Helldivers II "Glorious Exercise of Freedom" 4:46

Happy Independence Day for those of you in the United States! And speaking of managed democracy, there's no better way to celebrate the holiday than with Helldivers, a franchise that (like Starship Troopers before it) is in no way whatsoever a doublespeak-laden dystopian allegory on modern geopolitics! :-D Chimpazilla & Treyt's EDM version of Will Roget's orchestral Helldivers II main theme is the kind of ReMixers-on-ReMixer ReMixing that we here at OC ReMix can get behind! :-D Treyt explained the origins of this one, including how it eventually grew into the fully realized collab with Chimpa:

"This track started off as just a together-but-separate jam session I had with a producer I was mentoring at the time. I've been exploring synthwave/80's-inspired music lately, and my experimentation eventually evolved into a 1-to-2-minute idea for a psytrance/synthwave remix of "Cup of Liber-Tea" from Helldivers 2.

Apparently, that was all Chimpazilla needed to finish out a nearly 5-minute remix that spreads democracy like it's warm butter on bread.

I love her take on the source material, and how her writing and production complimented the bit of atmosphere I'd written. It's been an incredible pleasure trading ideas and collaborating with Chimpa, and I can't wait to hear what's next. ;-)"

Chimpazilla's been applying her skills lately as one-third of the Southwest Soundtrack Collective with Emunator & Flexstyle, and when Chimpa's not merely making tracks sound their best as a mastering engineer, she's juuuuust a bit of a track whisperer as well, taking nascent concepts and breathing 'em full of life. Beyond expanding this piece from a work-in-progress to this full-fledged arrangement, she also encouraged Treyt's incredible voiceover work (in its full totalitarian splendor):

"Treyt and I began collaborating when we started chatting after I mastered two of his (excellent) Star Fox tracks. I had an unfinished psytrance arrangement ("Hyrulian Helminths") and I handed those stems over to Trevor (and he finished that track up, to perfection), and he had a new arrangement he had just begun writing, for the Helldivers 2 main theme "A Cup of Liber-Tea." He sent me the initial WIP and it sounded amazing. I have not played Helldivers 2 (and, honestly, I had not heard of it, gimme a break, I'm a Zelda purist!), but the main theme that he was remixing is incredibly epic, and that theme means a lot to Trevor, having played and enjoyed the game.

There are currently zero ReMixes from Helldivers 1 or 2 on OCR, which surprised me. Wilbert Roget, II, the composer for Helldivers 2, is an OG OC ReMixer, and it only makes sense that his amazing theme should be getting a remix. As much as I am surprised that no one has remixed Helldivers 2 yet, I am honored that ours will be the first one.

Trevor's WIP was a combination of psytrance and synthwave which sounded great. He passed me the stems (about 2 minutes of material) and I took off expanding it. Trevor's guitar additions sound so great in the mix, and he added more guitar stems as the arrangement developed.

The star of the arrangement is the vocals Trevor did. My initial idea was for him to record a soft-spoken vocal of something philosophical, to appear during the breakdown, but I had no idea what that would be, so I left it to him to conceptualize and perform. He re-created the intense dystopian loudspeaker announcements from the game, perfectly processed, and they gave me chills. I used more of what he sent me than he expected; very little was left on the cutting room floor. The final finishing touch is the storytelling dystopian SFX in the outro.

We hope you enjoy this "Glorious Exercise of Freedom". Stay calm, stay vigilant, stay free."

Our most vigilant judge, prophetik music, awarded medals of freedom both to Roget for his inspiring compositional skill and our ReMixers for their prowess in patriotic, plauditory arranging:

"will did such a good job with this theme. it always felt a lot to me like the music that's used in the Victory at Sea documentaries i watched as a teenager.

opens with the silly hyper-jingoistic loudspeaker notifications and the descending motif in a few synths. the beat drops at 0:33 and the guitar is an immediate highlight [...] there's loads of stuff coming in and out in this opening section which is nice. first break is at 1:29 and features a lot of really fun vocal clips that really fit the style well.

2:18 is a new section with more of a beat focus initially. [...] the section that started at 3:28 kind of mirrors the original in that it starts to back off the intensity and allow the melody to carry it a bit. there's some more sfx and it's done.

this is, as expected, a great adaptation of a great theme. the mix is tight and the loudspeaker sfx are just ridiculous enough to fit into over-the-top neofascist tone of the game [...] the overall style here meshes well and does a good job navigating a lot of different soundscapes while feeling like a singular whole. nice work."

Meanwhile, our calmest judge, Emunator, dutifully saluted the valor in Chimpa and Treyt's potentially risky combination of elements, an undoubtable example of musical courage:

"Hearing these Orwellian voice clips over a classic electro beat that sounds straight out of the early 2000's is hilarious to me.

I've always complimented Kris for her ability to mix with absolute pristine clarity, but one of the things I've really enjoyed about her collaborations with Treyt is how that spit-shined polish meshes so impossibly well with the gritty, distorted textures that Treyt is known for. The synths are shimmering and the beats are produced immaculately, and Treyt's guitar and (presumably) more heavily modulated and crunchy synths are the perfect foil to each other.

Thank you for doing your civic duty, patriots. Your contributions to society are unimpeachable."

I too enjoyed Treyt's Orwellian voice intro; anything focused on the farce that is Helldivers' "freedom" is A-OK in my book. Arrangement-wise, Chimpa and Treyt ended up taking Helldivers to the club, this is cool! What an inspired and successful threading of the needle between upbeat and dystopian.

We always love when community members identify gaps and right some wrongs, because Will's been excelling as a pro composer for longer than he was in the fan arrangement scene; in other words, it was treasonous that he wasn't formally honored here by way of a killer tribute. That said, it's extremely exciting knowing that while Chimpa & Treyt are the first to do so (in "glorious" fashion), they also won't be the last to ReMix Roget, as I'm sure time will tell! :-)