ReMix:Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links "The Arc That Spans the Heavens" 3:25

We're back from some time away not only with inspiration from a legendary composer (courtesy the news of OCR's upcoming FF8 album, SeeDs of Pandora, dropping on Uematsu's birthday), we're also got inspiration from ReMixers who paved the way with our latest featured ReMix! timaeus222 (Truong-Son Nguyen) brings us some more Yu-Gi-Oh! representation with this jazz fusion version of Zuzu Boyle's Duel Links theme. The artist turns over the story cards he was holding:

"I've been having a lot of fun with Yu-Gi-Oh lately, both Duel Links and Master Duel (released early January 2022). Basically, Duel Links uses ~60% the board size of the real life game, with half of the Life Points and about half the deck size. The meta of this game changes fairly quickly, but right now it's rather diverse. The Melodious deck was part of the meta few months ago but is still semi-relevant (the current meta consists of several Arc-V decks like Odd-Eyes, D/D/D, and Galaxy). The character who uses the deck is Zuzu Boyle, whose theme is used in this ReMix. :-)

The title is based on the phrase the main character of the Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V anime says when he performs a Pendulum Summon: "Swing, Pendulum of the Souls! Draw an arc of light on the skies! Pendulum Summon!" I have no idea who the music artist is and Konami doesn't seem to be very open with revealing the composer name. Very weird.

I haven't done jazz fusion in a really long time, but I instantly felt that kind of inspiration from this theme, and wrote this in about 3 days, using a similar sound pool to the Kirby ReMix "Kirbland" I did as a Twitter challenge. You might hear references to zircon and Joshua Morse here and there. Out of all the elements in this mix, I enjoyed writing the drum (Groove Bias) and bass (Trilian Jaco Bass) parts the most, especially the bass solo! Hope you guys stay well, and keep on ReMixing! No source breakdown this time, as I think there are fairly direct connections to be made. :-)"

timaeus did cite "Kirbland" for the instrumentation guidance, but I heard so much more "Ragol Weather" (and, by extension, Weather Report, of course) and much more polished-sounding timing compared to the Kirby track. There's definitely a floating quality to this that judge DarkSim picked up on for his vote:

"Lovely, floaty space-jazz here. There's quite a lot of reverb on the drums, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it certainly adds to the spaciness of the track. Sumptuous bass anchors the piece, and gets a chance to shine on its own during the solo at 1:52. Some more soft-sounding analogue synths fill out the soundscape, and it all adds up to create a very warm and fuzzy atmosphere.

Nothing will really jump out at you in this piece, but that's perhaps a good thing. The smooth production and instrumentation let you close your eyes and drift along with it, without any surprises bringing you back to Earth."

Judge prophetik music's play-by-play ultimately framed this piece as a shoo-in; he's not wrong:

"meaty synth keys in the opening with lots of verb. the bass tone is instantly recognizable - love what it's doing right off the bat. the drums kind of noodle around initially, and it feels real loud here with the initial melodic content, but it's clearly from Duel Links. the leads sound great and are stylistically appropriate. i especially liked the layered leads at about 1:05.

there's a break at 1:20 with some neat late-attack synths, and that leads back into some noodling in the bass at 1:50. there's an awkward note at 2:06 in the bass vs. the extended chord in the background. at 2:21, the melody comes back in and there's some ramen around the melodic content as we go through the last big blow. there's another breakdown at 2:53 and an extended outro with some bitcrushed fuzz to end it.

it sounds great, instrument choice and execution is excellent, and the arrangement is clearly solid. this is an easy vote."

Indeed a slice of heaven from timaeus that will have you reaching for the repeat button to keep your head in the clouds!