ReMix:Rygar "Cloud Sailing Sky Robots" 4:44

It was wonderful to see Mazedude in person at MAGFest once again! We were in a group lunch at Nando's PERi-PERi (delicious) as well as in a sweet hangout at Joe Cam's room, and I made sure to plug the Flatiron Pepper Co. for his red pepper needs (damn, wish we had an affiliate code over here)! Now that everyone's back home, it's time to show love to the legend by posting his latest submission! This isn't Mazedude's first Rygar rodeo, no, sir! He's back with his third tribute to Rygar, and wuzzat??? A Mazedude tracker homage? Attention grabbed! Mazedude explains what brought him back to the Rygar dance:

"Good evening! Mazedude here. Dang, it's been a while since my last remix. I've still been making music these past few years, but it's been original work for a series of projects that still have a ways to go, so, more to come on those later. For now, enjoy a new "just for fun" track!

It's been quite a long time since my last tracker homage. Remixing a game theme while at the same time paying a nod to one of the trackers that inspired young Mazedude as I learned the art form... I love doing that, and it's a lot of fun to work with the old school sounds and samples.

Recently, I was listening to some of those homages and realized that I'd never done one to the artist known as Scirocco, which felt like a shame, as he was one of the first trackers that I was introduced to as a teen. Well, problem solved with a new Rygar remix! I took what I always thought of as "the cloud level" and have reworked it in the style of "Full Sail", a classic track by Scirocco. Clouds and robots in the sky meet water music. Enjoy!"

The long lead attacks might be viewed by some as a bug rather than a feature, yet the panel consensus was "This is good!" There wasn't anything disorienting about the leads so much as different, and I'm all about it, along with fellow judge and oldschool tracker fan, Flexstyle:

"Easy vote for me -- the stylistic choices don't bother me one bit, and this is a creative, well-executed arrangement. Now, I'm a sucker for the oldschool tracker/keygen sound (cTrix, Fearofdark, etc. are some of my favorite artists), so you're getting a bit of personal bias here, but regardless, I think it's easily within boundaries for a post-able arrangement. Overall sound is clean, the link to the source is there, love the concept."

Absolutely not a track to be skipped either; if you don't know Rygar, congrats, because you've got a phenomenal introduction to it here. Judge Emunator's verdict? Engaging throughout:

"We've got some classic Mazedude tracker action and I'm totally here for it. Chris' submissions always introduce me to textures and sounds I've never heard before. The groove is trance-inducing, with a very expressive bassline against a hypnotic breakbeat/trip-hop rhythm that evolves just enough over the course of nearly 5 minutes to keep me enthralled the whole time."

What an impressive concept in terms of adapting this for the instrumentation and mood of Scirocco's "Full Sail" (including the crucial shakuhachi). I'm just floored at how much more melodious this rendition was compared to the source, with beefy beats and textures surrounding this slowing down of the theme, as well as how much more impactful this sounds compared to "Full Sail". Mazedude's truly taken everything that works about both tracks and seamlessly fused the composition with the style, all while adding more power. :-) This track's not sharp at all, yet it's so, so vibrant. Amazing stuff from a true master!