ReMix: Final Fantasy IV 'RDX Necklace'
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- Game: Final Fantasy IV (Square, 1991, SNES)
- ReMixer(s): Children of the Monkey Machine, audio fidelity
- Composer(s): Nobuo Uematsu
- Song(s): 'Bomb Ring'
- Posted: 2012-06-04, evaluated by djpretzel
- Album: Featured on Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption
Larry explained that the hold-up on this track, from 2009's Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption, was his fault - oversight, mostly, but it's also harder to judge ambient/atmospheric tracks like this collaboration from Children of the Monkey Machine & audio fidelity. It's been awhile since we posted something from Mr. Newman, whose distressed soundscapes take some getting used to but pay off with very ornate, layered textures and arrangement that's embedded deep within tortured strata of sound, but always present. Jay writes:
"This mix is a part of the FF4 OCRemix Project: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption. It was originally started by CotMM sometime in the summer of last year but didn't really pick up until we started talking online and he asked me contribute some live instruments to his track. From there it took on a life of its own and went through many different revisions to get to the one that you are hearing.
My goal for this version was to make it accessible to others in a very dramatic way. The song builds in a long drawn out crescendo over the period of about 5 minutes. If you allow yourself to take in the drama of the story, where the song is played during a scene where the protagonist unbeknownst to him sets a peaceful town on fire, I hope you can feel the fear and anxiety that we hoped to build amidst this engrossing dark and burning intensity. "
CotMM adds:
"I think it's a fun take on what was otherwise an oddly upbeat jazz bit given the original source scene...I wanted to do something original, brutal, and edging toward unlistenable, but not quite there. While the track ended up being much more mainstream than my original concept (which would have been more inline with the extreme drone metal genre like 'Nadja' and 'Sunn O)))'), i think it's still a nice addition to the project, bringing something edgier than probably most of the other tracks."
Any of our newer listeners who haven't been exposed to Matt's work will no doubt find it quite different from the vast majority of OC ReMixes - more texture-oriented, more distorted, darker, and less about discrete instrumentation & more a cacosphere of motion. With this shorter version that Jay's helped out with, there's a bit more direction & focus, resulting in a piece that's a single, ever-intensifying descent into, well, evil. If anywhere in the universe there existed a perfect mathematical opposite to Kenny G, this has gotta be it, or close. A truly dark, disturbed vision that lent some weight & variety to Echoes, and a good example of a collaboration where a restraining, editing role helped channel the arrangement.
Discussion: Latest 7 comments/reviews; view the Around 1:05 or so, however, I just suddenly got slammed by a sense of premeditated violence and malice, and that carried on to the end. The explosions really punctuated things, to the point where I experienced a brief but very intriguing sense of disorientation, perhaps as one might expect from an inhabitant of the village in question, who has abruptly found his/her world engulfed in flames—a sort of "Wait, what's going on?"
So mission accomplished, I'd say.
~LS
- Lady Shinigami on February 6, 2013
- Crulex on July 21, 2012
Great job by CotMM and Jay here!
- Bahamut on July 4, 2012
evktalo;864546 wrote: One of my many favourites from EOBLOR. The ebb and flow of the creepy, gritty build-ups is very enjoyable - I especially like the first half. Extremely fitting to the scene in the game. The extended bonus tracks from CotMM on the album are also quite excellent to listen to.
Not to be lazy but this is exactly how I felt about this song when first listening to Echoes years ago, and I would doubly echo the part about the extended tracks on the bonus disc, Spiraling Decay for example is really something else if you just let it sink in for the full 35 minutes.
- ZealPath on June 7, 2012
--Eino
- evktalo on June 5, 2012
Glad to add a different kind of track to the fold and it was a real pleasure working with Matt. He's as nice as they come.
- audio fidelity on June 4, 2012
