The Legend of Zelda "Zelda by Lamplight" 4:01

Nothing Celtic in the hopper for St. Patrick's Day today, but we do have some mischief from a newcomer man of mystery, as shodan debuts with an expressionist, Webern-inspired chamber medley of Kondo Zelda series themes! According to shodan, we were shielded from a fully atonal experience:

"A chamber arrangement of several dungeon themes from the early Zelda titles. This era of dungeon music was very chromatic, so I saw it as an interesting exercise in getting the themes to play well with each other. Started out as something closer to a serialist experiment, which wound up being unlistenable. In the end, not atonal, but flexibly tonal. There are some original ideas in here, but the major motifs that glue them together are clearly lifted from these three pieces. Begins with a slightly dramatic interpretation of the "Dark World Dungeon" theme, and the chromatic tremolo motif occurs frequently. Then moves onto a much lighter take on the NES "Dungeon" theme. Closes with a brief reprise of some of the first ideas, incorporating "Light" and "Dark World Dungeon" themes."

This opens up with a joke intro "playing" the quasi-strings poorly, followed by shodan saying "This is Webern. Play it properly." Apparently, without being able to easily decipher what was said, this was enough to throw the panel, even our newbies, into a minor tizzy with some suggesting we ask to get the intro trimmed off before posting. Anyway, just because we've got some uptight folks doesn't mean we can't allow oddball stuff in a track. As long as the arrangement has a clear focus and is well-developed, silly moments (and silly tracks entirely) are welcome, ya judgmental goofs. :-P Hemophiliac dug the direction of everything else, brilliantly articulating the nuances of shodan's smart arranging -- and make no mistake, this is indeed smart stuffs:

"This is really cool, interpretive arrangement, in a chamber/small group approach. [...] To me this sounds like physically modelled strings, a lot like was used here. Either way samples or physically modelled, the sequencing was handled well. I particularly liked the attention to detail with how the articulations were changed, as well as the phrasing played out.

As a listener you have to be cognizant of how the melody gets passed off between parts, while things may feel like a supportive part, they may actually be the melody. Such as the cello at 1:21 playing the dark world dungeon theme, and 2:04 the Zelda dungeon theme on the viola (panned on left side). Source melody is deemphasized in it's dynamic but they are still there. Rhythm augmentation was a sneaky way of putting that Zelda dungeon behind everything else while the other parts lightly fill space and arpeggio around in a detached manner.

There is source in here that was not mentioned by the artist, "Ganon's Message" from Link to the Past from 0:36-0:52. All of the other 3 themes are identifiable and dominant throughout, even with much interpretation and various arrangement techniques implored to modify them.

Happy to see this through, kudos on a unique interpretation of multiple themes weaved together in a tapestry in a dark dungeon."

Beginning by focusing on the "Sanctuary Dungeon" and "Dark World Dungeon" themes, we almost classified this under A Link to the Past, and shodan had us the first half, I'm not gonna lie, but from 2:02-onward, the majority of the piece decidedly swings to Zelda 1's "Dungeon" theme. I love and appreciate how shodan shifted the themes around to being performed by the different "players", which can make the arranging more difficult to follow, though I'd argue not by much once you know what you're looking for. Kudos to shodan for not taking himself too seriously while seriously & cleverly interpreting a handful of classic Zelda 1 & 3 dungeons. Quite an expressive, impressive impression! :-)