[SotW] Song of the Week - WEEK 280 Voting/WEEK 281 Nominating

Okay this week is ridiculously good like most people have said. I thought I'd be giving Map and Wolfchild Title points (I was incorrect)! Also I think oddly this is the week where I know the most tracks from it beforehand that I can think of. Unused BGM7 and In the Jungle are the only ones I didn't know of from before.

3 Points: Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar (Game Rip) - Space Walk - Stage 2-A
2 Points: Be filled with feeling - Chromatic Beast
1 Point: Devilish: The Next Possession (Game Rip) - Stage 2 - Clock Tower
Just Missed: Map, On Sky and Cloud (Unused)

Space Walk - - - - To quote myself responding to someone who was asking for "what time signature is Space Walk in?" . . . . "1 bar of 2/4, 3 bars of 7/8, 1 bar of 3/4, 3 bars of 7/8, 1 bar of 6/8, 3 bars of 7/8, 1 bar of 3/4, 3 bars of 7/8, 4 bars of 2/4, 3 bars of 7/8, 1 bar of 3/4, 3 bars of 7/8, 1 bar of 6/8, 3 bars of 7/8, 1 bar of 3/4, 3 bars of 7/8, 4 bars of 2/4, 10 bars of 4/4 (loop) you could probably interpret some of the bars differently, but yeah! Amazing chiptune." - Jolteon, 2011. Of course as with almost any odd time track you could interpret it many different ways but that's how I usually think of it. I differentiated between 3/4 and 6/8 based on whether it was grouped 3+3 or 2+2+2. ANYWAYS this whole soundtrack is one of the most impressive Sega Genesis soundtracks in so many different ways in my opinion in terms of how the chips are used, I just like this track in particular the most in terms of the composition!!!! Those chords don't take up 4 FM channels because they have 4 notes in them, they take up 4 channels because the two channels being used to voice the 4 voice chord are duplicated in two other channels being used to at a very slight stereo delay effect to make it all sound way fuller and more spatial. Also the PSG channels are just going crazy with that constant 16th note arp thing to solidify the chords and a nice echo to make it sound pretty~ except for when it has the melody and it also sounds pretty then too!!!! ALSO FM SYNTH SLAP BASS YAY. Oh and all of the percussion here is FM instead of PCM, which is kind of worth noting I GUESS. . . Uh also it's worth noting that this song is one of 5 or so songs that I think of as being definitive of my musical preferences, it has SO MUCH in it that defines what I like in music overall all at the same time (Being an FM Synth chiptune, Odd Time Signatures, Fusion chords transposed everywhere, Delay echo/spatial/panning focus, etc).

Chromatic Beast is I love Hayato Matsuo!! Yay!!!! It's not his proggiest thing but it's probably his most pretty sounding thing melodically to be as weird tonalitiy-wise as it is if that makes any sense. I LOVE Delay Echo Trumpets in minor, they remind me of "Elevator Action Returns - Blow Up" by Yasuhisa Watanabe! So early this summer while on vacation one day, I had Chromatic Beast in my head, but I didn't know what it was. I checked frantically to see what track it was and after 2 hours of listening to random music from my collection of music that I had on my portable music playing device I FINALLY FOUND "Chromatic Beast" that I was surprised to see was by Hayato Matsuo (since I basically just had that trumpet melody stuck in my head), but it made so much sense once I heard it, since it is just yeah an awesome example of Hayato Matsuo. "Hayato Matsuo being prog/fusion/funk" is probably my favorite video game music composer besides Motoaki Takenouchi (unless you count Shnabubula but he's not really a commercial one (yet (not that that makes him any less((())))) and the stuff I like the most by him so far isn't actually for games anyways), too bad Matsuo doesn't do this kind of stuff much anymore.

Clock Tower has such an awesome melody. I love at :45 when this gets filled with melodic lines going down the circle of fourths and working around a weird tense changing tonal center in an awesomely beautiful sounding way, it feels very significant when it finally releases that tension at :57. Also um yeah this is like an extremely beautiful use of the soundchips of the Genesis, clever use of delay echoes, panning and detuning, thoroughly working to make the most use of all of the channels so that it sounds super NICE. The work pays so much attention to detail here that at times it manages to sound like it's not even a chiptune! It spatially sounds so smooth even though the panning values are hard L/R, and stuff. The PSG stuff is even used very smoothly and adds so much effect. It's just WOW. WOW. (I like it a lot)

BGM 7, On Sky and Cloud (Unused) is one of the few here that I'm new to. I quite like it! That FM harmonica sound is so EIGHTIES and everything about the chords/arps here just make this sound like you're on the Sky and Cloud (Unused). Really UPLIFTING melodically and stuff.

Map is very shiny (no, I don't know what that means). I like the syncopation and very basic "old DOS game" FM synths used here. It's also pretty ominous and pirate-y a bit at the same time without feeling cheesy like a lot of pirate-y stuff winds up being in my opinion (though I like cheese too), which is kind of neat I think!

Title has significance to me since I used to be a huge fan of the Genesis version of this soundtrack (which is quite different, and I more liked it because of the stuff done by Matt Furniss, but WHAT ever) and I kinda got a bit into Martin Iveson's other similar older stuff because of it. So much Amiga music trope fun here! I really like the tropes that come along with Amiga tracker music for some reason, they tend to make me like even the most mundane stuff, though I wouldn't consider this mundane at all, just stereotypically "epic 80s GYM TRAINING MONTAGE music" which I almost always love a lot!

In The Jungle (Stage 4) is one that I find hard to talk about for some reason...but I do like it! The other two of the new ones to me here. It's super 80s sounding and I love those synth stabs, as well as all the hard stereo panning. It's so ENERGETIC and cool and stuff yeah.

It's funny how much I mention things sounding "80s" here even though this is 1992 week, but that's obviously because all this stuff is influenced by 80s stuff given the PROXIMITY, decade trends blur together no matter how much people like to separate what they're associated with into evenly split categories.!!!! ! ! 1

If it wasn't obvious I love everything today. The stuff that I gave points, I gave points on account of literally being some of my favorite music that exists, not because I didn't like the stuff I didn't give points to. I feel kind of bad that I didn't wind up giving points to the ones I was newly introduced to (I almost did but it would be kinda imperfect honesty to myself in how much I actually like the music), because I feel bad for voting for stuff I already have as quite high favorites in an activity that's supposed to be ABOUT finding new music. Seriously amazing selection this week!!!!




NOMINATION:

Composer: Vince DiCola Jake Kaufman
Album: n/a (though appeared on "Choice Nuggets")
Track Title: GYM TRAINING MONTAGE
Track Number: 10
Year: 2008
Source: Gym Training Montage ‹ Big Lion Music and GYM TRAINING MONTAGE | Jake Kaufman

Jam it back in, in the dark.