ReMix:Super Metroid "BLOOD CONSTRICTION" 3:58

Maybe newcomer ReMixer 100%ROEMER is new to the front page with his menacing rework of Super Metroid's "Brinstar - Red Soil", but he's not new to OCR, no, no, no! My boy's an old school OCR fan, meaning he's already a character and a half. ROEMER had (in full in the MP3 tag) extra, extra flavorful comments about his piece, which took over four years from its inception to make its way here:

"DISCLAIMER This music is intended for both fish and humans equally DISCLAIMER

I would like to dedicate this piece to my deceased piano teacher, Lionel A. Nightingale. I wouldn't be here in this capacity without his years of extraordinary help.
7 Mar 1937-27 May 2019

This is one of those "long-time listener, first-time caller" situations. I first heard of OC ReMix back around the year 2000 while downloading Chrono Trigger MP3s off of KaZaA (remember that?). There was a feature that allowed clients and hosts to message one another while connected for P2P filesharing; out of the blue, one of the hosts simply dropped a link to remix.overclocked.org along with a simple message saying "good music here". I discovered a wonderfully blue website with even more wonderful music which has brought me great joy over the years. The rest is history.

This particular track was originally a FL Studio practice workspace that I started working on back in 2020. I was attempting to create "massive" drums and eerie soundscapes similar to what the artist Lorn is able to achieve. While I was never able to successfully emulate Lorn's sound, I did have some success on the soundscape front and continued to work on dark ambient tracks. I've always struggled with remixing the work of other artists, which is why I've only worked on my own projects until now. I find it to be too constricting to be bound to source material I had no hand in creating. As a result, this "RedBrinstar" project languished on my computer untouched and unfinished for years. I happened upon it while juiced to the gills on booze and pain meds after a long day of having my face drilled on by my favorite dentist, and, in my slightly drug-addled state, I decided to finish it off while I still had time off of work.

Coming back to a project after four years was difficult, and the project space was naught more than a shoddily constructed house of torn cards. Countless system crashes from FL10 -> FL20 conversion errors combined with the buggy 32-bit version of Famisynth resulted in a project space that would randomly implode at the slightest provocation (also, did you know that if you [change] a FL10 project to a FL20 project that it takes your four default send channels and automatically transfers them to mixer tracks 100-104?). [...] As I sat in silence contemplating this wretched failure, I recalled an unusual track I recorded which was simply two minutes of guttural groaning emitted from a rusty and decaying piano chair that I picked up at a yard sale for $5 many years prior. (The groaning sample is the inversion of the chair as it slowly rocked to and fro for three minutes.) Although the source sample was easy enough to record, it didn't sound like much of a track on its own. However, it did have the decaying hellscape vibes Red Brinstar gave off when I first experienced the beauty of Super Metroid back in 1994. At this point, I overlayed the two tracks and spent many long and late hours wrestling with the overall audio to give listeners the abyssal sounds of alien hell.

I hope you enjoy this abyssal hellscape more than I enjoyed creating it."

Sup about the fish? Hey, are you willing to arrange Tim Follin's music to Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future??? Asking for a friend. ;-) Seriously though, not every piece of music is fun to create, but respect to 100%ROEMER for putting 110% effort into finishing this one, especially because when you lay off of a project for a long time, it can be daunting (understandably) to pick it back up. Still, 100%ROEMER ended up tinkering with this right up till the 11th hour. Nine post-submission revisions later, judge Gario dug the A E S T H E T H I C of the final version:

"Well you come into another Red Brinstar mix with anticipation, since you never know what someone's gonna bring to the table with it. Seems like the flavor of the day is A T M O S P H E R E, and a good heavy dose of it to boot. I like the soundscape this provides throughout, up to and including the lovely piano bridge [...], and the production values are up to our bar, at least. [...] I think this is a pretty good arrangement that certainly clears our bar. Nice work, always glad to see more Super Metroid on here!"

This arrangement's, melodically, fairly straightforward, so it's mainly about 100%ROEMER's sound design adding more depth, experimentation, and tension. (Mission: success!) ROEMER's original piano writing was also well-handled, and a thoughtful tribute to his piano instructor, while his synth and organ's original lines were seamlessly integrated and felt like a natural extension of "Brinstar - Red Soil". A very cohesive sound for something that was an extremely start-and-stop process. :-) For any Super Metroid players, this'll excellent OCR debut will bring those memories right back for sure! (Dunno if the fishies will get any VGM nostalgia from it, but you do you, Derek...)