ReMix: Final Fantasy VII 'The Crossroads'

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The Return of... DJ CRONO?? Jovette Rivera, who now goes by his full name (which is rather cool to begin with - good move!), last had a mix posted in March of 2003. He's submitted things since then, but may have gotten discouraged as his personal style was veering away from our site standards and his pieces were not being accepted by the judges panel. All that changes now, with this ReMix. This is Jovette's best work to date, and fully delivers on all the promise his initial FF6 mix showed back in 2002. Way back then, this is EXACTLY the type of track I saw Jovette eventually progressing towards and submitting, and while it's taken a loooong while, his timing couldn't really have been much better, as his magnum opus coincides with Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream, of which this track is part. I'm a huge fan of this track; Jovette's maximalist style, inspired by J-pop and anime music and overflowing with vocal variety, isn't for everyone, but it's definitely for me. The ReMixer writes:

"I knew this song had to be special, an outlet that I hadn't tapped into yet. I wanted to combine the intensity of heavy metal and techno, with the energy of hip hop and breakbeats, with the dramatic and anthemic feelings of classical and oprah. I've always loved Cid's Theme, and unlike some other songs from FFVII, there's more than one consistent melody in this song. I then thought this would make a ideal song for building upon (ie, intro, verse, chorus, bridge) and implementing lyrics, as seems to be my signature. I hope everyone enjoys the song, I know it's been a while. Thank you everyone."

I'll say it again, I'm just really psyched that Jovette could be a part of this album. He's one of those very distinct mixers who fell off the OCR radar awhile back and who I always wished would make a grand return, and... here it is. He's right about Cid's theme having two distinct melodies, and he capitalizes on this to great effect. The traditional, very benign orchestral intro gets abruptly intruded on by a mean guitar riff, there's a screaming, ascending buildup into a vocal refrain that's sung/shouted, followed by some lower, grumbling metal vocal bits, then a vocoded electronica chorus... I mean, from a pure vocal variety perspective, this ReMix suffers from the worst case of multiple personality disorder EVER. Except that it's... beautiful. Jovette is absolutely fearless with trying out vocal ideas, combining singing in multiple octaves, rapping, growling, shouting, vocoding, and lord knows what else into this stew that somewhow works. The whole arrangement is to me an amazing stylistic accomplishment, but in particular it hinges on what Jovette's calling the bridge, which kicks in very anthemically at 3'10" - I always pump the volume knob up at this part, and it's already pretty damn loud. I've listened to this track on repeat half a dozen times in a row. It's very cathartic and therapeutic; it just feels like one big release of musical ideas juxtaposed together with equal parts craft and sheer, brute force enthusiasm. I'd absolutely die to see some quality Advent Children AMVs made using this mix (or for that matter any VotL mixes - come on, AMVers, show us what you're made of!) - it's such an uplifting and energetic piece of music, I think setting it to video would be fun as hell. At any rate, I may be this mix's biggest fan - it's not the most subtle, refined piece of music in the world, that's true, but frankly, that's not always what music has to be about. Jovette's mix is probably the polar opposite of my own Tifa mix, and I absolutely love the fact that they can both come out of the same community and end up on the same album.

― djpretzel