ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild "Peachy Sunbite Down Bubble Tea Quarry" 3:11

There's a handful of ReMixers with signature sounds, techniques, and musical approaches -- Israfel, zykO, Shnabubula, and RebeccaETripp all come to mind -- that have helped illustrate OCR's day-1 intentions as a place where all styles are welcome. Yet here we are yet again though with a Michael Hudak arrangement that has no analogues with anything else in the OCR community's catalog. Mike's latest arrangement from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reminds me once again of how special -- in other words, singular and incomparable -- his contributions have been not just here but for the VGM arrangement scene at-large. Here, Michael presents his rendition of one of Breath of the Wild's more melodious themes, composed by Yasuaki Iwata. Hudak praised the inspirational qualities of the BotW soundtrack and outlined his sound design ideas:

"Cave" is one of many minimal tracks from the BotW OST that has just barely enough of a melody and chord progression to elevate it above a simple ambient piece (elevate in complexity, I should say - I love ambient music), which makes it much easier to squeeze a remix out of. I think this is the magic of the music of the game overworld, as nothing hits you over the head and yells "listen to me"; it kind of just suggests you listen to it if you'd like, similar to being present in nature itself. The more I think about the music to this game and how it's used, the more I consider that it might be the best game soundtrack of this generation.

I think the original only plays in an actual cave once or twice in-game, but I still wanted to make a reverb-heavy, cave-like remix, with the distorted pan flute playing the piano chords and as much ear candy as I could stuff into it without giving you cavities. The piano chords in the original are played by a breathy digital flute thing here, and the high-pitched notes are brought down an octave and played by a plucked stringed instrument that's more in the midrange. The distant reverb on those plucks took an awful lot of tweaking to have them be in the background, but not incidentally so. I also didn't want them to be overshadowed by all the clicky-clacky tasty percussion in the middle ground (which I also had to tweak to sound busy, but not BUSY busy)."

The juxtaposition of Mike's first BotW OC ReMix simply being titled "Run" in contrast to this... slightly longer title... isn't lost on me. :-) By the way, if you're reluctuant to dive into weirder music, this track along with Hudak's Stardew Valley and Tales of Symphonia arrangements are the perfect gateways into his more glitchy, jarring, and cerebral stuff.

Oftentimes, Michael's glitchy music -- "Run" being a great example -- essentially leaves me pretty speechless. "Man, I don't know what I heard, but I dig it." In this case, "Cave" is indeed a more melodious theme, which makes this arrangement easier to follow and digest. Hudak continues in discussing his experimental approach:

"I envisioned a sound that's futuristic and polished, but also worn out (complimenting the aesthetic of the game). Lots of movement through different effects and filters, but more so to take you on a journey, with one part leading into the next, and not as a cut-and-paste experimental thing. Tons of pitch-shifting here, too, as send effects and as inserts, to make it washed-out sounding and not too slick, and a pitch-shifter on the master chain as well that's flipped on and off at points. Also liberal use of Fritz, which is an amazing granular plugin for Reason's rack made by Lectric Panda; it's how I turned one snare drum into an exploding cuckoo clock during the bridge section. I don't often tune my kicks, but here they're tuned to A-flat 1, as A-flat happens to appear in every single chord.

As for the final minute of the track, I initially had the refrain playing twice over after the bridge like in a standard pop song, and technically it does, but I decided to make it more of a coda instead, so the second time around is pitched down ~9 semitones and tempo stretched waaay out (with all sorts of tape warble and further pitch-shifting happening).

This piece is very evocative to me, and conjures a lot of images and feelings (that are partially referenced in the title), but I don't want to spill the beans too much so as to not influence what another listener might think."

I'm looking forward to more knowledgeable listeners dissecting and disseminating the influences of this piece. Meanwhile, I enjoyed the liveliness of the beats, snaps & pops, as well as the crystalline sound design, which makes me envision an ice cave save point, somewhere safe Link can run around that's both spacious and filled with loot. 2:22 pulled things back with an impaired-sounding slowdown that came out of nowhere. Do they have Poison Mushrooms in Hyrule???

Though I had a tiny bit more to say this time around, let me be clear: when it's Michael Hudak, I still don't know what I heard. But I always dig it. So should you... if you give him a try. ;-)