ReMix: Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen 'Zenobia's Grave (AChampionHasRisen)'

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Sorry for the one-post nights lately - sometimes this is simply due to sleep deprivation or my slim-but-definitely-existant social life, but more recently it's been due to working on more "behind the scenes" aspects of OCR. I need to clean up the code so I have a good development environment, update to the latest version of phpMyAdmin, etc. and there's some other goals for OCR in 2003 that will require more foundation work. Tonight's ReMix comes courtesy of newcomer DJ-Kwix, who has collaborated with established artist Israfel to give us our first Ogre Battle ReMix. Israfel's works in the past have mixed orchestral and ethnic elements with breakbeats and synthotica, so when I saw someone named 'DJ-Kwix' doing a collab mix, I figured it would be heavier on the side of electronica. But I figured wrong - this is straight orchestral with some apocalyptic choir work that adds a lot. Syncopated cellos, basses, and later low brass form a bassline over which string runs fly up and down and ensemble sections cover melody whilst centered orchestral percussion move things along. This is a long arrangement, sitting at 4'26" and taking its fair time to develop. Gotta love the formidable low brass, which gets into the midrange with a trombone section doing a counter-pattern. There's a bell/vibe that comes in a lil less than halfway through, before one of the main choral pushes. It's specifically worth mentioning that the choir varies phonemes instead of just straight 'oohs' and 'aahs' and it sounds like they're speaking, which is the exact reason that quality choir samples will offer these differing patches. Just nice to see them used, well. There's some very odd key changes around the third minute and shortly after that aren't atonal but, because of their exposed nature and challenging key, do sound a little "special", but things get back to the main vibe soonafter, and the ending is nice and conclusive. Apparently Kwix composed the original in FruityLoops and tossed the file on over to Israfel who took it and imbued it with better samples, etc. than FL natively allowed for. An interesting cooperative relationship - not really co-arranged but potentially arranged by one party and orchestrated/mixed down by the other. Whatever the case, the result is some very solid orchestral work that's greatly enhanced by the quality choir implementation. Another notch in Israfel's mixstick and a good first submission from DJ-Kwix, fans of Ogre Battle and orchestral in general should definitely sign up quick.

― djpretzel