ReMix: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 'Prayer'

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Jill Goldin can sing. She knows karate, butoh, and furthermore apparently played Yum-Yum in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. All of which I learned from her site, and all of which is pretty badass in my book. I actually just watched Topsy-Turvy for the twentieth or so time, so it was cool to see the G'n'S stuff. While I'd certainly love to hear her cover "The Sun, Whose Rays", the matter at hand is this Zelda 64 mix she's submitted. The ReMixer, aka pixietricks, writes:

"I want to thank user EvilHead for helping me with the Japanese text and pronunciation. He's quite a guy! This project took flight when, inspired by the vocal work I did with m1lesteg, I thought I might try a remix of my own. I've been an OCR listener for years, but I never really took submitting seriously until now. I hope you enjoy. This should stir things up a bit, if nothing else. And to any mixers out there looking for a voice, opera or otherwise, I lend myself to the vastly underappreciated art of videogame music!"

Actually just finished my first Anime Remix, a cover of Naruto's first season ED (end selfplug) and am thinking about doing others... maybe that offer extends to anime mixes, too? Now, where to start. This is in some ways a liberal mix and in other ways conservative - essentially, the original 'Forest Temple' theme is kept pretty close to the cuff, but Jill's added, among other things, an original Japanese lyric, an original melody for said lyrics, ambient storm effects, soft but layered + interesting drums, and she's also swapped out pieces of the original instrumentation with some cool vocalizing that reminds me of Laurie Anderson (Oh Superman = one of my favorite songs, ever) or Meredith Monk or something. Not surprising, for a voice major, but still very cool. The actual melody that's been superimposed over Kondo's original reminds me more of Erasure, especially the synth pattern that enters at 1'11" and the oh-so-lovely interval at 1'49". I was trying to explain to someone the other day how, like a single amazing line can make or break any given poem, a single interval in a melody that is JUST right can change things dramatically. When Tom Chaplin of Keane resolves on "we know" in "Somewhere Only We Know", for example, any other note would have been so very... less. The whole piece is fairly non-linear, without a sense of climax, but this makes a good deal of sense because, as the title suggests, the lyrics and the structure as well take the form of a prayer. I seem to dig this a good deal more than some of our judges; I think it's definitely the type of mix that'll either hit you the right way, or not. If, as I do, you've got a predilection for J-Pop and anime OSTs, I think you might be more likely to dig it. From an arrangement perspective, it's one of the more liberal pieces on the site, and an extreme example of primarily additive technique, but... I listen to Jill's piece, and I listen to the original, and I hear Kondo's piece reenvisioned as the backdrop for something that, while larger, still shares the same spirit of wonder, naturalism, and a sort of wooded, ethereal transplendence. There's precedent for this sort of arrangement, though the line/ratio can certainly be crossed. Mastering is a little low, so you might wanna pump the volume a bit. Hopefully you'll see in this what I see in it, but I think it's ultimately one of those tracks that does different things for different people. Regardless, I love that Jill's first submission is so unique and singular a creation. I'll be playing this one often and looking forward to more.

― djpretzel