ReMix: Sonic the Hedgehog 'Collision'

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Been a long time! Seem to be several submissions from those who've been MIA awhile lately, and all of 'em goodstuff to boot. Malcos aka Stephen Malcolm gives us a string-driven bit of Sonictronica with this hip-hoppish bit. At 1'39" something of a chorus comes in, with pizzicato and a cool call-and-answer motif. If you're familiar with the soundtrack to Silence of the Lambs, you might notice a certain coincidental similarity - I wasn't overly familiar with the original piece from Sonic, so to me at times this sounded more like a Silence of the Lambs mix. Kinda weird, I know, but trust me, there's some definite overlap - besides that, the original already had a sort of cinematic flair to it, which is amplified here by the string arpeggio patterns. Stephen takes heavy-hitting drums and uses 'em in a heavy-hitting drum track whose kick accentuates the bass, but lets strings drive the bulk of the melodic and harmonic action, focusing the variety in the arrangement on how they're put together and articulated. Coma summed things up nicely this go round:

"This is a good arrangement of a repetitious song. Violins are an appropriate mainstay, and the play between the pizzicato, synth, and bold drumline is enjoyable. Some of the percussion gets hard on the ears as it drones on throughout the mix; more activity or scaling back on the volume might've helped. Aside from that, there's plenty of variety and balance here."

In particular, I think the comment on the percussive dynamics is apropo, as some more work on variation here could have lent sections more distinct identities, beyond what was happening with the strings, and enhanced the overall mix in terms of development. The effect of keeping things level is that the mix does have more a background, soundtrack vibe, however, which does work well enough, I just think there's enough foreground stuff going on to warrant placing more emphasis there. Regardless, a solid return piece from Malcos of some more untread Sonic territory, which is always nice to see. And heck, for me at least (user experience may vary) it doubles as a good Silence of the Lambs interpretation as well. Kickin'.

― djpretzel