ReMix: Commander Keen 4: Secret of the Oracle 'man sieht sich galaxie'

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Commander Keen! He was truly keen. If anyone was ever keen, it was him. Actually, i never really played these early id games, but Prince did the tunes just like for Doom - pretty flexible guy. First off, let's answer the obvious questions as to what's being said at the beginning, and why - I emailed analoq after hearing the mix and was informed:

it's just supposed to sound weird. i was sick, i had a fever and a piercing headache, but i wasn't tired enough to sleep so i recorded that intro. for the record, i'm saying:

i'm not feeling too good,
about this one,
some kind of surreal expression,
surrealist expressionistic?
whatever.

moving on, 960 galactic alphabet,
960 galactic alphabet!
are you here? please!
thank you.

This has a very euro-pop sound to it, perhaps a bit of a Kraftwerk influence, and there's some tres 80's mangled vocoding of "Goodybe, Galaxy," preceding the lovely old-style recording piano conclusion with a nice cross-panned fade out. The guts of the mix are essentially a laid-back beat, a lil funky, with a squaeaky analog monoglide lead and some psychedelic oscillator effects over a plunky bassline that does its own happy little riff. I love some of the progressions and the piano solo circa 1'40" is my favorite bit, as analoq lets it loose with some funkdom. Slick snare fill into some heavier filtered percussion follows that, with a great analog lead that restates the melody in more badass fashion. For some reason, be it the references to leaving a galaxy or the dramatic progressions at points, this reminds me of Bowie's Space Oddity (i.e. "Ground control to Major Tom") - in a good way, as I'm a huge fan. Maybe if you melded that track with early euro-techno, added in some more recent virtual analog sensibilities and processing, and decided to cover Commander Keen, you'd come up with something fairly esoteric, unusual, and quality like this? analoq has answered that question, and for some reason I think he's the only one that could have. This has a VERY distinct flavor that, personally, I love. It feels like one of those tracks on albums that aren't one of the singles but you end up liking more, a rare find, and without being intimately familiar with the original I can appreciate that analoq's really transmogrified it into something different and special. Funky.

― djpretzel