ReMix: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 'Waltz for Zora'

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Well... YEAH. It's almost 5AM and I've been judging mixes for the past five hours. There's some great, really original stuff comin' your way soon, and this superb jazz Zelda 3 arrangement from Neskvartetten is just the beginning. Ahh, but what a beginning it is - as good as their initial submission, a happenin' Zelda jazz piece, was, this is better - with guest artist Erik Kristoffersson on Alto Sax, this piece takes the familiar title theme in totally new directions that are very mellow and smooth and just... jazz. This is the type of sound I think when I think of jazz, and the type of sound that's still totally, utterly out of the reach of any electronic emulations of any of the constituent elements. Yes, musicians of the world, you're still very safe from being replaced by machines. Probably always will be - the degree of control over instruments like these offered by combining the physical instrument with someone that clearly knows how to play it is awe-inspiring. The arrangement makes such good use of this as well - the drums are always doing something, the saxophone knows when to burn and when to hold back or fall out, the dirty organ is spot on, the bass follows beautifully, and nothing is out of place. Oh, and it's mixed great as well, with the sax very foregound for an intimate feeling. I can picture this being played in a Soho coffeeshop with some poet doing a reading, fully unaware that she was performing her work overtop music from Zelda :) This is my personal favorite arrangement of this oft-mixed theme, and there've been some damn good ones. If I were Koji Kondo and I'd written the original melody, I'd be absolutely thrilled someone did this to it, without hesitation. There's not much else to say, really - the maturity is there to a degree that sets a benchmark for jazz arrangements which almost makes me feel like not trying. Even if the instruments here were emulations, the arrangement itself would still be exemplary and creative. If you don't like jazz, it's certainly not gonna win you over, 'cause it's more "jazz" than most genre pieces on the site, but I dug it quite a bit, and consider it a classic for the theme and for the site. Highly recommended.

― djpretzel