Song of the Week - WEEK 66 Voting/WEEK 67 Nominating

I must admit to having reservations about a "Percussion Week", as there runs a risk of having too many tracks that are relatively devoid of melody. I was asked to submit a nomination, which I did, but it was rejected, which is fair; I'll just submit it as my own in the future.

Chocolate Outline - This is the kind of track that appeals to me, yet makes me wish it had a little more oomph. The sounds are quite pleasant and they flow into each other well. The pacing could be a bit faster for my tastes; I don't think it would've hurt the piece to pick the tempo up a half-step. The low-key approach makes for a nice introduction but after some time, the meandering rhythm gets a little weary. It's still enjoyable despite that, however.

ChaosField Soundtrack - spray-boss - This is a bit of what I was afraid of: techno-like beats that exist for no other reason than to create a track with little to no melody. Effective for a mood within a game, yes, but out of context it feels more distracting than appealing.

Complex Thoughts - I've known about this track for a long time. It was never one that occurred to me when considering SotW nominations. Not that it's bad - I don't mind it at all - I just wish I'd thought to nominate it when I was approached. Interestingly, this one has always reminded me of Super Metroid's music in some places. I've never isolated the reason. But yeah, nice track and the percussion is potent without becoming distracting.

Dance With A Crocodile - As soon as the animal-like jungle noises came on, I knew this was gonna be fairly interesting. And had they done their thing for about thirty seconds or so, that would've been awesome. But the presence of monkeys, birds and frogs throughout the entire piece, that was almost ear-rape in a way. If there was more variation in the rest of the sound, this could've been minimized. Sadly, a cool intro device winds up being overused and the charm is lost.

Kiss Twice - I've always been fairly ambivalent toward the general ambience found in Koudelka's music. It's neither annoying nor enthralling. Kiss Twice is one of the better tracks, thankfully, as the castanet-like clicking and the gentle drums create a soothing effect. The tambourine is pretty and the flutes are pretty nice. It does bear a bit of that "generic Asian music" feel, but I'm not truly against that, having nominated the same style myself. Not an amazing track, Kiss Twice, but a pretty solid one nonetheless.

Beachway - Well, the percussion is plainly evident. Too bad that's about all the song has to offer. Beachway feels far too underdeveloped to earn any points from me.

Ruthless - This track suffers from a lot of the same problems that "-spray- boss -" does. It's a lot of percussive noise with little else. Now, I know the purpose of this week is to highlight percussion in VGM but this kind of atonal sound doesn't work for me, personally. Those tracks that successfully blend strong percussion and interesting melodies, that's more of what I was hoping to hear out of Ruthless. The beginning was decent, but it just became frenetic and kinda pointless after the first ninety seconds.

Techno Rave - There's more variation in how the percussive elements are used here. To some degree, they even function melodically, though not exceptionally so. The genre of Techno Rave's not particularly my thing but I don't hate this track either. It's good at what it does and doesn't make a lot of mistakes within its preferred environment. Solid.


Point Spread:

3 Points - Genso Suikoden III Original Soundtrack - Complex Thoughts
2 Points - Koudelka - Kiss Twice
1 Point - Age of Mythology Original Soundtrack - Chocolate Outline


Impressions: I think this week was a little hit-and-miss. There was definitely percussive elements to each nomination, but some of them only served to illustrate that it often takes more than just a strong drumline to make a track work.

If I'd had my druthers, and if it had any chance of getting through the censors, the ideal track for this week would've been "Eternal Arcadia OST - Kingdom of Ixa'taka". I feel that track represents a very successful blend of aggressive drums and percussion toolkits, while maintaining a very strong melody and an exciting pace. Of course, there's no way it would've been considered "obscure", which is why I couldn't submit it. But that's the sort of standard I was hoping to hear.

Percussion Week was an interesting experiment, but in all honesty, nothing I'd like to see repeated.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Kanji

Artist(s): Minako Hamano & Norio Hanzawa
Album: Wario World (Gamecube Game Rip)
Track Title: Excitement Central - Greenhorn Forest
Disc Number: only one
Track Number: 5
Catalog Number: none
Year: 2003
Source(s): http://www.mrmonkeyman.com/treasure/ost/warioworld.txt

I'm not boldly protesting this nomination, but my initial reaction is that Wario might be too well-known of a mascot to have its music qualify for SotW. This is just a personal feeling since the primary objective is obscurity. I get the same twinge whenever a track from a lesser-known Sonic game is nominated.

Wario World's not really lauded for its music, but I don't know on which side of the obscurity line this falls.

Anyone else have an opinion to throw in?

There's nowhere I can't reach.