ReMix:Final Fantasy VIII "Into the Singularity" 4:18

Cheers to Final Fantasy VIII: SeeDs of Pandora co-director Jorito, who's a bro and a half when it comes to collaborations, in this case having previously teamed with Sirenstar on a pair of amazing pop pieces featuring her as vocalist. Now, Sirenstar wrests the lead with her very first OCR arranger credit, an otherworldly condensing of all time and space! Jorrith helped nuture Natalie's concept and add some sheen to things:

"Natalie has collaborated with me on a few tracks over the past few years, and it was high time I returned the favor. She had an idea for an arrangement of "Compression of Time", and already tried it a few times herself before, but needed a hand to help execute it. So I offered to help her out by mixing it and sprinkling some production magic fairy dust on her track to make her vision come to life.

Somewhere along the line came the idea to add some static to the track, as a kind of compression of time noise. I took that idea and ran with it, adding all kinds of static, distortion, glitching, and reverse samples to make one of the weirdest endings of a track I ever did. Fun!

Hope you like it, and I'm stoked that Natalie finally has her vision realized and her track released!"

And what a vision this is! Anything reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell or Origa?? I'M THE TARGET DEMO! Alright, alright, so that's just MY limited frame of reference. I'm genuinely not as musically cultured as many of you fellow VGM fans, but, as Sirenstar remarked in her album notes, we've actually got Karl Jenkins in large part to thank for her inspiration, including the experimental idea for her vocals:

"I've been obsessed with this track since FF8's first PS1 release. It's all "F your tonality/harmony, gently place into dumpster while you do a bunch of tritones and parallel fifths (a.k.a. crime). But make it fashion." Yeah, sign me up.

So, you may be asking yourself, "What else was Sirenstar doing in 1999?" The answer is, getting into J-rock but also listening to Adiemus Greatest Hits on repeat.

Eternally grateful to Jorito for coming on board to mix and help refine the arrangement, all while he's been co-chairing the entire album. He has produced a total of 58328063854784 arrangements though, so it was just another day for him. XD If you recall the Terranigma album from a few years ago, he was like, "Yeah, I feel like making some synthwave", and then suddenly *Miami 1984 sunset grid lines palm trees intensifies*.

There are no lyrics. This is my first foray into glossolalia (a.k.a. conlang, constructed language), however, the "words" were based on the phrase "When are you?" Normally, I'm a very lyrics-forward composer, but, for this arrangement, I wanted the song structure to take center stage. I haven't worked with glossolalia much before, so I wondered what I was going to "say" exactly. The answer was pretty simple -- "When are you?" Because, TBH, when is anyone, LOL.

As for the ending, a gentle reminder from myself and the album chairs to please not Compress the Time; nobody wants that and now we have to fix it, no thanks to you."

Sirenstar's (siren-like, as advertised) vocals are just the right balance of haunting and inviting, so this one's a vibe that you can loop over and over and over. The ever-increasing glitchiness of the final minute does give the foreboding feeling of things collapsing in on themselves, so before we blip out of existence to serve Ultimecia's wishes, I'll just say to our artists, "Great job!", and, to any fans still second-guessing pressing play, "When are you?" :-)