ReMix: Final Fantasy VII 'Mark of the Beatsmith'

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God, we haven't had an FF7 ReMix posted in these parts in what feels like... oh, at least a couple weeks. Voices of the Lifestream has been very well received, and we're working on potential contests and VotL-related stuff - keep your eyes and ears open. We did recently make the album available on Last.fm, so you can listen to all the tracks right from your browser - sweet. This track was particularly interesting to me for two reasons. One, I considered doing an arrangement of the source material myself as a second contribution to the project, but couldn't really find an approach I liked, and second, because Hy Bound was one of the few artists on the project I'd not previously heard of. Fortunately, he did a wonderful job with a tricky track. Clocking in at 7'20", this is a pretty epic mix that intros ambient with some very shimmery, high-end aliasing effects and strings, but builds up big beat mojo with some strong drum work, as the title might suggest, and has more than a couple arrangement/production tricks up its sleeve. The way Tyler works with the chromatic "melody" from the source, which is more of a riff than a theme, especially towards the end when he's layering it on top of itself, is purdy cool. Now seems like as good a time as any to mention to our listeners that we've been slower with posting and evaluating mixes lately largely due to this project - it's very difficult to support such an undertaking while still running the overall site, and in this instance I was involved not just with a mix but with artwork, site design, and promotion. Nevertheless, the show must and has gone on, and we should be back up to full speed shortly. Of Tyler's contribution, zircon writes:

"I was excited to see Hy Bound volunteering to contribute to VotL after hearing his work on sgx's remix albums. His main influence for this piece was the artist Hybrid, who deals in progressive nu-skool breakbeats; fans of BT may also hear some trademark stuttering effects and other tasty audio processing techniques throughout."

... very cool. Though VotL certainly featured a lot of big names that have been regulars in these parts for some time, it wouldn't be the same without some newcomers as well, and Hy's piece was a pleasant surprise that provided an awesome and thorough take on what I consider some of the most difficult source material FF7 contains.

― djpretzel