ReMix: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest 'And He Returned Home'

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Very appropriate mix title, as I just got back a couple days ago from sunny Costa Rica, where for the last week or so I took a vacation from cold temperature, work, my cell phone, and to a large extent Internet access and anything technological. The food was great, the people were cool, the roads were in the most miserable state of disrepair you could imagine, and I zipwired, hiked, relaxed in hot springs, and became painfully aware that my limited Spanish vocabulary, consisting mostly of food items, isn't sufficient to hold meaningful conversations. After all, there's only so many discussions in which taco, guacamole, salsa, and chimichanga are socially acceptable responses. All in all, though, a great way to start 2006.

Now, back to work... Diggi Dis sent in a collab with Thumper on the obscure Gameboy title 'Great Greed' way back in 2004, but now flies solo with some FFMQ action. There was a little dramarama when this was initially rejected by the judges panel, but I think it was mostly a miscommunication, as some of the rejections indicated that the only really substantive complaint was a somewhat out-of-place vocal snippet pimping Diggi Dis' website, www.diggidis.com, which Frank has since gratiously excised. The overall stye here is somewhat similar to that of Joshua Morse, with smooth EP comping set against acoustic piano and a light jazz mentality that's infused with a bit of funk and, in this case, classical piano. The intro hints at perhaps a pleasant, delicate solo piano piece, but at 0'20" wah guitar, crunchy layered drums, ep, and an anchoring, thick bass come in. At 0'44" pay attention to how the ReMixer changes the rhythmic feel without changing the tempo, introducing a synth lead and later bell pads to round out a very intelligently-chosen arsenal of timbres. Some excellent soloing in the third minute, and then the kit drops out, leaving only bongos and later mixed percussion for a restatement of the chorus and classy solo piano ending. It leaves the same pleasant taste of competent control, of knowledgeable arrangement coupled with the ability to pull off some appropriate riffage, in the listener's ears that the recent JM and po! collabs have. It also manages to mix the saccharin sweetness of the chorus melody with some dirtier, funkier verses and not sound the least bit incongruous, which I think is the salient strength and the mixer's largest accomplishment, but the whole dern thing is pretty spic-n-span. I was a little surprised to see the panel had rejected this, and not all of their comments were solely confined to the URL and vocal bits which have since been removed, I think for the better - some questioned the unorthodox drum panning, others thought the comping was at times frantic, and there was a singular observation about intonation. From my perspective, though, this is well above the bar OCR has set for accepting submissions, I'm glad to have it on the site and will listen to it myself often, and hope that other mixes of this calibre might have a *little* easier time making the grade. Ultimately, the process yielded what I view as a positive result: a version of the arrangement that has been, in my estimation, improved... however, we might need to take a step back every now and then and reassess where we're at with our own personal mix evaluation barometers, and I think Frank's mix offered us the opportunity to do that. Either way, what it means to you is that I'm back from Central America, I'm sunburned as all hell but surviving on pure grit, and you've got a great Mystic Quest mix from Diggi Dis to get a' downloadin', pronto. Guacamole!

― djpretzel