ReMix: Final Fantasy VI 'Seized with Fury'

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NOOOOOOOOOoooooo!! ... or rather: yes. While Anakin Skywalker impersonators may have much reason to melodramatically shout negations, this latest ReMix from none other than Alexander Liss, alias housethegrate, should bring balance to the force. Let me stop and briefly express my own thoughts on Episode III, since no one asked: better than I and II, but not by far, and still not in the same ballpark as the original trilogy. In other news, I went to see professional deception artist Ricky Jay last weekend, which was quite the shit, and also had Ethiopian food for the first time, which - once I figured out the sans-utencil delivery method - was also goodstuffs. Also, I heartily recommend checking out VGDJ, a new ocremix podcast that Aurora and Rayza cooked up and will be working on.

But I should probably talk about Alexander's excellent mix now, no? Firstly, one should be aware that housethegrate and Ashane, who recently had his own mix posted here, are brothers, e.g. Terry and Andy Bogard, etc. - very cool and certainly unique to have two sibling mixers. house's mix is from FF6 and merges orchestral elements with rock in a fast-paced construction that varies between following the original tunage being arranged and deviating a bit more. It's hard to argue with the production and technique on the drums and guitar side of things, with a good mixup between distorted tones and mellower stuff, and the arrangement itself does some fun accellerando towards the end and is powerful and emphatic. There's a general feeling of energy and tension, and things keep moving at a pace that's not frantic but definitely driving. The mix is bookended by ambient storm effects which do come off a bit cliched, but in the intro it's mitigated by the faint sound of a detuned saloon piano and a following moan/scream, which are both atmospheric details that lend a complete, produced feel to the overall work. Of the arrangement factor, which was really the only significant point of contention on the panel, Brandon writes:

"The key for me is that the sections that are close to covers are just that: sections. My vote would be an easy NO if house had tried to pass an extended version of material like the first 1:33, but what we have here is far more expansive. The other material in this six minute mix shows good amounts of creative expansion on the theme and is well executed (1:34-2:50, 4:50-5:15)."

Speaking of Alexander's guitar work specifically, Jesse adds:

"He knows how to play with few notes, which makes his (very) impressive chops sound that much more tense and kickass than if he were shredding for six minutes."

There's moments like 4'30" where there's a chromatic, Phantom-of-the-Opera meets Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre quality, and clocking in at six minutes to the second, there's quite a few moments in general that are memorable, musical, and impressively executed. There's certainly some legitimacy in the more critical comments from the panel - that what's constituting arrangement is almost wholly the lead guitar, that some of the individual orchestral samples aren't always picture-perfect, etc., but it ultimately passes the litmus test of not sounding overly similar to the original, bringing something new to the table, etc. and also happens to be very accessible and at several points to kick copious quantities of posterior. Good to see solid submissions from both Liss brothers, who will both hopefully continue conjuring and crafting such opuses.

― djpretzel