Posted 2008-02-17, evaluated by djpretzel

I'm proud to announce that OC ReMix Judge, ReMixer, and Director of Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream, Andrew Aversa, was recently declared the winner of SquareSound's Uematsu tribute competition. While fellow judge Larry Oji was a guest judge on the panel evaluating submissions, Andy's medley from FF6 actually ranked as high or higher with the other, non-OCR judges involved, so there's no conspiracy. I think when you hear this mix, which wraps several other themes from the game around a central motif on Devil's Lab, it'll be obvious that they made a solid call. On the decision, Larry writes:

"Objectively speaking, I personally felt zircon's track deserved to win, but being a colleague of mine, I was certainly proud the other judges of the competition felt the same way as well. It's definitely speaks to Andy's talent, and he's always impressively represented OC ReMix."

Upon hearing the good news, Andy wrote:

"Man, this was a great way to start my day. I'm really happy. Honestly, I wasn't even 100% confident on my entry because I had actually made no less than THREE attempts at a remix for this before I arrived on this concept, which I started really late into the contest. I ended up submitting about 20 minutes before the deadline :P"

I guess the fourth's time the charm, in this instance. Tim from SquareSound writes:

"With an impressive combined score of 96.22% from our judges for his Final Fantasy VI medley entitled "Dirt Devil," Andrew Aversa is our winner! Congratulations Andrew! ...I personally would like to thank everyone involved in this competition. All your efforts truly shone through, whether as an entrant or a judge. I really appreciate all the hard work each and every one of you has put in."

This was an especially cool competition/event because Tim really went to great lengths to involve other communities, including OCR. Larry got to guest judge and, while all of us were busy, making time for things like this whenever possible is definitely something that makes the whole online game music community more integrated.

Unlike a product bearing the same name, this ReMix doesn't suck at all. Zero sucktion. A bit-crushed beat intros the whole thing, which then gets layered up with cleaner drums before offbeat piano chords come in and an evil-but-funky bass enters. It's the lead, however, that does most of the heavy-lifting, with plenty of sequencing flourishes and twists and turns. There are also a good number of hybrid/orchestral breaks, like 0'49", with pizzicato, harpsichord, and clarinet all playing off each other and a giant modulated synthline gurgling in sync. There's also meaty electric guitar chugs, triumphant major-key refrains, more pizzicato-arpeggio breakdowns, mechanical anvil and related percussive fx, timpani, choral pads, and lord knows what else in here. And it's only 3'37"! No doubt that Andy packed a lot of punch in a tiny package on this one. The weaving of themes definitely makes it one of his more intricate arrangements to date, but his production chops came along for the ride every step of the way, making for a piece that well represents the arrangement/production ratio we like to emphasize so much. Very cool competition that I'm glad OCR had a chance to participate in - download this (awesome) ReMix then go check out the other submissions at SquareSound!