ReMix: Sonic & Knuckles 'Catapult'
Dropper of beats Dain Olsen triumphantly returns from a half-year hiatus with some pre-eminently danceable Sonic + Knuckles electronica, in classic Beatdrop style:
"It's a remix from Sonic and Knuckles of Flying Battery Zone. Felt like pulling out my breakbeat skills once more after that DDR remix awhile back. This one completely sapped my computer for everything it had."
Sounds like it, too. This lil gem has sections that represent the very best of what I've heard Dain put together, with 3'37" taking the aural cake for heavy, downright ill ("as the kids say") grooves n' textures. The beats certainly fly, and some of the synths have all the electricity and bite of battery acid (for a microcosmic example, lick both connectors on a nine volt), so the zone is being well-represented, Olsen style. Shnabubula does an excellent two-paragraph job of summing things up:
"2:11 was the highlight of the track for me. The bass drums pound each beat into my head almost knocking me over but the tight-as-hell synth catches me leaving me bouncing back and forth to the groove. Later at 2:39 when the additional distorted synth joins in by emphasising the off beats, the entire dance apparatus has finally been constructed and it does what it's supposed to.
After all the HARD-core sounds the sweet talkin' synth that shows up at 3:25 hit's the spot. It's like "I only hurt you cause I love you baby!" Right right, so we got tight rhythm work [not just drumwork since all of the instruments get in on forming the backbone of the beat] some nice occasional contrasts and a not-all-that heavily interpreted source with a good amount of original material mixed in."
Did you see how Sam capitalized the "hard" in "hardcore"? Wasn't that neat? Dain certainly ain't no softy, that's for sure, with little concern for fluffy puppies or cute babies when it comes to decimating the sonic soundscape using an arsenal of aggressive analog and alternative axes, brought to you by the letter "A". Over the years, his sound has evolved, and while it's lost of none of its edge, it's gained slickness and knowing technique in the production arena, which is a bit more important for genres of music that lean on sound harder than they do composition. Dain plainly remains able to again maintain and sustain the same balance of arrangement with more original components, and you can still tell it's a sonic mix, albeit one mutated by galvanized, acidic substances. Sorta like when Jack Nicholson fell into the green chemicalstuffs in Batman and came out all kooky and workin' his mojo, only on a musical level. At any rate, hopefully this marks a more consistent return of one of unofficial game music arrangement's electronica veterans, but even if it don't, it's dash wicked and phat beats, and fie on any who claim otherwise. Like the intuitively-named 'Electric Slide' that they traumatized me for life by forcing me to dance in 7th grade gym class, Dain's latest is, indeed, electric.
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