I never got "huffy" about it. I gave it a listen and decided I didn't like it. No more, no less. But had I known it was an April Fools prank I would've thought different and appreciated the humor. Also, Ice Cap Zone is one of my all time favorite Sonic tunes, so when I heard about an album with all Ice Cap remixes I was pretty excited. But thanks for clearing that up. So there was a method to the madness after all!
So what part of this actually is a remix part? Everything I've heard was plain Labyrinth played by slightly different instruments. Yes I listened the whole thing. You may or may not like sound of speed but at least they are trying to be creative.
Comparing this album to ReCapitated isn't that farfetched, to be honest. My first reaction when I heard most of these songs for the first time was "this is a joke, right?". I have to agree with many of the people who already posted in this thread: this album, like most of recent OCR stuff, is definitely subpar. I think I'm not even going to keep these songs on my hard drive, which should sound like blasphemy for a Sonic fan like me. Clockwork Criminal is good, though. I might keep that one and delete the rest of the album.
All of it. From here. Sure, it's going back to that old-school of OCRemix that just created an electronic version of the original song with only a few changes, but it makes for a more recognisable remix than some of the recent efforts where the remixer has tried to insert 'original' melodies that are more often that not some new section that doesn't belong at all. But it's not just some VSTs and a new drum-set. Oh, no. This remix begins differently to the original (in fact, it actually leaves the intro till the end) and the bassline is different. Oh, and there's the bit that adds the 'drowning' music, and kicks back in with a subdued tempo. Don't remember the original tune doing that. There's other minor ameliorations here and there. It's not 100% the original tune, just very faithful. Maybe I'm just weird in wanting a remix of a tune I love to actually resemble the tune I love. Maybe.
Really? A million? As far as OCR goes this is the first "simple guitar" version of that song on the site, and it's a pretty straightforward version of the song to boot. Also, not counting Metamorphic Rock (which only uses Green Hill Zone in the opening), it's only the 4th GHZ remix there. I realize you're using hyperbole, but even then, I don't think that there are really a lot of them. Maybe on YouTube, where people just webcam themselves playing along with the game soundtrack on their guitar? As an artist, I know that I generally don't care if folks have approached a song a certain way before; if that's where my inspiration is taking me, that's where I'll go. Whether you like the song or not is up to you, obviously, but asking a question like "Did we really need more?" or (as I suspect you really mean) "Was this really necessary?" is a bit pointless. No, none of it is necessary. Necessity isn't really the point.
Ok. I did not fully enjoy this album. I like to go into OCR albums thinking of the songs as songs, purging my fanboy side, just to be fair in my judgment. There were one or two funky songs I started to like... I actually started out enjoying "Fifty Rings to Ride." It made good BG music while I did stuff. Then you get the crap ass self insert vocals and you can't help but facepalm. And then I get to "Under Construction." Oh, this one sounds fun. Oh great. Vocals. OCR, you're good people sometimes, but let's face it... You can't sing. Stop trying to self insert your shitty vocals, even if it is scat. You just can't do it right. And then you get "Bubble Junkie." Unfortunately, I went into this one with my fanboy cap on. I love Labyrinth Zone's theme to death. But it wasn't the fanboy in me that killed it. It was that damn abuse of that synth voice that ruins so many good remixes. Some people like that sound, I guess. I don't. The only songs that made me perk my head up a bit came at the end. Both "Clockwork Criminal" and "Final Progression." I have to commend "Clockwork Criminal" for making my soul flutter a bit when I heard the refrain the first time. I was somewhat disappointed going into it because it sounded like one of those "let's abuse the in-game sfx for 4 minutes and call it a remix" types at first. It was not, luckily, and only opened and ended with any large grouping of sfx, spacing out more appropriate sfx throughout the song. I'll be honest, I started to think Virt had a hand in composing this one, at least with the refrain harmony. As for "Final Progression," it felt like a generic techno song. Not bad at all really. It was a rather unique twist on the melody, I suppose. When I put my fanboy cap on, I have to say it doesn't fit the stage at all, but as a song in general, it's ok. For those of you looking for a better album to dry your tears with, why not give Megaman: The Robot Museum a shot? Not too bad from what I've been listening to so far.
I wasn't aware that it was an April Fool's joke. Lose the hostility. Also, I tend to be very impressed with OCR's remix albums. I loved Project Chaos and Hedgehog Heaven, The Answer, Serious Monkey Business, No Balls No Glory, Hybridism, Chrono Symphonic, The American Album, Threshold of a Dream, and Rise of the Star. I just don't really like this one.
There's a few musics I enjoyed, but it's mostly just cuts and pieces out of each one. It has no memorable songs like Project Chaos had, but to be fair, none are as bad as Project Chaos' worst either (not even close). At least I recognised most of the music time and not just some lost part amongst all the original work.
Listened to the Green Hill one, and was instantly turned off by the midi-sounding drums and other ear-raping shit. Interesting composition, but the instrumentation is horrible. Listened to a few others and they all sounded like shit. Except Under Construction, because it actually sounds "real". Will post again once I hear all of them.
I'm with the majority; this album was wanting, quite desperately wanting. There was a lot of potential here, and much of it went unfulfilled. As Ch1pper said, the toxic guitars drowned out the good bits of "Sound of Speed". I wanted to think that "Subsonic Sparkle" was going to be impressive, given how much I liked GaMeBoX's contributions to Project Chaos, but it was middling by just how far it strayed from any semblance of its source material. Both "Spring Junkie" and "Bubble Junkie" could have been so much more. The former was consumed an attempt to pack too much into one entry and have some shoddy mixing, whereas the latter suffered from that wretched vocal synth. "Fifty Rings to Ride" was passable with me. Joshua Morse was masterful in Bound Together, but again, this did not bring to mind the source material. Yeah, I cringed at the vocals, but I can forgive that. I'll admit, I liked Daniel Baranowsky's "Knuckleduster" in spite of, and indeed in part because of, his vocal efforts. "Under Construction", as Ashram noted, had shades of Rouge's SA2 stages with its vocals, but the blatant self-promotion is bad form. If all but the SA2-type vocals were excised, this song would be as close as this album would get to a winner. "Caos" and "Clockwork Criminal" were pleasant enough. Everything else was not memorable in any way. The love for the Special Stage was inappropriate, especially for "A Hog in His Prime", which inexplicably takes a victory theme and closes with the drowning theme. Perhaps that's the fitting metaphor: an album drowning in sloppy mixing, unnecessary vocals, and uninspired emulation.
God... Under Construction came somewhat close to being an enjoyable listen but I couldn't shake the feeling of it being elevator music. Man. What a disappointment.
Clockwork Criminal is brilliant. I prefer this to Project Chaos which was just a mess IMO after Hedgehog heaven.
Actually I think Project Chaos is the best of the three. I'm already sick of SoS, and I have both HH and PC on my computer, I listen to PC far more though. There are so many great tracks on Project Chaos, Hedgehog Heaven is a bit "meh" in comparison.
I know most of the folks who worked on this album probably grew up loving Sonic and its music, but somehow that just doesn't come across to me in the finished product. The songs - and the truly hideous album artwork - give off a vibe like a bunch of people played Sonic 1 for the first time and were given a one week time limit to remix the soundtrack. I hate how harsh that sounds, since I know that a lot of effort goes into these things. But Sonic music is some of the first music I was ever exposed to, and it remains my favourite music ever - you'd think that an album designed to celebrate it would offer at least something that I find appealing, but I found the entirety of it to be boring almost to the point of being unlistenable.
Well, there is no accounting for taste. I must agree with everyone else here though. And the only time I felt ecstatic through the whole album was the Spring Hill track when it went very heavily 8-bit but even then the majority of it sounded atrocious. What did they do to the boss battle music? I thought Robotnik was supposed to sound militaristic. You see, OCRemix, I would like it if the remixes you did resembled the original work somehow, though sounded brand new. Oh and by the way... What you're doing is remaking music. Not remixing it. Remixing music is to use original parts of the song in a new way. You are recreating the songs in your own style. No matter how many times people calling them remixes, I still call them remakes in the back of my mind.
This. Times a thousand. No ultra-amazing tracks in this compilation unfortunately. Only given a few tracks a listen to though, so I'll have to really come back and confirm that.
