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From 2009′s “Freshly Baked Remixer Challenge.” Again, OCR forum members challenge us musicians to interpret any songs from any games they request. This time we had twice as long (2 months) to produce an arrangement of the requested material. Naturally, I still didn’t manage to start until the last week, but after five days from concept to finished product, I came up with “Wildermess,” a mix of the “Tallon Overworld” BGM from Metroid Prime. I just went with a high-speed, dirty kind of electronic, with a beat that I constructed, then chopped to bits, then sprinkled like cinammon throughout the track. The source tune’s strong melody made things go pretty smoothly, but this could have benifitted from a real guitarist. Please check the page at thaSauce for a listen at the other entries.

• Listen and download at OverClocked ReMix
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Since “Unknown from M.C.,” I’ve been dying to do another Sonic tune. Completed last April, “Sand in My Shoe” comes with an unapologetic 80′s sound. It’s an R&B arrangement of “Sandopolis Zone Act 1″ inspired by back-in-the-day England trio Loose Ends, specifically their 1986 radio hit “Stay a Little While, Child.” That song’s production style was closely emulated: the middle-Eastern influence, “Lawrence of Arabia” vibe and irresistably incessant 808 drum loop. It was a bit of a wait, but the song’s available at OCR now, as the last ReMix posted in 2008.

• Listen and download: Mirror 1 – Mirror 2 – Mirror 3 – Mirror 4 – Mirror 5 – Mirror 6 [from "Reserve Tank: VARIAtions - downloads" page]
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Part of DarkeSword and OCR’s “get well tribute” to bLiNd and his favorite videogame music, “Just How Deep” renders the “Crateria ~ The Space Pirates Appear” BGM from Super Metroid into some so-called “chillout,” a sound similar to Sweetback (the Sade band minus their lead). With only six days from start to finish to put a song together, it helped that this was a minimalist arrangement: piano, sax and mute guitar sounds, scattered guitar effects and a faux Rhodes on “constant hold pedal,” all done over a smooth yet crunchy drum and bass sequence.

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Our own “pixietricks,” Jillian Goldin, on her way to success as a new age artist, held a remix contest for her debut album Origins, offering three tracks from the album to be rearranged. As I missed the chance to enter a similar contest held by her electronica bf zircon, I jumped at this one. My entry took two weeks of nearly-non-stop work: an electronic take, with a faster tempo than the original, a thick rhythm and all the appropriate production tricks I could think up, taking some tips from recent Everything but the Girl songs. It’s become quite a pop-style thing, mainly owing to the bright melodies and chorus of Jill’s original track, “The Secret Guards of Kalé”. The source’s chorus melody made for a hell of a hook. This song came in as a runner-up to the grand prize winning entry: not too shabby. The other entries are also available at jilliangoldin.com, some by veteran OC ReMixers such as Malcos, Rayza and Another Soundscape; don’t forget to listen and enjoy those as well.

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From the “Freshly Baked Remixer Challenge,” the revival of a music project from way back at the OCR forums. The idea is for forum members to challenge remixers to interpret any songs from any games they request. The musician then has about a month to produce a remix of the requested material. Quite a challenge I took on, because I don’t do anything fast (didn’t even really start until two weeks before deadline), but I was challenged to do the “Stage 7″ BGM from the Genesis title Rocket Knight Adventures. “Outerspacester” is my entry. The source tune, while pretty good, doesn’t have much of a melody to work with, so I decided to give it one, and incorporate as much of the source I could in a way that makes sense in the context of the mood I was looking for with this song: that of your favorite late 70′s crime-drama theme song, but with some modern synth work and some “space” noise to hopefully give it a flavor of the game’s stage being interpreted. For two weeks’ work, naturally the piece is a bit unpolished, and could use better guitars and mastering. I may revisit this in the future. If you’re curious, please check out the project page at thaSauce and have a listen at the other entries.

• Listen and download: Mirror 1 – Mirror 2 [from "Blood on the Asphalt" homepage]
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A short little hip-hop thing, the second “BotA” track, actually based on Vega’s ending tune, but officially based on Vega’s stage music, because there wasn’t one available for the project. The lyrical premise was thankfully simple: pure braggadocio, which is what you hear in a majority of hip-hop, anyway, but tied in to the total victory at the end of Vega’s tournament run. The lyrics reflect most of the text seen in Vega’s various SF2 ending cinemas (“Perhaps he is the world’s biggest narcissist. Who’s next?”). I think the programmed strings work well enough in the context of thick bass/kicks and layered handclaps, along with the original, special piano/harp-hybrid line at the end.

• Listen and download: Mirror 1 – Mirror 2 [from "Blood on the Asphalt" homepage]
• Exclusive! Download instrumental .mp3 (LAME “-V 3 –vbr-new” encoded)
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• lyrics

This reggaeton number (may be a first for OCR) is the first of two tracks for the “BotA” OC ReMix album project: Dee Jay’s stage music. Another of my experiments in “put my money where my mouth is”… can I do radio-style dance joints as well as the next guy, but also make them less annoying? I’ll let you be the judge of that… I actually don’t like reggaeton much – like latin freestyle during the 80′s, very few tracks among this pile are quite decent, from what I’ve heard (and I’ve heard plenty in preparation for this track). Anyway, as in “Unknown from M.C.,” the verses are all quite toungue-in-cheek: lyrical content headquarters this ain’t. I just hope the track doesn’t suffer too much from my embarassingly limited knowledge of Spanish, as well as the fact that I couldn’t record as much vox as I wanted, so editing is almost rampant.

• Listen and download at OverClocked Remix
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Inspiration came from the smooth piano chords of the second stage track from Revenge of Shinobi, “Sunrise Blvd.” This ReMix is another trip back to that funky acid flavor I love so much, in the vein of the masters, Incognito, and following my MIDI’s of Marble Garden Acid Spin Remix and the Dev theme. The trick was to program the notes – since I can’t play more than seven notes on a keyboard at any one time – and have it sound like a good studio jam. The “Keys” in the title refer to the keyboard instruments jockeying for position, especially in the middle section: piano, Rhodes, and organ, plus a little clavinet on the side. Recognize the ending?

• Listen and download at OverClocked ReMix
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• lyrics

My very first work for the OC ReMix community. The general idea was to come up with something sounding basically like the stuff many folks hated to see hip-hop come to on the radio recently – fake gangsta flavor, very cliched, but at least catchy, complete with “radio edits” of the infamous “N-word.” Most of the lyrics were taken from the original Knuckles tracks from both Sonic Adventure games, re-written and recorded by myself, in lieu of someone with a better flow. The second half of the third verse is completely original.