ReMix: Final Fantasy VII 'Golden Feathers'

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Mattias' Jade Cocoon was posted rather recently, but he played a huge role on Voices of the Lifestream, and this mix is one of the more peculiar tracks on the project. Another Soundscape writes:

"I started it as a d'n'b "on drugs" kinda song but the day after I felt that I needed something more since I wasn't that good at electronic music to begin with. Thus the ethnic part was born. My pride and joy. And even more "on drugs". Actually that's pretty much what I wanted to say. This is a remix of an annoying theme on drugs. Admit you thought that chocobo jockey with the black hat, Joe was kinda strange. Now you know he's really a dealer! Enjoy!"

Project Director Andrew Aversa chimed in with the following comments:

"This song was the result of an FF7 remix competition I ran back in late '06 to fill in some of the tracks on VotL that hadn't been taking. To be perfectly honest, I had never heard of Another Soundscape when I received his contest entry, and at first I wasn't really fond of his entry. The original version was much less developed, polished, and musically interesting than the version I finally ended up with.

Though he didn't come in first, I thought Anso's track was promising enough that I pulled him on board and decided to give him some pointers on how to improve his remix. I was bowled over at how quickly he took my suggestions and improved the track; a few more rounds of this, and we ended up with a real winner. I'm glad I gave Mattias a chance as he's more than proven himself with this mix and a number of others that followed (both ones for VotL and otherwise) - in my nearly 5 years on OCR, there's almost no other remixer I've seen as hard-working and motivated to improve. Anyway, this remix really does a great job of taking a not-so-memorable source tune and turning it into something fun."

Quite the endorsement, but I can see where it's coming from - Mattias is great at quickly adapting his musical ideas and trying different approaches. The source material here could be described as "annoying," or more positively, but at any rate, I think it's challenging material to work with and develop, and that in just under four minutes AnSo does a great job of doing so. There's soaring, high-pitched synth melodies that get layered with powerful harmonies, some solid stuttering and percussive effects, and the ethnic section adds both textural and compositional variety. He says "a remix of an annoying theme on drugs" - I say: A solid, playful mix that takes tricky material and works with it very effectively. Fun.

― djpretzel