Posted 2005-07-04, evaluated by the judges panel

Well, that was exciting... our host had some networking issues that caused either lack of connectivity or reduced connectivity to ocremix the last couple days, but all should be resolved now. In other news, you may have noticed that we are gradually switching to "prettier" URLs, with games, mixes, and alpha listings terminating in slashes and not mentioning filenames or including querystrings. These new URLs are more permanent, shorter, and should we ever change from PHP to JSP (or anything else, for that matter), would still work. mod_rewrite makes it possible, and you'll be seeing more of it as other pages are converted over. Probably also be working with the RSS feeds a bit soon. Alright, onto the mixins... for those who thought battling organs were what you got when you had one too many chalupas or gorditas at El Taco Bell, think again, as Mazedude has decided to lend his talents to Keiichi Suzuki's oddball soundtrack, personally. I freely admit, every time we get an Earthbound submission, I always need to check the source material to make sure the person submitting wasn't just drunk one night; it's a highly contextual, very unorthodox approach to game scoring, and while it fit Earthbound like a Mattel Power Glove, if you're unfamiliar with the game and listening without context, some of it can sound zany or just downright bad. My apologies to Earthbound/Suzuki fans - I think what he came up with was creative, risky, and fit the game perfectly... it's just that - like many things - when taken out of context, quite a bit can be lost.

This may or may not be the case with Mazedude's oddball re-envisioning of "Battle 1" - there's a boatload of dissonance, a veritable smorgasbord of atonality, combined with some groovy percussion, synth bass, crystalline cross-panned synth leads, piano, schnazze Vegas brass, and miscellany fx. The melody quite honestly resembles "Three Blind Mice" being attempted by a first-lesson piano student with a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome - both in the original and here, and intentionally in both cases as well. So, that statement might come off rather negative, but you always need to keep the source material in mind when analyzing a Mazedude mix, because he's really done quite a bit, quite well, and while it's not my favorite piece of his, I'd rather listen to it than Suzuki's original. Chris at least in part suggests this in his submission email:

"Hiya! I know it's been awhile since I've released anything, and this one isn't exactly landmark or anything (although I am cooking up some serious sweetness), but it's fun. Silly. Wacky. Zany. Very trackery. I took a weird, dissonant, short and funky original... and made this.

I'd say his version is still accurately described by those adjectives, but it's more elaborate, fleshed out, and listenable. Baranowsky summed things up both candidly and creatively:

"Every once in a while we'll get submissions where i'm not sure if the strange sound quality is intentional. The most blatant "offender" with this kind of presentation I can think of is Shnabubula. I don't think it's any secret that I'm a huge fan of Shna's work.



Why do I bring up such a wacky allusion? Because this track reminds me of that vein of the bizarre, the avant-garde. I believe that Mazedude's wackiness is completely intentional here. I mean - he's Mazedude. Fanboism aside, I don't profess to be an expert in the obscure, but what is here is just about the best interpretation I can render in my own mind about what the source could inspire. It's not a brilliant onslaught of harmonic progression and melodic transcendence - No, this is a pseudo-atonal journey into the nether realms of Crazy."

Pretty much. It's something you've definitely got to be in the right mood for, and being an Earthbound and/or Mazedude advocate certainly helps. The extreme chromaticism on the uberzany synth lead at 1'00" alone makes it musically interesting, if not particularly mood music for chillin' or drivin' - several of Chris's works fall into this category, however, requiring a general appreciation of the source, what's been done with it, and his elaborate + crafty arranging in general. While less accessible than most of his other mixes, this is never the less "A Mazedude". It's stamped with the same attention to detail and complexity as his other works, and thus deserves a checkin' out and listenin'. Very quirky and intensely singular.