ReMix: Top Gear 'Rockabilly ~ Dark Gears ~ Surfing Gear'

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8 Bit Instrumental may be new to OCR, but they're no strangers to game music, and in fact were invited by Mr. Tallarico himself to participate in Video Games Live when the concert visited Brazil; check this video for Metroid and SF2.

Here they give us Top Gear mixage, arranging three themes in an upbeat rock/funk/metal/surf medley of, like the band name promises, 8-bit instrumentalism. It's perhaps the most intuitive band name ever, but at least it ain't false advertising (although technically, Top Gear IS 16-bit)... There's a lot of material here, but luckily the Top Gear soundtrack does actually have enough solid, original tracks to support the multi-faceted coverage; sometimes racing games don't always come through, but OutRun, F-Zero, and Top Gear are all good examples of excellent original racing game soundtracks. The band writes:

"The first theme we wanted to do something different from the already existing versions of the game, on the second theme we change almost anything and for the third theme feel like a surf music mood on the riff´s so we kind of let if flow"

These guys JUST released an entire Mega Man 2 album, "Beat the 8 Super Robots With 8 Bit Instrumental," that you'll definitely wanna check for more of their stuff. As far as this track goes, the transitions aren't the most seamless in the world, making for a minor case of medleyitis, but each theme is solid in and of itself, and since the instrumentation remains consistent, it's not as jarring. Judges noted performance sloppiness in the initial moments, the less cohesive addition of the surf bit at the end, and production "garagey-ness" as potential pitfalls, but most felt it compensated by getting progressively tighter and packing in a lot of musical ideas successfully. Jesse said:

"The first segment didn't thrill me..not because of the recording, which I think is fine, but the performance was a bit sloppy. The second section makes up for it. The track keeps getting better. I'm surprised it manages not to succumb to the medleytits, but it comes across more like a rock epic, something like Paranoid Android, than a bunch of parts slapped together."

Vinnie added:

"One does get the scent of medley-itis with those awkward transitions between sections, but that was my only real complaint about the arrangement. The sheer number of styles the song goes through is impressive - you get a lot of mileage out of the material. The surf take on "Hiroshima" was a little bit of a jolt from the much harder "Bordeaux", and I think it might have been stronger to just cut the song at 4:55, but I can give you some slack for getting 5 minutes of it totally right."

Good, organic stuff that's polished enough so it doesn't feel thrown together, but still has a lot of energy and spontaneity. Download it now, then check out their discography for other great mixes of F-Zero, Super Mario World, and more; they're definitely representing Brazil with both power and style.

― djpretzel