Xenogears OCR remix album just released!

[Jormungand]

Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed, a remix album several years in the making, has finally been released! The album is divided into two discs: the "Human" disc, which features arrangements that emphasize more acoustic instruments and styles; and the "Gears" disc, which focuses on electronic music.

Here's a preview video and the vgmdb entry.

Enjoy!

[Lord J Esq]

Woo! Mitsuda, you devil! Your music will never die!

[FaustWolf]

Thanks for letting us know Jormungand, been waiting for this! The preview video was really handy; looks like the style is incredibly varied.

[Lord J Esq]

Wow...I am aghast at how disappointing this album turned out to be. Some of the tricks were downright, unlistenably bad. Most of the rest were just plain boring.

It's very frustrating that the composers can have such good music skills and production values, and yet be so terribly bad at capturing the spirit of the original music. This project does not build on the work of Mitsuda, nor does it offer new interpretations of his incredible insights. All it does is go on and on in an endless parade of self-indulgent displays of technical proficiency. The original material is only vaguely alluded to. There's no love of melody. There's no mathematical intricacy. There's no energy, no direction, no progression. There's no character to it. Plain and simple, it's not music to me. It's noise.

Musical tastes being what they are, I'm sure others will love this album. Good for them. And kudos to the composers for putting work into this. But for me, this is a solid milestone in Overclocked Remix's continuing decline into egotistical irrelevancy. As the saying goes, "it used to be about the music." Instead, OCR has steadily developed a culture in which only certain kinds of music are acceptable. The whole community is growing steadily more interested in taking original material and going meta on it, rather than actually remixing it. There's too much self-consciousness, too much self-indulgence (as I already mentioned), and too much self-aggrandizement.

What an awful disappointment. Xenogears is one of Mitsuda's best video game soundtracks. For it to be represented like this is really disappointing, and that's all I can say about that. =(

[ZeaLitY]

I see. The FF7 project was a titanic let-down for the same reasons. One-Winged Angel became the most-overproduced failure of a remix I've heard.

[Lord J Esq]

Don't get me wrong. Listen to it for yourself and make up your own mind. My post wasn't a review; it was my personal venting of frustration. Nobody should base their decision to listen to this album off of my opinion.

[Jormungand]

I understand your distaste and consequent disparagement over the album and remixing in general, Lord J.

However, you almost made it seem like this album was created for the sole purpose of destroying original's integrity and defiling Mitsuda's good name. :p I guess I can only really speak for myself, but that certainly wasn't my particular goal... and I'm pretty sure it wasn't anyone else's, either.

Anyway, I, like you, am an adamant fan of Mitsuda's music. He's a major influence on my own compositional style, and it was rewarding to be able to join this album and make an arrangement of a track that probably would have been left untouched otherwise. I don't think I planned Forest of the Black Moon in any particular way before starting; I merely listened, reflected, and tried to recreate the piece in way that felt meaningful to myself as well as the context it fulfills in the game.  I drew out all the material I could from the original, and as I began I knew right away that this would be a portrait of austerity; contemplative, inward, and reflective. I guess if that's unbridled self-indulgence, then I'm guilty as charged. Furthermore, if I failed to offer anything new in terms of interpretation, then that's my failure as an arranger. But, I approach Mitsuda's music--all my favorite composers' music--with utmost reverence. After all, they together are the reason I got into music in the first place.

Also, I urge you to reconsider your grouping of the arrangers as part of a singular, defined OCR machine. Like the Compendium, it's a community of different minds with different tastes. Not everyone there is an arranger, or even a musician. Not everyone who IS an arranger gets posted to OCR. And not all arrangers have a goal of getting posted to OCR in the first place. Most of us do it because we love game music. Me, I do it not only because I love game music--and I could go on for ages about why I love game music--but also because it's an opportunity to thank my favorite composers in a sincere and meaningful way. (And I could go on doing arrangements for the rest of my life and it still wouldn't be thanks enough in my view)

Again, I can't speak for everyone, but I'm reasonably sure all the other arrangers featured were just as passionate about the music as I. I understand none of the music is to your liking--but make no mistake, we are fans too.

[ZeaLitY]

No, the machine is the judge panel, which has been defined to an extremely narrow perception of quality by the recruiting of like-minded judges. The judge panel is what makes sure the other arrangers are largely NO'd and the ones who make over-produced giga-sampled wankery get to be posted to the site.

And if you criticize the system and judge panel, well, you're banned. What a diverse community of assholes.

[Lord J Esq]

I don't doubt that you're passionate about the music, or that the other remixers are passionate. Is my disappointment at this album just a sign of how out of touch I am with trends in popular music? I guess that's possible. I've greatly enjoyed remixes from OCR over the years; I have dozens of them on my computer, including by some of the same people who did this album. Over time, though, it seems to me that the OCR community has taken a different direction, one focused less on reinterpreting the source music.

To the extent this album was meant to be listened to by the general geek public, as opposed to the extent to which it was meant to be enjoyed by its creators, I think it falls short. It was truly a disappointing listen for me; every large project will have a few misses and a few hits and some stuff in between, and I was expecting that with this one, but instead I got almost all misses. It's true that there are few limits on art and thus on the way that music can be retold. But I listened to this album, and I did not hear Xenogears. What I heard was well-sampled, well-performed, well-arranged, well-mixed, and well-produced...but it just wasn't music to me. I wish I could whip up a full sheet of critical analysis, but my musical skills are far below any of yours, and I wouldn't know how to put it--which is exasperating!

Anyhow, I hope none of you take this too personally. My disappointment is purely my own, and my intent is not to deflate your balloons at the moment of culmination on this huge project. Besides, being disparaged on the Internet is practically a rite of passage. =)

[neo-fusion]

I see. The FF7 project was a titanic let-down for the same reasons. One-Winged Angel became the most-overproduced failure of a remix I've heard.

I AGREE! I love the original and I think they just straight butches it.

...

Now I love remixes and the newgrounds audio portal is my hub for those, but when it comes to OC Remix. There is RARELY anything on there that peaks my interest or sounds good in my opinion.

I think it's just plain nasty sounding most of the time and I really think they butcher the originals.

Just my opinion, don't hate me for it.

[FaustWolf]

Finally got this downloaded. It's definitely high enough quality to warrant one listen IMO. Hey, free music after all. I kept about a third of the album, which is on par for me. To give you some idea where I'm coming from, whether I keep a track depends on whether it evokes some kind of imagery -- a landscape to go with the soundscape, if you will. That makes it entirely subjective; I dumped "Shit on Citan" immediately, for example, but I guess someone else might get a radical idea for some dark transformation of Alice in Wonderland listening to that sort of thing.

The tracks that stood out the most for me were "My Child" (ingenious vocals on that, it's like a lullaby with a slightly haunting quality) and especially "Omen [R3Mix]." I'm not detecting very much of the original "Omen" in the R3Mix at all, but interestingly it retains some of the original's vague unsettling quality. I have a slight hankering to record a bit of Super Metroid with "Omen [R3Mix]" playing in the background now.

Jormungand, I think your track was probably the one that stuck closest to the source material. It's interesting to hear just how well the Black Moon Forest theme lends itself to a solo piano piece. I kind of want to add all the animal sound samples to it now for kicks.

[IAmSerge]

isn't the title of this topic a little... redundant?

[Xenterex]

I find myself, too, regrettably disappointed in this project.  I'd say that several of the pieces (particularly the ones I was expecting to enjoy the most) had little to do with the feel or mood of Xenogears, or even convey a similar wavelength of emotion.  In fact, it felt like several scores had the composition based on a popular movie's music score instead.  Then there were a few pieces that would get really close, but its like they couldn't allow that, so it veered off and wouldn't let the arrangement complete a harmonized sequence that would elate one's senses comparative to the source.


I'll certainly add my sentiments that "First Meeting..." was enjoyable and a reminder of why I grew to enjoy OCremix in the first place. 

[FaustWolf]

Man -- the "Zeno Paradox" track from this album had a profound impact on my life. True story. Just, the mood of those chorals inspired me to go back and work on something that I'd left unpresentable for far too long, and after a circuitous course of events I now, finally, see the way forward on an intellectual property I've been struggling to develop since high school. After all, I guess the point of fanworks is that they're stepping stones on the road to even greater things. I feel my footing in life is just a bit more secure, and it's possible this wouldn't have happened without the Xenogears OCR remix album!

Thanks Xenogears Remix team!


PS: With regard to the album itself, some of these tracks really do grow on you over time if you give 'em a chance.