ReMix: Final Fantasy VII 'Damn Those Turks!'

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Danny B's last track back in 2006, the superlative Knuckleduster, debuted our last album project, Sonic 3 and Knuckles: Project Chaos. If you haven't already, when you're done checking out Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream of course, you should give it and all the other OverClocked ReMix albums a listen; there are some excellent cuts off many of them that aren't here at OCR as formal submissions but nevertheless will rock ya booty. Of his latest opus, Mr. Baranowsky writes:

"My mindset for this remix was along the lines of Prodigy meets Morricone. That probably isn't where it ended up, but I wanted to use every part of the source while making it into a more electronic and menacing mix. I had the idea that the Turks' theme, re-imagined, would be abrasive and threatening, while the middle section is more reflective, sort of how they do seem to have a hidden shred of good intentions. The fadeout at the end is indicative of how they just kind of fade away when their work is done.

The mix was made entirely with Reason, and I used a public domain Gregorian plainchant sample to back the piano section. The guitar riffs are all samples that were cut up, rearranged, and processed w/ automated distortion to make it sound all live (there are no actual live parts in the mix). For the foundation of the mix, I took the (very) few ideas of the original and extrapolated chord progressions from them."

Prodigy meets Ennio Morricone... I'll say it again: I love this community. Danny B.'s damning of our beloved Turks, who played a great comedic role in Advent Children, does indeed combine twangy wild west guitars, wicked wah leads, and acoustic guits with electronica elements, fulfilling the intended juxtaposition. The deep bass/kick hits are badass, but things start really kicking in when DB goes all Enigma with some Gregorian vocalizing paired up with gated synths - nice. This is a fantastic example of one of those tracks from the original score that I would have had a damn difficult time arranging myself; it's not exactly accessible, narrative, or catchy. But there's life outside the sharp hooks of power melodies, and the ReMixer does an exemplary job of conceptualizing a texture that enhances Uematsu's original piece. I'm not amazingly keen on the fadeout ending; although I'm not one of those purists who think fadeouts are always taboo, here I think something minimalist, perhaps reductive, would have worked better. Nevertheless, Dan's taken tricky source material and done it justice, and especially from a sonic perspective, come up with something compelling and original.

― djpretzel