ReMix: Final Fantasy IV 'Tororian Love Song'

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Man, you just gotta love the variety we've been seeing lately. I refer not to the variety of different games being ReMixed - though that's been respectable as well - but to the different genres and "riskier" material we've seen coming in. This latest sub from newcomer silent, aka Jason Merrill, definitely falls into that category. Big time. Jason's taken the "main theme" / field music from FF4 and turned it into an extended solo-guitar-with-vocal-and-original-lyrics opus. It's nothing short of impressive that silent was not only able to produce a beautifully articulate and well thought-out solo guitar arrangement, but to also write a very emotive, original lyric AND sing it (quite well) himself. And it's NOT an easy vocal to sing. The intro guitar solo reminds me of the beginning of several Led Zep tunes, in a good way, the recording is very well done, with fret-sounds, ambient effects, etc. present, but with no overbearing hiss. The vocal comes in around 1'30", and much of whether you'll dig the tune may hinge around whether you dig Jason's voice, and rock vocals in general, but I found that - especially given the difficulty of such an exposed vocal with a formidable range - Jason does a very admirable job. The arrangement does change to a fuller, metal-ballad style, with drums, electric bass, shred chords, and finally exits on a solo piano. There's nothing really similar to this on OCR - it attempts what I consider to be a difficult genre, doesn't cut any corners or take any shortcuts to do so, and you gotta admire the cajones for that alone. Some of the harmonizing towards the end actually reminded me of a couple Alice in Chains tracks. There are portions of the vocal I'm less thrilled about than others, sure, and when the mix fills out with additional instruments there are some balance issues, but really no excuses need to be made - even though one could write-off significant inadequacies to the sheer difficulty of what's attempted here, it's not really necessary, as the end result is surprisingly solid, musical, interesting, and it works. This is the type of mix that, on paper or in the formative stages, it might have been hard to see the potential for, but I'm glad Jason pulled it out, as the result is a compelling, unique bit of game music arrangement.

― djpretzel