ReMix:Journey to Silius "Postcards from Silius" 4:14

TSori (Logan Thomas) returns with something we've kept in the hopper for Valentine's Day! We hope you're having a happy one while we channel the feeling of 80s coming-of-age anthems with this light Journey to Silius pop/rock ballad. :-D The arranger sets the stage with his collaborators:

"It's that time again. I have another submission for you, this time in the form of an 80s pop ballad (now, with flugelhorn!). I'm joined by the same great crew as on my previous "Revenge of Meta Knight" submission: Eladar, Kenny Jr., Siolfor the Jackal, and tibone.

Credits:

• Arrangement & Flugelhorn: TSori
• Mixing & Synthesizers: Eladar
• Electric Guitar: Siolfor the Jackal
• Electric Bass: tibone
• Drums: Kenny Jr."

Glad to have this fave five join forces again, this time with a VERY different mood from their previous team-up mixpost. Journey to Silius is a dystopian game, and we just had a great ReMix leaning into that imagery via a stage theme interpreted by Black Ace & Mirasol. Now we have a piece that plays against type, taking on Silius's more hopeful ending theme and going in an intimate direction with intention and flair. Logan explains the creative process, journeying through how a random YouTube stroll eventually blended into Cyndi Lauper's style:

"I had never heard of Journey to Silius before I started this ReMix. I was looking for a new project one day and pulled up a YouTube video of "Best NES OSTs". The first comment under the video was "The whole soundtrack of Journey to Silius is amazing from beginning to end". So that seemed like a good place to start, and after listening to it all, I agree with that guy 100%. The end credits theme jumped out at me in particular. It was just so catchy. Right about this time, I was in the middle of putting together an 80s playlist for my fiancée. Some wires in my brain crossed, and I decided to do a "Time After Time"-esque 80s pop ballad ReMix of the end credits. I hadn't done anything with my flugelhorn for a while either, so this was a great opportunity to dust it off again."

I'm clearly not exposed to a lot of flugelhorn performances, but I've GOT to give it up to Logan for these tender tones here. :-) I had the good fortune of getting to finally talk with TSori on OC ReMix's Discord voice chat a few weeks ago, and was happy to be able to tell him personally how much I've appreciated his work since joining the OCR community. While hoping not to misrepresent what he said, Logan told me he didn't consider himself much of a music producer, so the opportunity to join up with live musicians has been necessary to bring his arrangement concepts to life. The networking and planning necessary to pull off collabs like these are indeed great skills to cultivate, and the outcome's relaxed yet vibrant (especially once the track's energy peaks at 2:34)! As soon as this track introed, I heard the Lauper/Chertoff influence with everyone's instrumentation -- sans flugelhorn, of course! -- but waited for -- and was rewarded by -- TSori's brass focus pulling this into its own unique direction. Logan summarized everyone's contributions as well as how we wound up with this ReMix's title:

"Once I had the arrangement together I pitched it to Eladar, Kenny Jr., tibone, and Siolfor and they were all eager to jump on board. I gave Kenny a skeleton drum part to work with which he did a great job filling in and bringing to life as he always does. Siolfor once again set aside all his distortion and heavy metal riffs in favor of playing some super clean, palm-muted stuff for us. tibone as always was excellent on bass and gave us a great foundation to build on. Eladar and I spent a surprisingly large amount of time researching 80s synthesizers and reading interviews with producers and musicians to figure out how we could best get the sound we were looking for. Many of the most famous 80s hits just used combinations of factory presets on one of 3 widely available synthesizers at time. Simple as the answer may have been, it made for a fun and educational bit of musical time travel.

The title "Postcards from Silius" comes from the narrative that played in my head as I was arranging. I thought of this as portraying a long-distance relationship, as if a couple had been separated because they were planning to move somewhere new (like a space colony called Silius) and one had left already, but the other had to stay behind and wait. There's a bit of loneliness and longing to it, but also a constant sense of hope and anticipation of a future reunion, It really hits home for me as we did this ReMix in the middle of my fiancée's and my 14 month separation on opposite sides of the world (thanks, COVID/Immigration).

All in all, we had a blast putting this remix together. Getting to work with these 4 guys again has probably been the best part of it all, and it has really cemented us as a regularly collaborating group. We hope you enjoy the results!"

I too had to work the trials of long-distance dating for nine months before being able to reunite (eternal thanks to djp for being an above-and-beyond bro, helping me eventually rejoin my then-girlfriend-now-wife!). TSori's vision certainly hits home for me. Even with his flugelhorn taking the foreground here, it always felt like Eladar, Kenny Jr., tibone, and Siolfor's components provided important interplay, allowing you the chance to hone in on and, dare I say, LOVE the subtle synnergy of their combined performances. :-) Whether it's red & pink hearts, inexpensive or pricey gifts, or even visions of slow dancing at the prom with Molly Ringwald, we hope YOUR Valentine's Day is about doing the things you love with the people you love. Fellow VGM fans, we love you, folks!