ReMix: Submarine Attack 'Into The Deep'

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Been quiet lately as I had a busy weekend which involved turning twenty-five, migrating servers, continuing and I would say worsening an already erratic sleep schedule, and finishing up a piece I'd been working on for my [insert plug here] recently opened gallery on deviantART. However, there's some great stuff coming your way as of right now, so I think the wait will have been highly worth it. First mix of the night comes from Destiny aka Helen Trevillion, with some guitarage courtesy zyko. So, not only does Helen make some badass tunage and sing (err, 'vocalize') well to boot, but in this case she's gone into true old skool roots territory with some Sega Master System coverage of Submarine Attack. Rock on. The ReMixer writes:

"It's a remix of what is probably one of the most obscure games that ever existed on the Sega Master System - "Submarine Attack". That game was the first game I ever had and I loved it to bits. It wasn't the greatest game ever made, but I really did love the music. (I feel I can die happy now that I've fulfilled my task of remixing it. ^_~) It's barely a remix - I got a little carired away and it's flooded with original material, but nobody would know anyway, since presumably nobody knows the music from this game."

As I personally, though a die-hard SMS fanboy, was not familiar with the game, I took it upon myself to verify that Helen wasn't just submitting an original piece and going off on some totally fictitious story meant to confuse and befuddle us. Not that I don't trust her and everyone that submits mixes implicitly, but I needed to compare regardless and this was a great excuse to fire up Meka. While my controls were a bit messed up, resulting in many naval catastrophies, das boot was definitely doing its thing set to music recognizably similar to the piece Destiny submitted, and though her original contributions do add quite a bit, the gung-ho spirit of the original is definitely there. There's orchestral, Celtic, and middle-eastern influences here, along with the used (and abused) ubiquitous Enigma shakuhachi sample. If you're familiar with the sample in question, which is either the original, infamous E-mu shaku or one based off it, you might cringe a little to see it used yet again. Some of you won't have any idea what I'm talking about, but there are certain synth patches/samples that are very "known" in the recording world - the Van Halen "Jump" synth patch, the Roland 'Digital Native" D-50 patch, the classic DX7 electric piano, and yes, the E-mu shakuhachi sample. It's well-implemented here and seems higher-quality than the very first incarnation, but it still makes me think of Enigma or Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. At any rate, besides shaku you've also got lovely solo strings, lush layered percussion, breathy vocals, and zyko working his mojo on an inspired lead. There's some progression funkiness at around 3'15" that while transitory seemed a little odd. But I simply love what she's done with the melody, and zyko as well interprets a very set, quantized, but still GOOD tune into something with human edges, pauses, and a pulse. Most likely you have never played Submarine Attack, and perhaps the odds aren't amazingly high that you ever will. Nor arguably, should you. But it had some very solid, intensely melodic music, similar to the scores of plenty of earlier anime that I've watched, and Helen and zyko have taken that and injected all the life and scope the original demanded and deserved. Great stuff all around, don't pass it by out of unfamiliarity with the material or you'll be missing out big time.

― djpretzel