"

So many good decisions on this mix - an incomplete list:

• Funky electric piano bassline intro!
• GUIRO FILL!
• Token English catch phrase!
• Half-tempo/dubsteppy chorus!
• Reversed effect under rise-fall arpeggios circa 1'41"!
• Glitch/cut transition leading into the rap!
• THE RAP!
• Doubling up/harmonizing the trumpet bits!
• GUIRO ENDING!

...and that's not even a complete list. And of course, the vocals are beautiful, spot-on, and make everything work. My daughters were dancing around to this in my office just now, so it's also got the Lloyd Girls coveted seal of approval. This is catchy af, insanely well-executed, & offers something distinct on the album AND on all of OCR while also fitting in with the game/context. So...

...a standing ovation to Vylent, TSori, & Spy Girls for this closing track & accomplishment - highly recommended!

...and so is the whole album, ultimately. I'm very grateful and never take for granted how lucky I am, and OCR is, to work with album directors like Darkflamewolf, Jorito, and now TSori, all of whom have brought energy, superb coordination skills, patience, but most importantly passion to their respective projects. TSori's level of analysis and involvement in so many areas of this project really floored me, and I think it shines through in the end result. Orioto delivered fitting, majestic artwork, Siolfor helped with tagging & logistics, and bubblepipemedia deserves a special shoutout for mastering the whole enchilada & accommodating some late-breaking tweaks. As always, Larry Oji came through with the last mile work of QC & package prep. And of course, none of this would have meant much without all the music, contributed by a diverse roster of amazing artists.

We hope you've enjoyed this journey through some of the (many) highlights on the album; we'll be featuring more selections in the weeks & months to come, but in the meantime, enjoy ALL of Golden Sun: A World Reignited!