ReMix: Marathon 'Neo-Pacificist'

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Long before there was Halo, or even Oni, there was Marathon, arguably Bungie's first hit, also a Mac exclusive, giving Apple advocates something to chew on whilst the PC crowd answered the call of their ids and evangelized Doom. Craig Hardgrove, alias tycho (no relation), sends us our very first ReMix of a mac-exclusive title from the days before the sexiness of iPod, OSX, and the return of Steve Jobs, from a game that was critically acclaimed at the time as being a "smarter" alternative to Doom and which represents an important milestone in an important company's rise to fame. Since the odds of Bungie making a mac-exclusive title today are, shall we say, rather slim, it makes the Marathon series all the more exotic and elusive to most gamers. Craig's a self-proclaimed member of the Bungie fan community and even has an interview with Marathon's composer, Alex Seropian, on his site. He was very upfront in his submission email:

"My attempt with these remakes is to enhance the original, not totally reinvent them"

I'd say OCR's ideology is somewhere between an enhancement and a total reinvention, leaning towards the latter, but depending on the nature of the enhancement, mixes which are structurally closer to their respective sources are on occassion posted, so long as the enhancements qualify under some definition of rearrangement, encompassing instrumentation, additions, subtractions, tempo changes, etc. Larry was the initial and sole voice of dissent in feeling that the approach was a bit too conservative; there's definitely legitimacy there, and not every mix of this nature, relative to the source, will (or should) pass through the panel so unscathed, but in this instance the repetition of the original was mitigated somewhat and the sonic upgrades significant enough to become aspects of arrangement themselves. Mr. Anna of Locke offers:

"this is tough one for me, because while it follows the general structure of the original identically, it has a very different feel to it. the drums, bass, synth sfx are all additive, yet they reserve subtlety.

i really like the ep improvisation that's going on, i wish it wasn't so subtle. this is very well put together overall and the additions fit like a glove. that's gotta count for something..."

The scene vibe is all about the downbeat, electro-jazz trip groove, with a bevy of beautiful, organic, layered percussive elements augmenting the fairly minimal melodic motif of three rising notes followed by... three more rising notes. Yes, it's pretty minimal from a purely compositional perspective, which is why the plethora of sweeps, patterns, and undulations tycho's added in are what make the difference. I especially like the searing, downward synth "yawn" at 0'36" - as Shariq puts it:

"The interpretation is pretty expansive in terms of texture; the original is so sparse; this really adds a lot of meat to the song. It's similar, but different enough."

Definitely mood music - the type of thing you could have on the background while performing any number of lascivious *or* innocuous duties, as the situation dictates, and which would be unintrusive but not uninteresting. Is it safe?? Perhaps just a little, but what it lacks in melodic/harmonic substance it makes up fairly admirably in sonic/textural ambiance.

― djpretzel