ReMix: Soukaigi 'Aftershock'

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Ziwtra sends in our first mix from this Squaresoft PSX RPG that never made it out of Japan:

"First of all, Soukaigi is an obscure Square game for the PSX. It had a stellar soundtrack by Hiroki Kikuta that was performed by many live instruments and had various vocalists. It should be listened to by anyone who can obtain it.

I've wanted to do a remix of Quake for a very long time. When I was still in high school I used to walk to school for about an hour in the morning. And if I'd been working on a remix, I'd hum various parts and try to figure out how I wanted to solve this problem or that problem (Desert Snowstorm and Willed Assault are both products of such walks). And during one of these walks is where this mix began...

I really tried to open up the atmospheric space--hence the deep reverbed "thunder" bass drum, and the delay applied to the bass (something i've never done!). There are some pretty interesting details here and there (perhaps I got carried away), but hopefully they'll be appreciated after the nth listen. My favorite, I think is the set of "warning" synth beeps at 2:20."

Well, Youngjin covered quite a bit, there, so my work is minimal. I personally love Kikuta's style, so hearing Ziwtra cover some of his lesser-known work is a double-treat. Introing with ambient pads and glacial, cutting, cross-panned timbres, a quick break comes in with an analogue filtered bass that pecks around the melody. This is key to the piece - the bass rarely sticks on a note too long, and instead serves as an accentuator that the groove plays over. It's even cross-panned, which is something you don't hear done to a bassline too often. Youngjin layers on the pads, glide leads, bells, and background effects, per usual, creating a shimmering world that seems a bit faster than his usual style but is none the worse for it. Ziwtra's execution works perfectly with Kikuta's general motifs, and everything clicks in a waterfall of brilliant, synthetic drops of melody and rhythm. Effervescent.

― djpretzel