ReMix: Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole 'Rare Mineral Addict'

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Landstalker finally graces us with its isometric greatness, courtesy of resident panel eccentric extraordinaire, Samuel Ascher-Weiss, perhaps better known as Shnabubula. Again utilizing an unorthodox style that juxtaposes disparate, sometimes even sub-par samples with more elegant, intricate textures, and featuring very tight, quickly adaptive sequencing, Sam's come up with something that's just... different. Listen to a single, small excerpt of it and you might tend to be dismissive, but taken as a whole, structures like this breathe with equal parts creativity and schizophrenia. Brandon offers:

"The bass-play at 0:57-1:20 is chilled magic. Throughout the track the bass is alive with variation and it’s wonderful to follow it as it takes the lead, then morphs into almost a supporting pad then is reborn with a the cleanest of funky slap styles. It meshes well with the seemingly endless array of other sounds that laugh in the face of repetition. One would think that with this many elements present clutter would be inevitable but the hard panning, distinctive EQ on each instrument, sparse reverb and variety of textures keeps the entirety of this mix as clear as a bell…a clear bell anyway…not a busted bell or something."

You've got filtered wah synth zaniness with JAZZ FLUTE, more heavily verbed 70's style synth lead, a slap bass that seems to duet with itself, bass panned right and upper-octave harmonized melody on the left... and that's just the first minute and a half. Sam just has weird, crazy musical ideas that he somehow pulls off, there's no other way to put it, or at least nothing more eloquent yet concise comes to mind. Actually, Jesse did a better job:

"Sam is doing a great service to the community by serving up such unconventional yet entertaining tracks. He challenges listeners to think about music in new ways, using near chaos to hilight convergent harmony. Great stuff."

If you don't have the palate for Shna's stuff and have already come to that conclusion for yourself based on past precedent, this won't be a revelation or deal-breaker, but if like myself and Jesse you appreciate his... I'd almost call it audacity, but we'll say "strangeness"... and find that it challenges your notions of what's "allowed" in terms of both arrangement and instrumentation - even if that's at the cost of accessibility/danceability/comprehensibility sometimes - then I think you'll dig this. Landstalker certain deserves such an opus, as one of the few great hurrahs of the action RPG on the Genesis. Rare, addictive, and... mineral? Sure, why not.

― djpretzel