ReMix: Eternal Champions 'Perpetual Motion'

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I was privy to earlier incarnations of this, our first Eternal Champions ReMix, courtesy of Mr. Aversa. I still remember the television ad for EC, which depicted the box for the cartridge opening and closing, so as to resemble a mouth, with some witty slogan about how Eternal Champions was going to eat up all those "other" fighting games. Needless to say, while Sonic was clearly a successful combatant for Sega in the realm of platformers, EC never really screamed "franchise" to anyone. I remember playing it, thinking it was decent, then going straight back to my beloved SF2T without batting an eyelash. The music was something of a fog for me, but zircon's lifted that fog, and what you've got in this case is a piece that wouldn't sound out of place on a Castlevania soundtrack - very gothic... or baroque... or one of those adjectives that describes music they play when people dress up in flamboyant clothes and whip vampires and wear too much makeup. It's a different style for zircon, although his trusty FM7 is familiarly identifiable as the synth brass patch that starts things off. The intro actually sounds a bit like a Genesis, until the cleaner drums and pristine bell pads enter. There's textural electric guitar added in for some subtle but effective grit, as well, and drums get meatier using Andy's layering tricks at 1'10" after a tom fill. The following progression really reminds me of portions of the Clockwork Orange soundtrack. There's a nicely executed ritardando/fake ending sorta thing that then kicks right back in, harder than previously, and some choral patches join in for the last bits. There's a conscious lack of a discrete bassline in the instrumentation, with the base of the progression filling things out in the lower quarters; I think this both helps and hurts the mix. It helps it remain very crisp, clean, and perhaps increases the gothic feel, but at the cost of the drums sometimes feeling unanchored. I could go either way, but since it's a salient and probably more unorthodox arrangement decision, it bears mentioning. All in all, though, a great mix that reminds me that EC really did have some good tunes, and which also opens up some new directions for its ReMixer in terms of genre and instrumentation. As a sidenote, while 'Perpetual Motion' was one of my mix title suggestions, I was pushing much harder for Andy to use the extremely punny 'Eternal Affairs' or the Banglesque 'Eternal Flame' - alas, cooler heads prevailed.

― djpretzel