ReMix: Final Fantasy VI 'Canvas of Dreams'

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In a bit of a rush right now, so this is gonna be super, super brief. Newcomers Geoffrey Taucer and The Prophet of Mephisto submitted an excellent piece awhile back that nevertheless was rejected because it relied too heavily on The Eagles' Desperado, the melody of which they'd woven into Mitsuda's Xenogears soundtrack quite artfully. It was a tough call and resulted in a clarification being added to the standards, and it was made all the tougher by a sweet ballad arrangement and some soulful, well-executed sax. Well, they're back, and this time they left Don Henley behind and covered Relm's theme from FF6 and the ending theme from Radical Dreamers. There's acoustic strumming, appropriate and natural acoustic percussion, electric lead, cello, acoustic piano, and seemingly intermittent fretless bass. The spotlight is definitely on the sax, which is simply beautiful. Kenny G catches a lot of shit for being weaksauce elevator music, which is often true, but you still gotta recognize his skill at the instrument and the purity of his tone, and I'd liken the better parts of this performance to that sort of ability. Check the run at 3'10" for a good bit of fast fingering, too. The whole arrangement capitalizes well on the organic nature of each element; my only critique would be that I'd have preferred the bass been a more consistent presence, as it seems to drop out or fade widely in prominence. Nevertheless, as with their previous, ill-fated submission, there's a lot of warmth and soul here, and the unquantized and intimate setting serves the coupled source material amazingly well. I'm glad that GT and Mephisto persisted and sent this one our way, as I think it'll have broad appeal and speak musically to the numerous fans of both games.

― djpretzel