ReMix: Chrono Trigger 'Tears of Contention'

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TO writes:

"All right. This piece was initially Bladiator's idea. He came to me one day and asked if I was interested in making a Chrono Trigger remix of "At the bottom of night". I liked the piece, so I told him it was worth a shot. He seemed to have quite a few ideas in mind and we went to work coinciding our styles and working out a format. After what took about 5 months, we finally finished it to our liking.

Starting off with some reverbed piano, leading in to the Bozzy Drumset from Stylus, with Squidfont strings making the backing. When we build up, there's some nylon guitar strumming in there, low-end bassline and Atmosphere strings. The midsection is a combination of the squidfont strings, atmosphere strings and a squidfont Cello, before heading back into a final drum and piano section. Closing out with Bladiator's piano and the strings accompanying. Finishing on F Major was Karl's idea, and I think it worked out quite well."

Having quite recently collabed on Jade Spawn, these two clearly have a good thing going on (platonically). Karl's shimmering piano, with a cavernous, melodramatic reverb, is enshrouded in an appropriate environment of acoustic drums, bass, and strings. Lee does a great job of keeping the drums interesting, and ventures outside of straightforward acoustic territory with some layering work that starts around 1'48" and makes the beat a bit meatier. Piano remains the centerpiece throughout the mix, but doesn't overpower the background, so the two can play off one another without it sounding like a piano mix that just 'happens' to have an accompaniment. There's some excellent interpretation and chord work; some peculiar intonation at 3'43" for a second, but all in all I like the willingness to walk the progression, and the major key, pastorale happiness of the ending is a nice twist relative to the more turbulent body of the work. Oji McJudges:

"Good piano stuffs immediately starting things off; nice atmosphere, very engaging. :43 brings in the TO beats to drive things along. Good stuff at 1:07 with the quick reference to "Out of Phase". If it had stopped with that, I wouldn't have recognized that as an influence but later on it was confirmed.

I think the percussion could have gelled a bit more tightly with the piano work, but overall the piece was clicking and the synergy was there. There's irony involved in that you both had stuff rejected recently, but subsequently team up for this new age gold. Man, this is groove-biasing me with the groovaliciousness. McDonalds, I'm lovin' it."

We love to see you smile. It's worth noting that Jesse had some concerns about simplicity and Jon regarding dynamics, but I think Karl's chord work and interpretation, paired with Lee's appropriate, unobstrusive but never bland accompaniment have resulted in a pretty easy-to-like arrangement and a solid piece overall.

― djpretzel