Lurker > Toxtricity

Zeal Continent
Massive X
Despair of ELFERIA

Zeal Continent is my 31st favorite in the contest! Fake pmd by one of the pmd 2 composers. energetic 5/8 with fun flute part and tarkus arpeggio piano and also a banjo wtf. tonally quite my thing, especially 1:03-1:19 which is one of the most beautiful parts of any track in the contest. those transposing tense chord clusters are pushing the edge of what could possibly musically make sense but somehow it just barely does, probably because they're (i think anyways) parallel harmony so every chunk is related to each other it's not just like random keysmash dissonance even if it's abruptly far more out-there than the rest of the song. also the individual chords are actually like...vaguely chill weird jazz chords on their own, it's just the rapidness of a harmony so dense being evenly pitch shifted around that makes those chords sound as forcefully dissonant as they do. I think that's the kind of "dissonance" that appeals to me most, like...stuff that'd typically be consonant or even /chill/ having their context changed to become some really tense chaos instead, it doesn't feel 'random' anymore to me at that point, it's like a weird, very deliberate feeling expression of tension. so much of my favorite music uses "jazz chords" that typically would be used in some transitionary context in what'd be seen as very 'functional harmony' chill jazzy stuff, but it's taken way out of that context and turned into something dark and intimidating because of how it's presented. As much as I love 1:03, i like everything that isn't that part equally as much, melodically just really fun, energetic through constant 16ths, an example of "stereotypical jrpg battle theme" done in a way i actually love. i could go on about every part of this but i don't have time today so i just focused on the weird part

Metropolis ~ Kerwan is my 150th favorite in the contest! It's funny to me that gamebop describes this as "fake nostalgia", I first played this game in ~2014 (and i love it!) but my immediate thought when i played this then with so much of the music (this song in specific being one i reacted this way to) was that it made me feel nostalgic for music from other similar games- Zapper: One Wicked Cricket being the first one to come to mind. It's the epiano, electronic drums (and very era-specific filters and drum loops), really cool playful synth sounds, and its combination with quirky orchestral halloween music that just sounds so much like "western(australian) furry mascot 3d platformer" or whatever. This song is one where my feelings on it in-game are very positive, heavily for that nostalgia out of pure style-adjacency, heavily for its immediate funkiness, this is one of the most viscerally FUN tracks to experience in-game. out of context though i find i'm not nearly as energized by it, i think it requires experiencing in-game action alongside listening to feel as effective as it does to me. on its own i find some of its tropes (really straightforward banjo kazooie flipping back and forth between chords a tritone away from each other / silly cartoon alien spooky theremin) kinda cheesy, they totally contribute positively to the vibe of the game that makes the game something I love, but i dont want to listen to it out of context

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You're Not Here is my 131st favorite in the contest! Man i feel bad that i'm going to have to vote against this, i probably appreciate this a lot more than most here. this is a perfect example of the kind of guitar I DO like, where it adds to this really gritty rusted metallic walls with blood on them atmosphere. Akira Yamaoka's production tends to appeal to me, it fits perfectly Horror Game Music, which is a zone I like~! Probably nowhere near as much as people like Snake and Pablo (i don't actually play horror games i just listen to "boring horror game music" out of context lol, though i like watching them. i like dark things i would probably like most horror games its mostly just that i don't even play that many video games these days), but yeah Yamaoka is good at making things feel gritty and unsettling, whether it's through grungy guitar put through slightly odd effects or weird trippy dark ambience. love most of what i hear from silent hill. this is the kinda really loose unclear-but-expressive vocal style i've grown to like more as time's gone on. i used to hate like, thom yorke, couldn't get into radiohead because of him, and lots of similar 'indie rock' felt really off-limits to me because of that vocal style, but i love that now (i know that's probably odd to compare to this) i fucking love these vocals now. i blame zzzv (tawny ant) for opening me up to vocals that sound like you're drinking an ice cube while you're singing at the same time

Massive X is my 46th favorite in the contest! I've been pretty negative about Yasui compared to most people with similar-ish taste. I always see him as a "composer I /would/ like but he relies on too many tropes that piss me off" but this has NONE of those tropes. Instead I can just focus on the yasui elements I actually love- cool harmonies, cool FM synth/sound design, cool funkiness. I LOVE the chord progression here (his progressions, movement between chords being too predictable are usually my criticism, this is the opposite of that), it starts off with this really jarring chord planing parallelism stuff but the melody weaves that weirdness together, and it's presented in enough an energetic funky way to not feel outright dissonant. The melody is actually really strange and i think like a 4th or 5th off from where it "makes sense to be" to me?, not that much even makes sense under those chords haha. This really pushes the limits of right at the edge of dissonant/consonant, just barely sounds not completely discordant and i love that exact line being tested. When the more conventionally tonal parts show up after it's a huge relief, and some of the chord changes in the 1:01 - 1:26 section are that "unexpected but still smooth" zone that's really effectively emotional for me

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Despair of ELFERIA is my 7th favorite ToC entrant! Nekomata master is so fun I LOVE ELEBITS but this is one of their least elebits-y songs but that's okay since edm in the epic forest is also totally my thing. i'd probably like this more if the drums didnt go full hyperfast carnival 200bpm kick every quarter beat with alternating hi-hat, but at least it doesnt come across as stupid carnival to me the way some stuff similar does, maybe because it enforces a 6/4 feel instead of like "2/4"? it doesn't feel like it's resolving over and over again too fast for me to feel things like that often does in things, because it's SO fast that it actually makes bars/phrases feel /longer/. that 6/4 feel is actually pretty important too because the earlier parts feel more 3+3+3+3 12/8, but the drums make it more mechanical 2+2+2+2+2+2 which is a pretty important contrast for effect, always loved that about this. aaaaah i love nekomata master instrumentation so much! these fluffy piano elements, EPIC ETHNIC FLUTE. I wish it also had his signature sine wave-y epiano, want it to fill the space with chill fusion harmonies atop this. but I LOVE THE XYLOPHOPNE i love mallet perc~! and the constant 16ths strings have this interesting "ambiguous subdivisions" feel to them that lets everything else play with different possible perceptions pretty easily, it reminds me of Waltz of the Gears from at2 even though it sounds nothing like it. cool harmonies! wow it's already over? this song did not feel like it was 4 minutes because I was having so much fun listening to it!

Flash Frost i ranked 29th out of 56 which still holds. easy vote for ELFERIA
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Hbthebattle posted...

mycro's already revealed his #1 I think

to this and the responses to this- i have, but not in places where : ) haste2 is paying attention (it hasn't shown up in the contest yet). he still has a chance to guess!!! don't spoil it for him!!!
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Taliyah, the Stoneweaver
Burning Force Medley
Revenger

We Are Burning Rangers (English Version) is my 153rd favorite in the contest! this song is BORING to me because it is too fun. I like the rhodes epiano keyboard chords and 90sness for sure. nice and funky, i think if it felt less tonally "neutral" to me, less quick to return to its home chords, i'd be more enthused by this, but most of what it has going for it is the energy it exudes and that there's a rap well i like rap more than I used to but i prefer edgy rap over fun rap. THE BRASS section is really good in this song though, i would have so much fun playing this song in a real life with a band. but if i'm listening to it it's hard for me to really be energized for some reason even though it's such an energetic song. on paper i'd expect to like this, i like fusiony/funky things, so i'm not sure why it can't quite click. probably just because it is too fun and i am too edgy to emotionally connect with positivity as an exuded emotion in a song or something. love the epiano solo around 4:20 though~!

Taliyah, the Stoneweaver is my 44th favorite in the contest! this is the LEAST boring song I have ever heard. like it's a bombardment of my favorite types of chord changes and individual harmonies it feels simultaneously chill and EPIC at the SAAME TIME simultaneously. the "DRIP (drop)" at 1:04 is an EXPLOSION OIF MY EYES i can't HANDLE it it changes between minor/major/dorian like every few chords and makes a BIG POINT about how it is changing what notes are flat/natural/sharp like JUICE and the funny aaaaaaa girl singing is WEAVING together every startling chord change like a STONEWEAVER. YEAH! i think i might've been bored by this in 2009 when i only listened to music that i think is boring now and dismissed everything as soon as it had a violin and girl singing in it. i'm an actively huge fan of the instrumentation in this one. The live-sounding hand percussion is wonderful it sounds like you can control rocks with abstract rock control powers and are surfing on a rock through a cool rocky environment. This track feels so full of life, every instrument is expressive and i adore this so so so much. I love this song!!!!!!!!

lol

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Burning Force Medley is my 12th favorite in the contest! 7/4 time! the 7/4 part's ironically probably my least favorite part of the song, not because I don't like it, but because I think every other part is even more amazing! The Genesis (and arcade) version of Bay Yard (Daytime) (1st Day) from Burning Force (the part from the start until :57 in this medley) is definitely one of the single pieces of music I listened to the highest number of times. The day I found it (during the period where I was listening to every Sega Genesis ost in alphabetical order), I listened to it on loop nonstop, for multiple days. I listened to nothing except that 50 second loop for days! for the majority of waking hours of those days! and even after that period ended i loved it so much it still continued to be one of the tracks I most regularly went back to for years. I did not know about this remix at the time. I think this track almost perfectly embodies what my taste in music was from ~2009-2011, like eerily perfectly, it checks like every box at once: Vaguely 80s?, 70s prog rock organ?, odd time?, "epic (destiny)" soaring minor/dorian melody?, "FM SYNTH IS THE BEST" lead patch?, generally complex and playful live instruments/soloistic/"proggy things" sounds like motoi sakuraba or "emerson lake and palmer" or something yeah. it's about the most '09-'11 mycro (_Jolteon) song you can even get and I did not know it existed until less than a year ago despite music from Burning Force being among my favorites back then and this remix existing back then! What a shame! It'd have totally been like, my literal favorite song at that period probably. Anyway now I'm more interested in the part :57 and later funnily enough (i likely would've been then too, but not quite as majority my focus as it is now). the part at :57 pretty immediately spams you with transposing chord cluster stabs which i've expressed plenty is one of my favorite compositional DEVICES and the parts with that are my favorite bits here. The part like 1:22 - 1:26 is my other favorite part, the drums descend into this polymetric 3+3 6/8 feel beneath the 4/4, and polymeter is one of my other favorite compositional DEVICES. So many cool echoy trippy background things that fill the space here really nicely! : D !!!!!!!!!!!!!! the Taiko Drum in this video looks so happy!!!!!!!!! Just like how happy I am listening to this song!!!!!!!!! Jolt(?!) jolt!

Infant Queen Bee is my 168th favorite in the contest! i've said this before. i never know how the fuck to react to -45's music. on paper if you described it, i would assume i hate it (it basically falls into the same category as Danny Baranowsky, cheesy halloween edm with really predictable chord movement and really grating amateur production). but I feel like there's a few things that make me actually fond of it...but they're like...all things i think are "bad", but they're like "interesting bad" (mostly the fact that the music all sounds like it's recorded inside of a sewer pipe and just how immediately recognizable the composer is from the composition tropes they default to) so then i wind up being a fan. Also I think I never find -45's music "cheesy", it's straightforward and traditional, but it's not like condescendingly layed out to you, maybe even the awkward sound design choices adds to clouding elements i might scoff at normally. Also it's just dark, and I like dark. basically -45 is a huge exception to the rule of "i hate music that does these things", i never outright love it, and it's very mood-dependent, but I appreciate that exists. I am glad that music that sounds like [a bunch of evil ghosts playing fake edgy classical music on toy keyboards inside of a excessively echoy metallic room in a castle dungeon] exists. i think as much as i tend to react with aversion to what i perceive as amateur audio production or straightforward composition, i firmly do not believe anything is actually objectively 'bad' and things like this are an example of why I hold that opinion. You could only get music that sounds exactly like this from -45 and no one else, and that makes it a valuable contribution to the world regardless of how naive i might find it to be, maybe even specifically /because/ of how naive i find it to be. I feel like it's the kinda thing that makes me frustrated with things that put too much emphasis on "right" and "correct" when learning things like composition or production, because if -45 adhered to more traditional standards, i would probably not like their music as much.

burn

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ASGORE is my 31st favorite ToC Entrant! and I already talked about it in r1

Revenger is my 16th favorite ToC Entrant! I always get some mysterious nonexistent rhythm game track in my head and do not know what it is. The answer: a mashup of Crystar - Revenger and Sigma Harmonics - Hope Given "Dance of the Dog's Howl" (neither are actually rhythm game songs as much as i would like to believe they ar.e..). This has lots of cool sounds, and sticks with me a lot. I like the "less melodic parts" because they sound like "masashi hamauzu" and also I like how this has a violin in it at the same time as constant 16ths synth crazy stuff because it sounds like "masashi hamauzu" and i like the part with lots of brass at 2:28 because it sounds like final fantasy 13-3 (masashi hamauzu). very busy and timbrally varied, just what i like~!

voting for the rhythm game song
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Haste_2 posted...

Yay for deo and Mycro ranking Dark Man Stage high! I was wondering if Mycro's improved rating for it was gonna stick, and it did! Also, it's nice to see Mycro rank Infinite Dungeon 2 so high... I was wondering if I was crazy for rating it a 9/10. =p

it has definitely grown on me! as has the original

Toxtricity posted...

! Gates to Infinity is what i usually say my favorite pmd (and pokemon overall) OST is. ~8th favorite game ost overall, that's a pretty big deal with how much VGM I listen to. Favorite soundtrack with any representative in this contest. I

also i just realized this is false because
1) I "forgot" that pso2 is my 5th favorite soundtrack now
2) I "forgot" that pso2 has entrants in the contest!
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MY VOTE WAS SUIPPOSED TO BE:
FCDH

accidentally selected the wrong one. thank you deo for pointing that out
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Dark Man Stage
Infinite Dungeon 2
Preserved Valkyria

Dark Man Stage is my 66th favorite in the contest! what i said last year still applies but i like it more now. MM5's my favorite NES MegaMAn game for music, for a while I liked Dark Man less than a lot of the other songs from the game but I think it's alright now. The arrangement is mostly what makes it for me though. Hiroki Morishita is one of my favorite composers and did most of my favorite Fire Emblem tracks and I think it's cool to see what his style sounds like outside of the imposed aesthetic of FE, he tackles electronic sound design REALLY well and it has the harmonies and stimulating detail i look for from his stuff. so much cool going on at once. all beneath a cool /medley/ of MM5 melodies, even if dark man's the focus! it all flows together incredibly naturally

Night Gale is my 132nd favorite in the contest! reminds me of some of my favorite tracks from the pokemon movies. very energetic and the solos are interestingly loose, well the sax solo at 3:07 is actually too un-loose and "melodic" for me but whatever. THIS FEELS LIKE ANIME probably because it is by Kohei Tanaka. I like stuff on the orchestral/jazz border and this is that, super full and expressive feeling. some cool angular string lines at the start and I like the constant 16ths backing it feels like a SIREN to alarm you about something. there are plenty of tracks from this game i like much more though, and other music of similar style that just happens to do more for me. I'm glad something of this vibe was picked though!

7

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Infinite Dungeon 2 is my 21st favorite in the contest! Gates to Infinity is what i usually say my favorite pmd (and pokemon overall) OST is. ~8th favorite game ost overall, that's a pretty big deal with how much VGM I listen to. Favorite soundtrack with any representative in this contest. Is this one of my favorite examples from the game? I didn't used to think it was, Plasman and some others would go on about this as an "underrated banger" in the discord and stuff and i was always just like "??" but now I'd agree. This one takes a bit to get going, part of why it doesn't immediately stand out compared to other pmd songs, but once :57 hits holy shit the rest of the track up until the loop is fucking insane. that straight 8ths vs. triplet polyrhythm comparison thing is just so so EXPLOSIVE, and everything following is just viscerally exciting music! I think maybe even the fact that the first minute isn't particularly immediately exciting is to its benefit, it makes the climax so much more powerful when it hits. and stuff like the comparison of the very simple on-beat chimes part at :45 compared to the weirder triplet polyrhythm stuff at :57 is some of my favorite things, hearing the same ideas compared in two very different feeling contexts rhythmically. Despite this being the highest quality version of the soundtrack i will say my reaction to the soundtrack's mixing is....mixed (ha ha) and this isn't one of the better examples. The muddiness of the instrumentation against itself drags this down a bit for me compared to other songs in this style (and compared to other songs from this game), but the composition is so SO good that I can't complain too much about that. I LOVE PAN FLUTES AND MARIMBAS AND OBOES this instrumentation makes me so happy i just wish i could hear it a bit more clearly! really just a minor complaint because i love this song so much and i know i could like it even more

ChRoNiClESeVeN is my 98th favorite in the contest! this is kinda the opposite of my reaction to inf dungeon 2. This production is SHARP and CRISP, lots of cool electronic effects that make the composition itself punchy and clear. but i don't care as much about the instruments that are playing beneath the cool sound design as i do with pmd's here. the anime-ness is fun and there's all these cool futuristic sound effects i love, but i'm not sure i care as much about the aesethetic or composition it explores, it doesn't really evoke anything specific to me. I used to like this a bit more than I do now. there's some bits with cool chords/changes like 3:04 and i like the 3+3 rhythms out of nowhere there. also ha ha 3:00 is in 7/4 that's so funny because the song is called 7. I LIKE the fake xylophone layers they remind me of Kazuki Yanagawa. yeah i like those aspects. this song is cool. but with as many cool little bits it has that are to my taste it's still....only a .....7/10.

7

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FCDH (10th/56) vs. Preserved Valkyria (22nd/56), still about right. easy decision for fcdh but i don't hate preserved valkyria
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"Best VGM 168 - Chrono Trigger - Secret of the Forest" - <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r1iesThvYg>;

"Chrono Trigger - Opening Theme (80s remix from '25 Games' album)" - <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVevW4GuHbY>;

"Corridors of Time (Zeal's Theme) -x- PMD2 Soundfont - Chrono Trigger" - <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqijup6QEG0>;

i am sort of being silly but, well, whatever. basically just picking random stuff that idk if you'll even count it

as a note corridors of time is probably what i'd have nommed if i didn't already know it was a favorite of yours lol (it's one of my favorites from the game~!). i think you'd like most of the ct ost and a good chunk of other mitsuda stuff so i'm just picking random things but you should just flat out listen to all of CT at some point and probably other mitsuda osts too (i need to go through all of chrono cross again myself)
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DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)
Apollo Justice ~ A New Chapter of Trials! 2016
Ricordando il Passato

DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX) is my 47th favorite in the contest! blue reflection music all sounds the same except it actually doesn't but it is a fairly homogenous ost. I like what it goes for but I never remember what songs are what outside of my absolute favorites and sometimes i find it hard to imagine being someone who can tell them all apart and talk about it with other people and remember what songs are which just from song name, without listening for refernece (I'm saying this as someone who LIKES blue reflection music). this isn't one i think of as a favorite but i like it enough to give it "47th" apparently. lets see WHY O_o yeah fancy edm production ok i like that. atmospheric opening is cool. big thick block string chords good. 3:20 gets me every time, that synth melody line is never going where i expect and the backing behind it's fun, too bad that part is only 10 seconds. One of my favorite parts of this was always 4:04ish, I love how I always lose place of the beat despite how straightforward the drums are, because my focus shifts to the low strings/piano doing that really spirally pattern beneath that doesn't neatly lineup with the beat. I think that's something that prevents blue reflection music from ever being low for me no matter how 'predictable' some of the melodic content or whatever might be sometimes, there's always so many possible things at once to pay attention to. if i don't like one layer there's at least 2 other options and i will surely like at least ONe of the things happening in the song! once 5:21 hits I remember why I always rank DNF all phase mix so high, it's purely because of phase 3 (why don't you just nom that phase so i can rank this 20 slots higher). Those chords this phase starts with on that exact sound are SO COOL, and the 3+3+3/16 over 4/4 polymeter is so IMBRIUJM except not as cool but i still like it... though tbh i guess i wouldn't rank phase 3 that might higher on its own. my favorite bits are lthe end of phase 2 like starting around 4:04 like i said, all the way through the beginning chill bit of phase 3 i guess.

Outer Wilds is my 152nd favorite in the contest! as much as people tend to generalize my taste as "dislikes simple, likes complex" (usually correct tbh), certain brands of folky stuff counter my tendency to be repulsed by simplicity. This is one of those cases, it feels actively important to the aesthetic of the track (which I love) for it to be as minimal as it is. This specific example of it doesn't actually grab me or anything tbh but I love the type of thing it is and some similar things could be 100 slots higher than this example. like if this was longer and just the start to a longer fuller thing, i could really dig this. some of the quiet background elements, harmonica and other winds, reversed strings and echoy stuff, all are beautiful and paint a wonderful picture in my mind. nothing but positive things to say about it. honestly could imagine voting for this over a bunch of stuff even 50 slots above it if in the right mood

Gap is larger than my actual feelings.

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Apollo Justice ~ A New Chapter of Trials! 2016 is my 166th favorite in the contest! i said this was my least favorite song locked at one point, because, well, it was! doesn't mean i actually dislike it though even if the ranking number's pretty low. a lot of AA music makes me "nostalgic" for megaman zx and i think there's a similarity to zx/zxa tunes albums and I'm attracted to that (basically because "I like those games and 2007 when i played them was one of the most plainly positive years of my life" tbh but it shifts my tastes to an attraction to that style). it feels like that style but more contemplative? probably because if you are a Ace Attorney you have to tHINK A lot. there's some really thick big string chords that are yummmy and taste like Chocolate and some startling chord changes at 1:11 / 1:17 are like when you realize that was just the Coating of the chocolate cake and it's actually liquid fudge that you DRINK and then become a very excited bunnies of ideaas flour bed what's i'm so cool yeah genie

Butterfly Girl (VS Narmaya) is my 180th favorite in the contest! this would be higher if it didn't have the parts like 1:46 where it is the blues scales that sound too fake. but even then my reaction's mostly one of indifference. the production is cool but i'm not excited by enough of the musical content to care (at least i can say that aspect of it is nice, i wasn't fond of the instrumentation/production of the other gbfv songs in). too melody focused without the stuff behind it being interesting enough to me to carry it. the piano layers are my favorite elements and the frantic synths backing are fun sometimes

azusa chiba where are you please make me like cygames music more...oh wait we actually know what granblue fantasy songs are chiba now lets see ("Ready...", "Continue", "Game Over"...........all 10-25 second jingles) oh COME ON why did you have to leave basiscape ;-; (listening, I would totally vote the 10 second gbfv game over jingle over half the field lmao. top tier game over theme. chiba hasn't changed at least)

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match 3 still have the same feelings. seize the truth is the kinda song that misled me to think i dislike newer falcom as a whole and i do not forgive it (or other similar falcom songs) for turning me off from a huge set of soundtracks I now realize i love more than not. it'd be like if the only atelier song i heard was maria (or even worse, cygnus) and i assumed thats what it all sounded like..or if the only sonic shuffle song i'd heard was Love Poison......
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Undersea Palace
B.T. Dutch
Invitation Flower ~ Autumn

Undersea Palace is my 58th favorite in the contest! I never owned an SNES actually, but i'm still nostalgic for CT music in general. Close friend of mine in High School was obsessed with the soundtrack and I got very into listening to ocremix remixes of it / vgmusic.com midis / actual soundtrack / etc. Played the DS version later and it's a cool game (i actually technically never beat it shhhhhhh, though i know how the game goes i've watched enough playthroughs at this point haha). I should probably play more RPGs, especially with how many i like the soundtracks to! This song touches a lot of things I love about Mitsuda's style and used to be one of my favorites from the ost (now it's not, but I do still love it). In the past the appeal to me came from that starting ostinato, delay echo-y saw-ish synth, also the fact that it's in 6/4-12/8 or however you wanna count it is something I always found cool. Now I'd say those aspects have little to do with my fondness for this. The reason I'm so into this NOW is mostly the part without the synth ostinato, and unrelated to the rhythms the song's doing. :50 - 1:25 is one of my favorite bits of the soundtrack! Mitsuda's one of the most well-known examples of a composer with the exact tonality sense i like most, tonal center changes like every chord change in a row and melody makes what would be jarring flow beautifully instead (and contrasted with actual tense transposition part for the last bit of that section). Very PMD-adjacent style~! That exact way creating emotional intensity (:50-1:05), unpredictability of the next chord but making it still make sense through the other layers, that's what i want to feel. Somehow more viscerally emotionally powerful to me than any other way of making notes be in a song, and CT pretty consistently nails that for me! but that moment in this song is just one of my favorite examples of that compositional trait in the soundtrack. oh and i always loved pitched down reverby/echoy metallic clanking sounds in music of this era, one of my favorite 90s music tropes and this is full of that sound!!

Move Me is my 104th favorite in the contest! y2k era breakbeat in a way i like, but there's tons of music with this aesthetic (that i love) that i love more than this. most things i have to praise about this could apply to other executions of them i'm more fond of than this example, i'm just listing what defines the style really: breakbeat, chill epiano modern jazz harmonies, slap bass, punchy electronic effects (reversed effects, sharp cutoff on samples, pitch shifting) and general focus on presenting interesting timbres. all great things to me! just wish this example of that stuff stood out to me more. I think the most relaxing music to me in the world is actually stuff like this, stuff with frantic elements (breakbeat/IDM (interesting drums music) drums especially) but the actual foreground is chill lounge chords and stuff

90s

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Battle 2 is my 175th favorite in the contest! I wish i liked nobou uematsu more...he's such a beloved composer with a really cool set of influences! Igor Stravinsky and 70s Prog rock!?! but even literally junichi masuda presents his intentions in a less straightforward way than uematsu. it's the lack of subtly, and overclarity, that bothers me about a good chunk of his stuff. I always know exactly what it's trying to do, and what it's going to do, and it will be presented in the most plain, unsubtle, toy keyboard educational object way possible. When he's flaunting his influences loudly though (OWA with stravinsky, Dancing Mad Part 4 with "prog") then i'm a huge fan, he takes the things he's influenced by in directions other people often restrain back from and i value that. this doesn't really exert the side of him i like though, and mostly it's that lack of subtlety (especially because of format/era) bleeding through too visibly for me to like it. i don't hate it, but in the end i just find it boring

B.T. Dutch is my 8th favorite in the contest! This was a 10/10 at one point. I'm only knocking it down because i feel the standards of mine that put it there are different now. This appeals to me less than many things i "only" give 9.9...but that's all just arbitrary rating number shit. I LOVE this song! YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU. Every time I hear crowd noises now even just being in a crowd in real life i just think "wow this is a nice cover of B.T. Dutch these guys are singing". The industrial and "reality has been distorted" aesthetic this soundtrack has is very deeply important to me, and I consider this one of the best examples of it of all time, one of the first examples of something I'd put in that category of weird i ever heard too. I value how it retains that sort of minimal atmospheric dark sensibility, while also still being musically interesting! Transposing chord stabs is one of my favorite things in music. I also love how much this compares constant 16ths and triplets within the same space, actually basically not ever at the same time, but the comparison felt is there and it just FEELS cool, GROOVY (groove coaster by zuntata) somehow. I LOVE REVERSED SOUNDS uooY. G-Darius was one of my first newfound soundtrack discoveries i made from board 8 (Kimera II became my "new favorite song" once i got into it from these contests), still about 20th place in my big personal ranking of fav game soundtracks! B.T. Dutch is my favorite after Kimera II, but it's close! G-Darius one of the only soundtracks with multiple 10/10s for me if i'm in a mood where i'm still calling this a 10/10!

B.T. Dutch more like B.T. DUTCH

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Invitation Flower ~ Autumn (8th) / Memories of You (46th). yeah those rankings still hold true. Very easy choice here. Other persona picks vs. other atelier picks might be harder decisions though.
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IF YOU LIKE Toccatina from Evenicle, YOU MIGHT ENJOY "8 Concert Etudes, Op. 40: III. Toccatina" by Nikolai Kapustin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPuvZFfm6YE
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[...continued from above]

Looking Up at the Sky is my 174th favorite in the contest! huh that's way lower than i'd have expected myself to rank this. i guess i didn't feel much from it when i did rankings so it went into 5.x zone, and like yeah i'm not a fan of how much attention it calls to some chord progression resolutions and things but like these individual chords are cool and the space the instrumentation/production fills is nice and full in a way i like. cool sounds. pitched down drums at 3:12 are beautiful. wish the mixing was just slilightly different since a lot of my favorite parts are quiet and hard to hear. i'd rank this much higher if i did a re-rank though at the same time i wouldn't say i super love this. other slow/sad falcom songs are more my thing than this one. this'd probably be like 143-150th or so, i guess that's not that much a boost, but my point is i definitely don't dislike this or find it boring like the other stuff this low

Toccatina is my 48th in the contest! This does a lot with like, constant 16th piano and just accenting the right beats to give it a more deliberate rhythmic/melodic feel despite just being a constant stream of 16ths mostly. this is a style of piano stuff i'm really REALLY into. reminds me a lot of HAYATO MATSUO in the 1990s like G.U.T. from G.T.R. and the very similar Naoko Mikami - Beady eyes from the same compilation album. some amazing harmonies and chord changes. :50's big spread out chord voicings and prominent acoustic bass solo beneath the transposing light rhythmic piano chord stabs is like aaaaaaaaaah!!! synth pad chords in the background at that part fill the space really nicely with something beautiful. the way that seamlessly segues into like rhythmic gated synth patterns subtly in the background is cool too. This is so good and very much my style and i wish this was longer!!!

whats falcon song team jfk

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Seize the Truth! is my 54th favorite ToC entrant! least favorite contest champion. 54th/56th out of this toc. i do not like this song : ( this is the kind of song that made me think i hate falcom music even though i now realize i actually love falcom music just not most of the songs that got talked aobut here but ESPECIALLY NOT THIS ONe. it's just tonally the antithesis of what i want to hear, the melodic line that i dislike is too much the focus, chord changes that place a big emphasis on tension/resolution in predictable places. the instrumentation's ok, i can dig dance music of older electronic sensibilities with violin over it, except the violin is playing nothing i want to hear and also the guitar drags this down, just fills the space with an even more unappealing timbral atmosphere. the electronic elements are great though, especially love pitched down drum loops and stuff at 2:18 are great, and i love fake piano!

WOW NOW i only "have to" do one writeup for certain matches! Ricordando il Passato i ranked 24th, it's in the middle of the pack for me but "at least it's not seize the truth" and i've grown to like the more subdued type of thing Ricordando is more than in the past, easy match
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-(Isoleucine)-
Toccatina
Ricordando il Passato

-(-(Isoleucine)- is my 5th favorite in the contest! ok here we go time for THIS. I said some of this in deoxyribose but i'm a much bigger fan of this one so i'll get into more detail here. So 13 Sentinels Aegis rim is my favorite soundtrack released between vgmc13 and 14. I consistently LOVE basiscape and have been going through their endless amounts of stuff like mad for the past year or so now, but this impressed me even more than a normal ost from them would. it's actually an incredibly varied ost and I feel a bit odd that there are TWO very similar -(bracket)- tracks representing it this contest, that's only representative of what tiny portion sounds like. Some of it's more like chill pat metheny jazz fusion-adjacent composition, some of it's like trippy 999-esque stuff, wide variety of type of futuristic electronic stuff (some of it with among the coolest synth sound design I've ever heard in ANY music), and the archtypal "when basiscape does orchestral" sound and uhh...anime op sounding stuff somehow...and Brat Overflow just sounds like gust lol. The moment in my early listening through this that i heard this track, I just knew "this is the song to nominate for vgmc", something about it is just the exact right amount of energy exerted to be strong, while still doing enough compositionally that's exactly to my tastes for me to be as excited about it as everyone else. My 2nd favorite track from the game out of all 83 (I'll probably nominate my favorite from the game, In the Doldrums, next year. or if bost happens again that'll at least be in the BOST set)
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Yoshimi Kudo, the specific composer of this is one of my favorite basiscape members (did all of Raiden V, and deoxyribose as well). Before the individual composer credits were confirmed I predicted this one was him (though kao helped me figure it out) but i guess it shows his style's distinct if we both got this right. The one thing Kudo does that I find most attractive is (predictable set of words to come from my mouth in 5...4..3..2..1..) unpredictable chord changes. though the very specific way he does them is a bit different from the other basiscape people who tend toward that, with Kudo it's very often simply just "first 3 chords in progression are 'normal' but the 4th one is 'weird'", 4th chord suddenly randomly modulated to a different key from the first 3 or something, requiring a different scale to be played underneath abruptly if anything's to accompany it, and I love that a lot specifically maybe even more than an actually complex progression. I think the repetition of it prevents the 'weird chord' from feeling like a dramatic subversion, and instead shifts the focus of it from "woa wtf weird note" to just allowing for a wider spectrum of notes that work throughout the 4 chord loop. EVERY time that last chord every phrase happens i go WHOA as if it's the first time it ever happened, it's not leading me to anything, just there to give more room for melodic content to do cool things. and the melody, backing arpeggios, everything, all makes it flow together. I really like how the chords are presented to you here too, funky super syncopated synth chord hits that make me want to DANCE to the BIG SONG are the first thing you hear that gives any indication of the progression and they sound SO cool, especially once phase 1 hits at :52, that sound is so BOUNCY it reminds me of Chasing Down the Miniboss from Kirby Triple Deluxe and I like that song!
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the rapid constant 16th arpeggios in this make this song so COMPUTER. I think the contrast of all the near atonal (though as far as i can from playing along to it right now, tell it's mostly arpeggiations of the actual chords, i originally thought it was more out-of-key quartal/quintal atonal explosion stuff, still, lots of jumpy 4ths/5ths fun that sounds like TEMPORAL TOWER except inside a computer) parts, with the almost lighthearted comfortable melody line, that contrast puts this track in the exact right zone I think. You get this like anime jrpg town theme zone in the same song as evil rotating cylinder in Tron1982 computer boss being mad at you and this seamlessly blends the two extremes beneath the same progression/aesthetic somehow. 2:36 is like CYBERPUNK PMD1 SKY TOWER lol. 2:49-3:01 is definitely one of my favorite parts chord-change-wise. 4:26 is one of the more extreme dark constant 16ths moments and i looove it. Other contrasts involved, "neutral computer like :39-:53" and "epic orchestra part at 1:45 whoa". so many VERY different feeling things yet the aesthetic of this is so well defined that they all work within the same song seamlessly, one with such a weird chord progression tying these entirely dissimilar things together that too
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One thing i'm only noticing now, around 4:00 there's really syncopated/funky low strings. That reminds me A LOT of Kudo's contributions to Caravan Stories, like the 5/4 part of Bunwaii Desert? I think that's one of the other traits I adore about his style. he's funky but in like this really 'heavy' way, syncopation feels powerful because it's playing on these huge synth block chords or low strings or whatever, rather than feeling "loose" like syncopated stuff tends to be associated with. every syncopated rhythm feels INTENSE and very Not relaxed. this song is very CUTTING EDGE it is everything I want and MORE maybe a brave little toaster 1 remake would be ok if yoshimi kudo arranged all the music
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I have no idea what my favorite part of this song is. I love it so much, everything about it. I have listened to this near every day since i found this soundtrack in mid january. by nature i'm neglecting to say tons of the things i love about it. I love everything about it. 9.9/10. i am happy to have had a role in introducing it to here and that so many others here at least like some of the tracks as much as I do!)-

-[Snowman is my 102nd favorite in the contest! this is a nice pretty song : ) very 90s, fretless bass is one of my favorite "90s sounds" even though it isn't inherently a 90s sound. and also this arrangement is not from the 90s but i guess the combination of instruments is stereotypically of the era to my ears, pan flutes and fake fretless bass and lots of reverb. the glassy older crystalline sounds that dominate this fit perfectly with Snow Music so that is why they used Instruments that are Too Old for the year this came out and I welcome that! the drums at 1:08 are so punchy and i love that powerful snare. some cool backing rhodes keyboards chords, chord progression and melody are both very interesting and flow in a cool way. the echoy sleigh bells are so goood. beepy stuff at :17 makes me think of auroras because it is the ice zone. twinkly cold snow cool yeah this song is pretty...COOL. feel bad this track is

Chou chou kou soku de mae sai soku!!! Speed star Kanade
The Merciless Savior
Chocolate Missile

Megalovania is my 191st favorite in the contest! this probably looks like some contrarian ranking placement but i just do not like this song ESPECIALLY not this version, normal megalovania's a bit higher but still 3/10. other undertale music's a bit more my thing but i tend to prefer deltarune music by a lot when it comes to toby fox. i don't want to waste my time and energy trashing this but basically it's a combo of a bunch i dislike at once: blues scale being half the basis of the track (used extra plainly and mechanically at that), and mixed horribly, reverb drenched in a way that makes it impossible to hear anything that could potentially be cool...everything just sounds like glhkjdlfgm;kb;mud. "carnival fast 2&4 drums battle theme" all the playful choromatic stuff in the composition feels very strained and forced to me for some reason like it's trying too hard to be funny halloween quirky song but instead it's grandma emerald's really big beeswax factory educational building where you learn about the ABCs and how to count to the number "too lazy". its not that i'm "tired of it" because it's overpopular or what ever, honestly i usually forget it has the status it has, it just literally is the antithesis of what i like. if i want to be excited about popular indie game song i will be excited about like idk Positive Force or Rude Buster or whatever the most popular shovel knight song is or Umbral Ultimatum from the video game homestuck or Literally Any Other Undertale song. toby fox was a composer that excited me from the a long time ago times, and i still love a lot from him now, but battle tower and "smash ver of megalovania" might be specifically my 2 least favorite songs from him and they're both in this contest somehow lol. his other stuff mostly ranges from OK to AMAZING to me so i hope i do not come across as Big UndertALe FOX TOBY hater because i am definitely NOT that but this particular track is just not for me. still gets a 3/10 because it is EPIC enough for me to think it's a big adventure battle. if you like this song that is ok : ) sorry that I do not like it : ( sorry for wasting my time being mean to it even though i said i didn't want to do that.

Chou chou kou soku de mae sai soku!!! Speed star Kanade is my 116th favorite in the contest! I wish this was not the NOFX version and had all the crazy filters/effects that get put onto it in-game, i feel more than most sound voltex music this is meant for that. speedcore kickdrum drilling/buzzing sound craziness is way more pronounced and the mix just winds up sounding better in-game when it's put through those filters. Anyway i unironically do like this song, come back to it every once in a while, i'd like it more if the vocals were less loud only because I want more clarity of the crazy glitchy programmed drums behind them. i honestly don't see this track as super weird just because i know lots of people into speedcore/extratone and adjacent stuff and i like some of it too sometimes, i'm not like super well versed in that stuff outside of a few artists honestly but i like much of it so this track doesn't come across as a weird novelty to me. it's like an entire genre and this is just a random example and it's a silly one but the entire concept of the genre is a silly one so Who Cares. this'd honestly be a high tier example from it if i were fonder of the mixing (or if the vocals were different/quieter), but it does jump up like 50 ranking slots when it's the in-game version with the effects atop! (maybe i'll nominate an in-game recording of this next year..................) Fun! Music!

now i am looking up speedcore remixes of undertale music for some reason haha. i'd possibly vote "MEGALOVANIA (Camellia Remix)" (thank you for pointing the existence of this out to me uf8) and "Toby Fox - MEGALOVANIA (Algorithm Dude Trash Mix) [UNDERTALE, SPEEDCORE]" over speed star kanade. wish more of these remixes were not megalovania

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Lake is my 57th favorite in the contest! one of my favorite effects in music to an almost excessive degree is fading in/reversed chords with an abrupt cut off and that is a GOOD neat spread out voiced maj9th chord it sounds like super monkey ball for orchestra. So my favorite element here is easily that. everything else comes together to make it nice and fun too though. arpeggeios both fast and slow are nice, i like sequenced drums in pokemon music usually in gen 3-5, they're nice and detailed~! honestly there's A LOT going on in this song at once for something this chill, it all interlocks and intersects nicely. go ichinose regularly has cool "nostalgic" chord progressions that make me happy : ) sometimes. this is one of those times!

The Merciless Savior is my 26th favorite in the contest! 5/4! Yay! I always liked how smooth the 5 here is (to the point i never noticed it was in odd time until much after i first heard it) and it's neat that it somehow works in this 90s fake piano electronic dance music context. this track is an example of something i rank highly because it manages to touch a bunch of unrelated things i like at once, it's proggy (odd time and cool chords/chord changes), it has natural elements (cool strings/brass and cool chanting), has "90s dance music" elements (the fake piano on that 5/4 rhythm reminds me so much of "Little Planet" from sonic cd jp version, which is one of my favorites from that game), and i guess in general i just like it. I'm ecstatic that these things that might not be hard to find on their own, but are hard to find in combination, are all in one song. That's important for me because that's the way to rise to the top in my tastes. it's effortless to find any random 90s dance music with fake piano & synth, or any random epic chanting violin melody vgm song, bit harder to find "prog" but it's still like, a genre. this isn't a "genre", you can't just like, find an example of a song that mixes all these unrelated things I spend time struggling to seek out so easily. To me that's a big deal and why I value this song so much. the chord changes in this track make me FALL OVER they are so PERFECT thank you Wataru Ishibashi for making this song come to life, your time on this earth was valuable and you made wonderful music that made it a better world to be in

who made this matchup wtf not fair : (((((((

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Chocolate Missile is my 14th favorite ToC entrant! this retired recently so i don't have too much motivation to talk about it but i liked it from the start, but it's continued to grow on me. really nice retiree and it nails a LOT of things i look for at once. cool chord changes/sound desig

CHANGING MY VOTE TO:
Someday the Dream Will End

re-listened because i knew the match was close and i was uncertain on my feelings. in the end, someday the dream will end represents what i used to hate, but no longer hate, so it's very difficult for me to conceptualize the fact that I prefer it over Laguerra del Mundo now, and that past reaction of aversion keeps clouding my perception. I don't love someday the dream will end and the match is close, but my tastes have changed significantly since when it was last in these contests, and i have to remember that past reactions don't represent my reactions now. i think this track is alright now, still find the melody really weak...it keeps returning to the same places too quickly and feels trapped in a kinda narrow range of ideas that prevents it from being as emotional as i'm hoping for it to get. but the overall "Through the Sea of Time - (Pokmon Mystery Dungeon - Explorers of Sky)" vibe is significantly more my thing than what Laguerra del Mundo is, so it's enough to push it above and get my vote. the backing behind the melody is strong and i like the instrumentation and emotion expressed overall, even if it isn't my favorite execution of something like this
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DanKirby posted...

That's because it (partly) is Hamauzu. This piece was arranged by him.

oh I see now in the album individual track credits, so it is! that I guess explains why i like that part hahaha
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Sudden Visitor
Classroom
Laguerra del Mundo

Weight of the World (Japanese) is my 143rd favorite in the contest! despite my recent turnaround on deciding i actually love nier music, this track isn't one that stands out me much in particular. its pretty straightforward compared to other nier stuff though i dont dislike it for that, it just doesn't do the stuff i like about this game's music i guess. still some cool stuff to like, the beginning (and i guess percussion layers throughout) has nice really vast punchy echoy feeling space i really dig, actually almost "80s" lol, gated reverb and all that stuff. unexpected chord change at 1:12's really uplifting and i love that. overall it's pretty and nice and i like the vibe it sets but it doesn't leave a lasting strong impression or emotion on me

Sudden Visitor is my 127th favorite in the contest! big chord blocks like whoooaoa cool filling the space between the constant 16th gaps, cool! cool chords! fancy in-your-face RHYTHM GAME sound. I like this less when it's the fast four-on-the-floor kick parts but not because i dislike that in itself (as much as i complain about fast-paced simple stuff sometimes), but more the cooler production effects and stuff happen when it's more jittery and not cycling through a pattern with a repetition multiple times a second. i wish the breakbeat elements that are there for like 1 second happened for more than one second

close match i guess?

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Classroom is my 15th favorite in the contest! I talked about how much I love DV-i enough during BOST but yeah i consistently love DV-i's style, one of my absolute favorite composers. Favorite instrumentation in the world is the exact set of digital sample-based glassy/futuristic 90s rompler synths he's attracted to and also all the crazy FM stuff that fills up the space all over the place in this stuff too. The way this fills empty space with so many different cool sounding things, so hocketed and funky in a mechanical futuristic way like this makes me think of MARS MAZE from JOURNEYMAN PROJECT. every chord is a cool thick one with lots of close together pitch classes(haha class room) so it sounds like "yasuhisa watanabe" I love this video game SOUNDTRA. Cool chords! (2) Basically every DV-i song is 9.9/10, including this one!! THis is so fun!!!!!!!! When it comes to dvi music i basically find myself just listing literally every single moment of the song as "one of my favorite parts of the song" so to prevent this writeup from becoming the entire post just listing why every timestamp makes me explode I will point out the moment that stood out the most to me this specific time around of listening: ironically the really calm part at 2:18-2:55 the radio-like voices in the background, the flute-like patch coming in at 2:33, and how the sudden decrease in stimulation brings out how cool all the percussive backing has been the entire time with more space to focus on it being given....and then the drilling drum stutter to cap it off right at the end of that section!!!! Such a good ENERGY LEVEL FLUCTUATION. I'm glad to have finally gotten this in this year, I'd been wanting to since a while now! I hope it does well : ) but if not...that's okay too! At least many people have been introduced to this wonderful music who may enjoy it!

Love Scope is my 171st favorite in the contest! oh no the snare drum is too fast and the guitar doesnot sound like it's playing any notes so i don't like it. :45's kinda echoy feeling guitar layer is cool! this isn't really my kind of tonality. mixed in a way that just makes me sad because i can't hear the parts of the song that sound like they'd be the most interesting to focus on. lots of the fast background synth stuff sounds like it'd be cool if i could hear what it even sounded like but i'm barely able to even be aware it's there because everything else is drowning it out! i don't have much positive to say and i don't like being mean to songs i do not like so i will NOT be mean to the song

why are there so many REALLY EASY matches for me in this part of the contest

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Laguerra del Mundo is my 39th favorite in the contest! i never really shared the enthusiasm for this track but when it's playing i'm never bored either. It's fun and dramatic and sounds like sonic heroes and also has the DESTINy moments where it gets the natural 6th instead of the flat 6 so it is ""dorian"" isntead of minor for 2 seconds and thats EPIC

Someday the Dream Will End is my 43rd favorite in the contest! I used to be really really harsh on this song because I uniformly expressed "I don't like slow, simple song" as my whole identity because i tended to like fast things and thiis is the "opposite" of that, but now that is not how i think and instead i get mad at fast music more often (and tend to conflict with people who's preferences are so centric around a fast pace) hmmmmmmmmmmmm. in hindsight i now realize that because of the sound at like :25 that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 SAd Music is probably all copying this song and also Theme of Lancelot from Thousand Memories even though that song is fast hahahah Keisuke Ito you're the funny clever final fantasy x referencer. there's some fairly emotionally effective to me moments in this that are nice and the chords are way cooler than I remember, though i think the melody line itself is extremely boring and that brings this down a ton. I VERY strongly prefer Hamauzu/Nakano (and basically every non-uematsu composer involved in final fantasy series...sakimoto...M.Suzuki, mizuta..Noriko Matsueda, hayato matsuo.....COMPOSERS) over Uematsu, and one of the reasons is usually "everyone else uses 'cool chords' and uematsu doesn't" but this track actually kinda feels like he's imitating Hamauzu's "cool chords" style now that I think about it? there's a few moments with this big cool string chord blocks like what comes in at :44, feels very hamauzu. Interesting! but I like ffx's soundtrack and this is definitely not representative of why i'm a fan and would probably rank near last if i ranked the ost. basically the stuff I love about FFX's ost is hamauzu/nakano's tracks, and then seymour battle's the one uematsu one i love, this is really just "ok, better than i remember"

close match and i can imagine flipping
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EXEC_PAJA/.#Orica extracting.
Mysterious Trap
Yesterdays Opponents are Todays Ingredients

EXEC_PAJA/.#Orica extracting. is my 10th favorite in the contest! My favorite Ar Tonelico 1 song probably too! fake gamelan-ish solo to start off, fading in cool vocal chord with abrupt cut off, cool slap bass! WOW, lots of things I like all at once right off the bat. I like how long-phrased the backing choir and melody stuff is throughout, takes like 4 bars at least before it feels like it lines up with the barlines. and there's so many cool multilayered vocal parts. fun 7/4 at 1:55 though it's actually one of my lesser favorite parts of the track, mostly because it's ironically not as weird as the rest, but it's still a welcome contrast in the context of the rest of the music surrounding it. My favorite portion is 3:39 for its extreme barline ambiguity, and "mixed meter where it's ambiguous where the downbeat is" is my favorite type of mixed meter! I count that part as 9/4, 6/4, 4/4, 4/4, 9/4, 6/4, 4/4, 9/8, 7/4, 6/4, 7/4, 4/4, 4/4 before going to the tv static break, but there's so many different ways you could interpret it because bar divisions are so obfuscated. the whole 3:39 section is made even more stimulating by how multilayered it is with the vocals there. whoa just realized these metallic sound effects toward the end i've heard in other tracks before COOL I like recognizing synth presets and samples...! Overall the instrumentation is to my tastes and this is undeniably rhythhmically intricate and obviously that's a thing I always love! also tonality is very much my thing too, this is phrygian in a bunch of places and that's a scale that I LIKE because it is DARK and sounds like a EVIL DESERT WHERE THE SUN IS OUT TOO Bright(i guess that is the opposite of darkk...), but the more conventional minor scale stuff is a nice breath of "Not Quite As Tense" air too, the alternation between these modes is powerfulTHERE ARE SO MANY COOL SOUNDS IN THE BACKGROUND And there is not enough time to liste all of them (I like this song that is why I supported it and also ranked it 10th!)

Chant This Charm is my 172nd favorite in the contest! this song is TOO HAPPY for me because i am too edgy > : ( but i do like some billy hatcher music but this song is to funy for me. There's some cool chords sometimes. i don't actually hate listening to it or anything but it's a pretty not-for-me song

Big Gap (right side of bracket B and left side of bracket C have a LOT of these...)

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Two Dragons is my 173rd favorite in the contest! i don't dislike this in any way but i have never understood the popularity of this one. I like edgy metal epic orchestra at the same time songs as a style, but there's like 90923084 other songs that sound like this that don't feel like they do not exist. this is like the most barebones song in this style and there's nothing that stands out to me about it. Why this out of everything that sounds like this? Normally when i'm not a fan of something that i see a lot of praise for i can still understand the appeal, but this one i understand 0 (get it? 0?! ha ha). The suddenly organic sounding melody at 3:21 is pretty BIG i like that feeling, nice contrast from the big blocks of angry columns.

Mysterious Trap is my 27th favorite in the contest! I love modern kirby music! Things i've said about other modern kirby music apply here too, just every possible zone of empty space being filled with something is a really cool feeling, never a pause. Not that having moments of pause is a bad thing for music to have, but the feeling of there being NOTHING empty and always 5 possible things to pay attention to at once is amazing. Instrumentation is ultra my thing, tuned mallet perc everywhere~! fun woodwinds but FAKE SITAR (i love "fake sounding sitar" as a very specific thing). and of course all the totally detuned parts have such a bizarre cool feeling. It feels like a familiar environment (desert? i have no clue where this plays in-game) but foreboding to a degree of reality distorting proportions. the drum loops being pitched down/low quality's a wonderful effect. This track actually reminds me a ton of Ar tonelico as weird a comparison as that may be, but there's tons of FAKE SITAR and this kind of electronic percussion all over that stuff. very inspirational stuff

wat ever

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Kurokami Midareshi Shura to Narite is my 21st favorite ToC entrant! oh i forgot that this video was music audio sounds like a really old youtube (low quality). if I didn't know this song well already i would demand a higher quality video before judging this match but i know it' a song that i know my opinion on. I like the strings and the rhythms of the strings because they are "weird" (rhythm game song). The guitars going durrrgnn too loud to hear the cool things and "too fast drums" are the typical things i complain about but i don't mind them as much as usual here, something about this context lets them just drive a faster pace for me without me finding it too SILLy. THE PIANO CHORDS are so cool at so many places. 2:53 is really good. 3:06 is really piano. yeah i like epic fake traditional japan song with frantic piano and strings vaguely proggy ok. It's not my favorite version of something like this i'd rather listen to muramasa or even okami examples of this angle, but it's still nice and makes me happy : )

Yesterdays Opponents are Todays Ingredients is my 9th favorite ToC entrant! i feel like i talked about this too recently for there to be much new for me to say about it. I love all the dissonance, cool stark glitchy electronic effects are cool and make this cool. Love the instrumentation. This is fun, edgy, natural, artificial, and proggy all at the same time~! Kazuki Yanagawa is so cool and top tier gust composer

if you listen to atelier you go into the big cylinder ha ha
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Rustling Throb ~ Cloche
Time for a Great Turnabout
Last Surprise

Rustling Throb ~ Cloche is my 11th favorite in the contest! this is possibly my favorite at2 song. I remember when i first got into Ar Tonelico II music I had a very GAMEBOP-adjacent taste compared to now and could not stand vocals at all. This was the first Ar tonelico series song with vocals I remember liking at all (actually might've been A Strange Play ~ The First but what ever), prior to it i just listened to all the instrumental ones. maybe that isn't surprising because this is "basically an instrumental one" and the vocals aren't the focus but it marks a transition for me i guess. It immediately piqued my interest because of the very distinct sounding electronic drums layers and marimba (and other similar glassy tuned perc layers) dominance. The artificial sounding piano THING at :30 still remains one of my favorite parts of this, and the normal more real sounding piano is beautiful too. Perfect synthesis of contrasting organic and artificial in one place. Whole thing is pretty grandiose and shiny! It's a really crystalline Mystic Ancient Ruins aesthetic evoked and that is one of my favorite things. Nowadays i actually actively like the vocal layers rather than trying to ignore them, though they're not centric to my enjoyment of the track the way they are in some other ar tonelico stuff, they're just a thing I think is cool and amplifies my enjoyment (them coming in at 1:15 is a wonderful climax of intensity to this). To this day though, I've found very little that impresses me production-wise as much as this soundtrack and this is just one of many examples, wonderful sounds/electronic effects all around.

Running Hell is my 176th favorite in the contest! i've realized as time has gone on two things: 1) I like cave story music less than I used to, 2) so much of what I like about cave story music is dependent on it having the original instrumentation. the custom ORG fake soundchip is just a way more appealing limitation set to my ears than nes 2a03+vrc6. I don't dislike rushjet i think he's good at arrangements but i'd be SLiiightly more nice to the original version of this. but also this song is literally just not something I have anything positive to say about it feels too much like the skeleton boomerang one yesterday except i don't even like the instrumentation. can't take any drama the track presents seriously because it is too oom-pah carnival beat and tonally it's just really cheesy. lots of music from this game i think is awesome but not this one

Gestation (First Cave) next year?! : (

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Battle YAS 2 is my 133rd favorite in the contest! This blasts you right off the bat with some pretty distinct chord changes that are to my liking, the startling shift to a chord with the bass resting 1 semitone above the tonic at :10/:23 is one of the easiest ways to emotionally PUNCH me in the best way with music. also just love the soaring melody it starts off with and the arps too. in general love the first 25 seconds but then after that it starts to sound like "anime song but with the vocal track replaced with an unexpressive beep that it wasn't meant to be heard on" or something and i'm not fond of most of :25-1:13 or the parts like it, i don't hate them but my interest isn't kept even close to the rest of the song. The dissonant section at 1:37-1:55 is pretty fun, at first i thought i didn't like how empty it was but what it builds to from that initial emptiness is really cool and it turns out to be a welcome quirky dark TENSE break.

Time for a Great Turnabout is my 119th favorite in the contest! love this accordion+strings/brass instrumentation a ton, subtle grace notes/etc really make the accordion part come alive. rhythms are bouncy and fun with lots of groups of 3 16th beats. cool harmonies in each chord. there's some parts that are more stereotypically "classical music that makes the end of a phrase clear with hamfisted tension/resolution that's too 'predictable' for me" that i do NOT like. but honestly other than that this almost sounds like PMD? unexpected chord change at 1:02 is WHOAA and the section right after's progression is really REALLY appealing to me (but then at 1:18 it starts to sound too "cheesy rich people mansion in 1900 music" and iu dion't like it any more because it sounds like real music). mixed reaction but the good parts are REALLY GOOD

I don't remember liking Time for a GReat Turnabout this much even though I ranked it over YAS. Very close match. Two tracks that contain both elements I love and dont. could flip, expected to be voting for YAS initially

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Skyclad Observer is my 34th favorite ToC entrant! I have heard this too many times because of the one thing. I have a hard time judging this fairly because I have heard it too many times... I do like it but it's become like Super Mario Bros Ground Theme-Tier "how do i rate something that i have heard 5000 times". I always liked the heavily-produced nature of it and that it's dramatic at least. Cool sounds throughout. I love reversed piano!

Last Surprise is my 6th favorite ToC entrant! The popularity of this track always surprised me but I welcome it, maybe my favorite persona series track? The backing epiano chords are ridiculously trippy from :16-:44 and are what makes this for me. The funky bass part being so prominent is a big factor in my enjoyment too. Everything about this is simultaneously super musically interesting and super fun to listen to! This has grown on me significantly between when it was actually in vgmc and now.

Surprise!
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The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Jazzy NNYC
Douwa Kairou

The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind) is my 36th favorite in the contest! i think anyone who has an ounce of an understanding of my taste in music should not be surprised that i like this song. I like prog metal. i like glitchy things. i like odd time. i like "edgy" and "dark". I don't want to talk in too much detail about this, because again, i will go in plenty of detail when it's time for this one to show up in my topic, but yeah. It is not really too much a spoiler that I like this song

Sand Canyon 3 is my 62nd favorite in the contest! this is a good example of Kirby music being strangely intricate even when it's a simple short cute fun happy exterior like this. This is EXACTLY the type of chord progression I always explode about, pretty much every single chord change is a modulation, you can't just jam any given notes within some unchanging lame pentatonic scale on a shamisen over this, you have to hop all over the place and change scales basically every chord to do this justice. If judging purely on "what song do i think has the most attractive chord progression in the contest" this would be ranked near the top of my ranking, even though I ranked it down at 62. Only reason this is low as it is is because there's not as much to it as other things basically. Instrumentation is super fun, fake flute and fake tuned metallic percussion, it's BEAUTIFUl. I love all the snes delay echoes mmmmm~!

closer match than you'd think, despite the numbers (is that a ranking topic spoiler? who cares). I'd be more likely to go sand canyon if it were not so small but it is hard to compare something that is really small to something that is really big like filthy mind

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-[Disco Necropolis is my 182nd favorite in the contest! : ( I genuinely can not stand listening to this but I notice a lot of people with music taste similar to me love this track. i guess it isn't that surprising though, it has the kinds of timbres i'm attracted to (FM synth and FM synth mallet perc as a primary instrument at that!), and is intricate jazz-fusion-adjacent composition at parts. but i'm way more turned off by fast oom-pah loompa goofy carnival (especially "goofy carnival halloween"...please make halloween more edgy...) song than most people who like the stuff I like I guess. No other Skeleton Boomerang song would be ranked this low to me of what I know, I like the soundtrack's general style (I find +tek slightly more engaging than the yasui he imitates usually), but this just has too big of a portion of it that's banjo kazooie-y that no matter how cool everything else is i can't get into it. These harmonies are great, sound design is cool, it sounds like a more polished undertale track in some ways, i hope +tek keeps making cool music that sounds like this soundtrack but not this song!]-

-(Jazzy NNYC is my 18th favorite in the contest! I can't believe i said disco necnckjnrgeokr was "jazz fusion adjacent" when it's in a match against this of all things lol. This is probably the most "accurately" any piece of vgm I know of has imitated the sound of like, this exact very specific tonally weird odd time synthy jazz fusion i guess haha. I tried to get this in last year but FAILED due to a technical error (it would've gotten in had it been listed properly and not accidentally split into two separate entries in the spreadsheet), so I guess i'm glad it's in NOW. i don't even know where to begin with this thing. like a big chunk of my fondness for it is because "it sounds like" it sounds like ALEX ARGENTO it sounds like VIRGIL DONATI it sounds like TRIBAL TECH (that one might be pushing it) like ok yeah it sounds like "jazz fusion" subgenre, but this is like the exact subsubgenre of jazz fusion I like most!!!!
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These warpy rubbery synth sounds are so fun! Chord chunks parallel harmonized transposing around like a VIDEO GAME SONG INSPIRED BY JAZZ FUSION. I love the FUSE out of the Devil Engine OST and this track's without a doubt my favorite from it. It's a rare gem to find something that sounds this tight to this style in VGM. It's kinda the opposite of what I said with Einhander lol, "this genre only exists in vgm", this is the opposite, there's very little VGM that is like this exact zone (despite how commonly "jazz fusion" is an inspiration to vgm composers), but there's entire nonvgm bands where every song sounds like this (though if this was on an album with most of that stuff, it'd still be among my favorites from them). Someone get allan holdsworth to do a game ost oh wait : ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( (
/
Maybe it's underselling something as unique as this to compare it to so many existing artists. The stuff this does is astounding and distinct, I value it just as much as anything else in it's sub-sub-sub-genre and it blows much adjacent stuff out of the water, thrilled this piece of music is in a video game.
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One thing I like about this is how it's not very upfront about the fact that it's in 7, I actually didn't notice it was in odd time at all the first time I listened, it's such an unusual (but somehow natural/smooth feeling) grouping(s) that it's easy for it to slip by in observation. It doesn't call attention to its unevenness with any patronizing guidance to express its rhythmic groupings, though it doesn't hide the fact that it's weird either. It's not uniformly accented in any one place and I love that about it. even though so much of my 'identity' is 'likes odd time signatures' a lot of the time odd time music pisses me off because it feels like it's trying so hard to help you keep count alongside it moreso than any actual 4/4 music ever does. "ONE-2-3-4-FIVE-6-7" spoken with really heavy rigid annunciation to make sure you don't get lost is how so much odd time stuff feels, but this isn't at all victim to that. It lets itself be what it is and leaves you to figure it out if you want. but you don't have to if you don't want to you can just listen to all the cool sounds in the song if you want!
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Also it's actually not entirely just straight 7, there's one single 4/4 bar at :32 and a 15/16 right before the loop but it's so fucking subtle it's insane. the ambiguity of the transition to :38 is really appealing to me, the way the first sax hit doesn't land at all on beat one so it feels like the start of the bar is elsewhere. I could endlessly just list moments from this i love. haven't even begun to talk about the tonality beyond the vague stuff i said already but i don't feel like it so i won't sorry to the 3 people who'd care about that
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The really crystalline part at 1:24 is beautiful and a nice welcome breeze of fresh air when it comes in. It's also the most rhythmically

video games have music?
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Bad End Syndrome
Bitbop
Rapal

Bad End Syndrome is my 61st favorite in the contest! fun fluttery piano that starts as a feeling of constant even spaced 16ths but actually is NOT all even spaced and reveals that more as it goes and slowly transitions to something more organic and alive. the LOW piano note sharply panning between the speakers back and forth at :45 is one of my favorite sound design things in existence. {Alice Schach and the Magic Orchestra/Yuni Minami/Nene Akagawa} seems to have a thing for the sorts of progressions that tickle me, i'd say this isn't as interesting in that regard as Chocolate Missile was, but it's certainly full of that winding alternating major/minor all over the place and changing what scale's being used every 2 seconds stuff I crave! I also like both this and chocolate missile lay in this neat in-between zone between subtle predictability/subtle unpredictability, i never know quite what's coming next, but if I do, I wasn't expecting to know, i can't predict whether or not i will be able to predict the chord after the next chord... a very specific zone that i can't name much else of the top of my head that sits there. but i like it. Oh actually I guess that's what nier is lol. this stuff is much more playful than that though

Shadowbringers is my 157th favorite in the contest! mmm the distorted quality compressed EDGY voice is good. this is like what I /wanted/ Saudade's vibe to be, kinda (this writeup doesn't make sense if reading linearly because I wrote this block of text after writing the block of text for Saudade oops). on the lower end of ffxiv songs i've heard, but i mean ffxiv is far too eclectic an ost for me to expect anything specific out of it haha. i don't mind this at all, it's a nice zone between shadow the hedgehog edgy guitar music with gruff low monotone voice and some orchestral/choral dramatic thing. i don't really care for this track's actual composition, doesn't actually engage me emotionally in any way, but I LOVE the "vibe" whatever the FUSE that means. I wish this style/instrumentation were applied to something that was more my thing in terms of the NOTES that were in the song. idk some Hamauzu/Mizuta/Suzuki song in this style or something "oh wait that's ff13-2 limit break"

game BOP

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Saudade is my 186th favorite in the contest! i expected i would love this when i first heard it, i like "edgy" and gritty and this is THE KIND OF music where I actively like electric guitar. and that is true here! I like those things! this has some interesting chord changes, i like when music has "interesting chord changes" by whatever personal definition i have of that, obviously. I tend to like shuffle feel when it's applied to 'dark' music, esp if it has vocals in..well, a few styles, but this is one of the styles i like applied to this kinda music. i should be all over this thing. oh of course this guy worked on dmc5 lol. yeah WHY DONT I LIKE THIS? I DONT KNOW?! I don't get it. every time i hear this song i just get really annoyed at it and I think it actually has to do with an exact reason i said i expect to like it, the shuffle feel rhythm is REALLY heavy-handed in a way that kills it for me. It feels like a broken slinky tumbling down the stairs. It isn't subtle enough about its "accenting the 1st and 3rd triplet beats only" feel. It's mechanical, when it should be smooth. This isn't really a criticism, this isn't like a "bad" way for it to be, but I think that's what bothers me. I can't take it seriously because it feels like the michelin man is stumbling through a swamp to this song, it doesnt feel edgy, i don't get that cool 'woa dark shuffle-feel edgy gritty song'54"042o-12 bad ass feeling, because its too plodding. every step it makes is heavy and unintentionally "silly" to me, when this should feel organic and foreboding

Bitbop is my 22nd favorite in the contest! this is a very stereotypically 'me' song to the point that i have heard people refer to this song as "mycro" more than just a few times. they're not wrong. blunt groups of 5 16th notes in your face, rhythmic playfulness, smooth alternating between organic swing/shuffle feel and mechanical computer 5/16. this is honestly some of my FAVORITE shuffle/swing feeling stuff i can think of lol, the opposite of my reaction to saudade. the deconstruction of the free bouncy layers against the mathematical precision, or even the "plodding" march-y parts this has in the same song ("plodding march-y parts" that i actually love, despite "plodding" being one of my most overused adjectives to describe something i dislike in a song). it's so many ways to feel the same exact ideas all presented to you in the same track, sometimes multiple ways of feeling it at once! Sometimes it feels like there's a smooth, barely noticeable transition between the ultra mechanical constant 16ths and ultra bouncy swung stuff. On top of ALL of that I think the sound design is extremely cool, epiano's a sound i like, synth sweeping chords are amazing (and the kinds of thick harmonies that i like). This is quirky, goofy, and I like this kinda quirky/goofy when it's on instrumentation like this. This reminds me A LOT of SHNABUBULA who is one of my favorite musicians of all time!!!!! If i had more time today I would do a huge writeup actually analyzing every subtly (and overtly) twisted rhythm thing this does and picking out what all the cool chords are. The rhythms & harmonies here are wonderful and exactly what I want to hear, I will at least say that!

game BOP

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Daddy Mulk is my 49th favorite ToC entrant! this song is not representative of what I like about Hisayoshi Ogura. i notice he tends to be very simple and short in the melodic line, even in the stuff of his I love, and that's to its benefit for me throughout his stuff in the Darius series (contains a huge amount of my favorite vgm), but in something as unsubtle as this it winds up coming across as underwhelming and condescending in its straightforwardness. Can't stand the synth solo from 1:54 - 2:25, i think maybe because it uses up all of the content of the scale its in too fast to have any impact after 2 seconds in, there's ways to handle a pretty much pentatonic solo that doesn't immediately turn into a tedious failed display of expression of intensity through shallow speed that is not even that fast. Orch hits are one of the few "stereotypical 90s synths/samples" that i don't love, but outside of that I love the rest of the instrumentation! I LOVE the fake piano at 2:25 on the other hand. PUPPY PUP

Rapal is my 36th favorite ToC entrant! I've never really been completely blown away by any tracks from this game, it's all just stuff that makes me go &quo

Chasing Daybreak (Rain)
Thermosphere
Douwa Kairou

Mirror Temple (Mirror Magic Mix) is my 141st favorite in the contest! a lot of people had complaints about confronting myself that are basically my complaints about every celeste song that isn't confronting myself. i remember getting kinda annoyed at a lot of the contrarian way much of the statements about it felt but i feel that way about this. it feels like it's selling myself to me something that is dishonest about it's advertisement. I hear surface like "chill electronic jazzy thing that's like mysterious and kinda melancholic", something i should like, but in the end i wind up feeling the actual synth patch choices in combo with the jazzy style is unappetizing, i can't perceive it as mysterious or sad because "chord progression isn't my kind of progression it's too easy" so i think it's cheesy kitsch i can't take seriously instead. even if the loungy jazz chords individually in themselves are cool. they are very cool! I like the delay echo vibraphone too because i like delay echoes and vibraphone is my favorite instrument : ) this is definitely not one of the celeste songs i get excited over, and there's many I love. Sorry song : (

Chasing Daybreak (Rain) is my 112nd favorite in the contest! there was a bunch of FE nommed and this was one of the few tracks that was NOT on my radar, normally love fe music. I never remember what it sounds like until i click play and listen to it. and then i forget what happened after. I have to type about it while listening or itk does NOT work. i feel "it's not memorable" is a kinda shallow complaint, since it has little bearing on whether or not I like something more/less (memorable=bad to me, very often), but like I just mean I literally can't talk about it unless i'm listening to it as it's playing because it's so abnormally unmemorable. ok yeah this song sounds like fires elbmen. i think i like a lot of its indiv. elements on paper, cool chords, it "sounds like modern fire emblem" and has a part with reversed/abrupt cut off choir fade in effect which is something i am addicted to. there's some neat sneaky fun modulations but it's nowhere near the "every chord's a different key" or other cool morishita stuff i like for (i suspect this particular track is not by morishita). I guess i don't have room to complain about this being musically unadventurous when Desire Below (Flow) of all fe things somehow got in, thank you Desire Below (Flow)

bonus bonus boys. 2203 houises. 2 songs with music from the same thing that i like WAY more than these examples. hard match to vote in. could flip.

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-[Midnight Lady is my 147th favorite in the contest!this song sounds like it would be called Midnight Lady. wtf who is that guy ggoing like "ohh yeah" he's so big. cooll instreuments i dont' care about the song though because it's too fun and i don't want to have fun. guitar solo is "epic" i like it. this has so many parts that sound like persona 5 and modern jake kaufman]-

-(Thermosphere is my 2nd favorite in the contest!!!!!!!!!!!! constant 16ths quartal run assault right off the bat! Tarkus arranged for "shmup synthesizers", i'm addicted to anything with rapidly jumping 4ths/quartals (or quintals or 5ths) basically songs that sound like they're imitating tarkus, but this is one of my favorite examples in the world (it is my 6th favorite piece of music in the world (it is deo's 7th and I will forever rub it in that I like this song exactly one slot more than he does)). One of my favorite moments in this community is when i just randomly said "who likes this song more, me or deo" when it was playing in a vgmgg, and he revealed it was his 7th favorite song ever right as I revealed that it was my 6th favorite song ever. The closeness of that and "NOOO" reaction of me BEATING deo at LIKING THERMOSPHERE MORE is just too hilarious to ever forget.
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1:35 is a contender for favorite moment in any piece of VGM. The flipping between 16ths and "triplets except they're groups of 4 triplets" is TOO GOOD, and like even though there's even crazier metric modulation / crazy tuplet stuff / polyrhythm/wHAT ever stuff in music, it doesn't matter what something mathematically IS, what matters is how it feels, and holy shit nothing has ever beat the way that part of this song FEELS to me. Taking non-4/8/16th/etc length values, but having the actual feel of the division not being where the barlines/beats are, it feels like a tempo change even though it's not. When the kick comes in and solidifies that it's NOT just a tempo change and it's just a triplet rhythm but with groups of 4 accents it FEELS LIKE A X RAY OF A HAND BONES just picked me up and threw me up into the thermosphere and then i died. I actually like the kh3 arrangement of this song but i'll never forgive it for that being the one section of the song not really explored.
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2:15 is in 7/4 (with some 6/4 bars) and i like that but also i just like every sound that is floating into my ear drums at that part. that glassy period-specific VAST synth sound world it creates. It's beautiful. It's easy for it to slip by my mind how cool the synth bass is there. that's a cool sound. More importantly, the chord progression is EXACTLY the kind of chord progression I like the most, the kind that makes me FLOAT IN THE AIR INTO THE THERMOSPHERE AND THEN DIE and become very excited : ) Melodic layers having to snake their way through that maze of abrupt tonal center changes in the chord progression to get it to sound natural, it results in some of the coolest most intense emotions I ever feel from music. extremely difficult to play along to by ear even if it doesn't sound like it would be because of how smooth and natural the melodic lines make all the chord changes that'd be disjointed otherwise. There's a lot of stuff in this direction on this soundtrack, but the 2:15-to-the-loop part of this song is likely my favorite bit of the ost tonally (some of the similar stuff in Afterimage is a close contender). Every time the melody leads me to another unexpected chord I feel like my body is being turned inside out AND THEN I DIE FROM THE i'm in the thermospher.e The beepy layer has a few sequences of cycling up 4ths intervals which is nice and connects it to the tonality of the chaotic beginning, even if the way they feel in this context is very CHILL instead.
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one of the biggest things I appreciate about this song (and this is a thing that defines most things i'll rate a 10/10) is that it manages to touch very disparate elements of my music taste all simultaneously. I feel like that's very difficult to do because my taste is so self-contradictory. This touches on "futuristic shmup synth sound", "danceability in pulsing, very 90s

Kaine ~ Salvation
Battle! Giratina
To the Distant Sky

Kaine ~ Salvation is my 100th favorite in the contest! as i say every time it comes up in the past few years now, nier music's grown on me a ton. I used to HATe it, i changed to "slightly like" it, now I LOVE it. This isn't my favorite song from it at all, not even close, but it does have some of the traits i look for in its music. piano chords are the big thick complexish chords with 4+ notes in them that i like the thick chill sound of~! Some really powerful unexpected chord changes too, some nier music my frustration is the obviousness of the path of where it's going to go but I have that problem 0 here. I also like the vocal layer...i normally do not focus very much on like, what's being said in lyrics, or even that much on vocal style outside of specific circumstances, but I actively like this vocal style a lot for whatever reason, but even more specific, I actively like the sound of specific syllables/words said in the lyrics. One of my favorite words in the english language is "chimera" for lots of reasons, but partially because I love how the word sounds. This has parts that sound similar to that being said (I know that is not what is being said) and I love LOVE those parts of the vocal line (1:05 / 1:21 / etc) because the way it sounds is COOL. this isn't as full of cool metallic percussion as Kaine~Escape and i definitely prefer that version's instrumentation, though the slower pace of this relative to Escape is kinda interesting, actually never realized until now, rhythmically comparing them how different they feel. Escape is like bouncy 3+3 6/8 while this is straighter 2+2+2 3/4, at least as the feel that's most prominent to my ears, both have both. I actually like the more 2+2+2 focused rhythmic feel of this one more for whatever reason, even if I like the greater variety of timbres in escape more.

Level 5: Main Theme is my 108th favorite in the contest! This is an extremely "me" song at surface level. If the whole thing was as weird as the first 20 seconds this would among my favorites. but i have A LOT of problems with the composition of this song as much as i like the "type" of song it is. I REally do not like drums that have snare on 2&4 "too fast" i complain about that toomuch i do not want to listen to a "banger" i want to listen to a boring piano song instead. 1:09 is a cool natural bouncy 7/8 but blues scale in the bass comes across as cheesy to me, honestly reminds me a ton of Tim Follin music that is in 7/8 and i like how it's in 7/8 but don't like how blues scale focused it is(there's like, at least 5 examples of this exact thing in his music if not 20). The tonality of this track fluctuates between stuff i LOVE and hate simultaneously, the blues scale in the odd time part's the lowest point, but there's tons of very high points. obviously i love the complete atonal chaos of the first 20 seconds, wish the whole thing had that level of chaos, but I also love the weirdness of the chord changes at the more normal parts, :23-:38 where it's alternating between chords a tritone apart from each other (just like BANJO KAZOOIE except I actually like this), occasionally transposing down one chromatic, and the melodies weaving this ridiculous weird case of chord planing movement. JUICY. but then :45 and like :52-53 hgappens and then i go EW it sounds like one of the falcom songs i don't like it sounds like rich people would listen to this song in umineko, the direction is too guided where it's about to go in a way that really destroys what i'd otherwise like for me. Also I like amiga sound format yeah that's cool ok. So yea very mixed VERY mixed, some of both my absolute favorite moments of any song in the contest, alongside absolute least favorites.

Feel kinda bad since the hoi track feels like it's made to appeal to my tastes more than most of the rest of the board, but in the end the result isn't quite there for me as much as it is on paper. i definitely confidently prefer kaine no matter how close it is for me, but i kinda wish i didn't. this match would feel less awkward to me if it were Kaine ~ Escape which I DO handily prefer no questions asked. both "cool but i like other things similar to them more", and i don't mind too much which wins, close match, but i have a clear preference.

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Jena Anderson is my 83rd favorite in the contest! Fun Big Chanting song. I love the general style of Astral Chain's ost, rhythmically complex guitar/drum stuff mathematically deconstructing the more straightforward Epic Orchestra Choir song it sits beneath. Combining disparate genre traits I like. very DJENTy, some songs sound more like Animals as Leaders than this one does. This is more a "I like this because i like the style of this ost" enjoyment than liking this specific example, but it's still great. 1:03's guitar rhythms have a bunch of 2+3 "5/16" subgrouped stuff and that's kinda my literal favorite rhythmic sound. 1:32 - 1:50 is one of my favorite portions of any song in the entire contest actually. LOTS Of fast 2+3 groupings in 16ths beats in that pattern, and I like how the movement of the notes doesn't line up with the rhythms. The strings/choir/etc are a looping group of 3 notes, but the rhythms that loop of cycling 3 notes is being played on doesn't line up, so the position of the 3 notes get heard at different parts of the pattern and it's SO GOOD animal as leaders(tesseract) i really want to know how much prog metal the vide ogame music composer Jena Anderson listened to when writing the astral chain soundtrack........

Battle! Giratina is my 14th favorite in the contest! my 'houndoom' playlist on youtube used to be called GIRATINA. this is practically the defining track of an entire category of my music taste, though only more in the sense that it's a popular and well known example of "distorted reality music". Junichi Masuda's a very hit or miss composer to me compared to the other gamefreak composers. I tend to dislike when his music sounds like it could actually be music, but when he writes things like this, no one would write this but him. Nothing in the world even sounds close to this. This absolutely fits with the kind of being that Giratina is, incomprehensible to the average living entity, ANTIMATTER exiled to alternate reality so that the entire world does not explode when you exist. but this song makes you explode because it is so CRAZY. fun pokemon song to look at sequence data of, I know i said that with Colress but it's true here too, Game Freak is REALLY GOOD AT NINtendo DS sequenced music creativity!!!!!!! So much packed into ~11 channels, watching panning and pitch bend data go crazy and patches changing every 2 seconds is fun lol. I LOVE REVERSED SOUNDS ITS ALMOST LIKE SOMETIMES PEOPLE CA

where does gamebop fall in the 'votes for vocals.."
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Theme of E-102 Gamma
Moonstruck Blossom
Face of Fact

Frey's Philosophy is my 105th favorite in the contest! I like the trope of rhythm game music that soiunds like the way this song sounds...EPIC song is fun, intense dnb with cool background choir part and cut off glitch effects and fun stuff. the drums in the part in the 2:00 zone sound cool, constant 16th piano is fun. something about the chord change at 1:43 is really big and impacctful to me compared to any other moment of the song. Despite how much I like that it does on paper, it doesn't stick with me at all or stand out to me among the pool of other music in the same zone as it. I wish it did!

Theme of E-102 Gamma is my 74th favorite in the contest! but I wish it was my 102nd favorite in the contest because that would be very funny! Sonic Adventure is my favorite Sonic GAME. It is not my favorite sonic soundtrack(I think most people know what my favorite sonic ost is by now...) but at the same time, i would not like this game as much as i do if it weren't for the music being so cool to me. A big part of what makes this game a significant game to me is the atmosphere it exudes, and music like this is what makes that. Very Interesting chord changes i do NOT expect to be the oens that happen next (Sorry i'm so repetitive with what i talk about i only like music where i don't know what the next chord change is because i'm stupoid i like jazz fusion too much). This doesn't "stand out" very much, but it doesn't need to, it sucks me into this mildly melancholic, mysterious, and curious, electronic world. like i just woke up with no memory and learn about what being a machine is like, like that's kind of "dangerous" because you need someone to charge you up using mysterious red objects that loop in intricate patterns so that you can grow a christmas tree on top of your head and that's existentially uncomfortable isn't it? being a machine is very "mixed feelings" yeah. I like "vaguely JazzFusion-adjacent music on futuristic synths in 'y2k' music" this song needs to have a screensaver for your computer where it just shows a bunch of images of excessively shiny metallic organic abstract 3d objects

1

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Moonstruck Blossom is my 49th favorite in the contest! sorry about not liking miracle matter here's a Kirby song I actually LOVE this time that i can explode about. Modern Kirby Music is so overwhelmingly DENSE and I love every moment of it. Every single possibly empty space is filled with SOMETHING, like how much stuff the piano is doing in like the :50-1:00 is so busy it's almost silly, but it doesn't feel jarring or out of place or anything. Kirby music's always been frantic, busy and even some form of "complex" from the earliest Kirby music, it just naturally evolved into the modern hyperlayered style that I like more than anything it's ever been. I love you Hirokazu "I like complex chords" Ando! Fun xylophone! fun Piano!! fun plucked STRINgs. This keeps the whimsy of the modern kirby style while still feeling dramatic enough to feel like it can be a final boss theme. omG some of those chord stringy pads sweeping in at like 1:53 are so beautiful...! Never noticed them until this listen. I guess that shows how dense this music is, and why I like this era of kirby music so much. Most of the time I'm able to get something new out of a song every time I listen, and I'm glad I can't comprehend everything going on at once ever on a first listen. It's maybe ironic that Kirby's selling point is that it's simple easy and Anyone Can Draw Circle, because the music is the antithesis of that mission statement! It's probably some of the most overwhelmingly difficult to learn music out of any popular franchise imo. I LOVE it for that. Thank you ando (and ishikawa) for your relentless file cabinet MAZE of dominoes and i can't drink too much music all the time. that said, the "complexity" has never been "unfitting" since it's used to drive the cartoony whimsical chaos that fills DUM PINK BALL vgm ost. the 'complexity' makes it frantic, playful and fast paced VACUUM SPHERE. i love kirby music

CLASS::CIEL_NOSURGE; is my 92nd favorite in the contest! as one of the Big Gust Music people on the board i feel bad that i'm not more excited about this. I like the style but it's i think a bit too centric on specific layers only, one at a time, and so much of what i like about music to this series is how full and dense it is, and how creative production-wise it can get, how much there is to potentially pay attention to at once. This doesn't really have those elements. I like the over-the-top distinct vocal styles present here but i wish they weren't treated as the sole possible focal point i think. Akiko Shikata focused way more on the types of sounds i'm into gust for on so many other tracks from ciel nosurge (I know this is actually from Ar Nosurge WHAT EVER). I don't dislike this at all, it's actively the aesthetic i'm attracted to the most these days, it paints imagery i want perfectly. but I guess it is "too empty" for my liking i guess is how i'll put it. This is a far more negative than necessary writeup, i really like this song, and it's not easy to find stuff like this and I value this for what it is A LOT. Just explaining why it's the thing in the contest from this series i ranked the lowest

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Face of Fact is my 40th favorite ToC entrant! delay echo piano makes me happy because it reminds me of Robert Miles - Children (this isn't the first time I have referenced this piece of music this contest). The fake guitar at the very start does too. Cool synths and effects !!! Recognize some synth presets/samples and I always find it fun to hear these same sounds in wildly different contexts from each other. Track has a similar energy to the evangelion opening in terms of the way the vocals interact with the song or SOMETHINg and I like that song. weird unexpected key change a 1:29 for some reason I like that. I guess this is the kind of ANIME song i actually like a lot, syncopated y2k era dance music with trance supersaw synths filling the atmosphere with cool lines. though mostly it's because it reminds me of music from the year 2000(?) pretending to be the year 2020. I ranked this 40th. I don't like it "that much" but i liked the things I said anyways and i don't dislike anything much either

Zenith is my 51st favorite ToC entrant! i do not like being mean to songs i don't like so i am trying to word this as un cruel as i can while still talking about it. i do not like this song. I have very mixed both ultra-positive & ultra-negative feelings on Yasui music, but this is like the single yasui song i can think of with the lowest % of "things i like about yasui music" and highest %

ok some big top things and WHY:

1. Sonic Shuffle
- i have a kind of contradictory set of things i look for in music, very difficult to find a soundtrack that hits all of them. I like cheesy 90s dance music that relies on recognizable samples & synth presets of the period, pretentious complex avant-garde prog, minimalist hyper-simple repetitive stuff, pretty naturey foresty music, futuristic synth sounds, soloistic alive jazz, mechanical glitchy hellscapes, etc. Sonic Shuffle somehow hits all of these disparate things at once and more, sometimes simultaneously in the same song even when it doesn't seem possible. Often taking some of those elements (particularly the weird "complex prog stuff") to a level of extremity that i hear in almost 0 other VGM. I heard this soundtrack before i played the game and discovered it literally from looking for new music to listen to in the background while working "hmm, i feel like listening to a sonic ost i've never listened to before- wait I have listened to EVERY single sonic soundtrack before except for one. sonic shuffle? what even is this?!" and I was bombarded with the most overwhelmingly to-my-taste set of music I have ever heard. Definitely saved the best for last, of ALL sonic osts to be "the only i had never heard". later played the game, which is kinda infamously known for being an un-fun mario party except it is sonic party instead, can see why it has that reputation, but regardless of the game's flaws, the music fits better with it than i ever imagined. I had no clue how this diverse set of weird as fuck music would actually fit in context, but it defines the atmosphere of the whole trippy distorted reality dream/nightmare world thing perfectly

2. Shining Wisdom
- this one's more plainly just "it's basically a prog rock ost", constant IRREGULAR TIME, POLYRHYTHM, and other bizarre stuff to the point it doesn't even fit with the game. who cares. it's fun music! also, 90s synths and i like that. (common to me liking a game ost: "wow it has 90s synth presets and is 'prog' at the SAME TIME", not an easy combo to find so i cherish it when i do)

3. Wachenroder
- this game ost is also "prog" to the point it literally has ex-King Crimson member Ian McDonald doing multiple tracks (though his contributions are actually like the least weird ones). Also the game has a bunch of prog references. Some of the stuff in this thing is so musically bizarre it almost feels like a joke and i can't believe it exists, but i cherish that. Also cool sounding 90s synth presets everywhere I wonder what year this came out HMM

4. Gungriffon
- See: Shining Wisdom (same composer, love it for basically exactly the same reasons). My entire top 4 is "debatably unfittingly prog/weird ost on sega console in the 90s"

5. Phantasy Star Online 2
- This might be a bit weird to put here because I havent listened to the whole thing yet but I've listened to vol7-8 in full, and know a good chunk of vol1-6's stuff. 1-6 are more "futuristic synth stuff" and 7-8 are more "medieval fantasy orchestral/'world music' or something". love both sides of it but 7-8 speaks to me compositionally a bit more so afaik it's my preferred portion. Anyway compositionally it's EXACTLY what i look for, unexpected chord changes everywhere that make me float in the air, thick individual chords that sound like inside a computer(space). Lots of fast moving hard-to-follow stimulating accompaniment but flowing melodic lines to weave it together

6. Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil
- Fluffy new age 90s (2001) glassy synth sounds everywhere. and pan flutes : ) In the pretty forest and also in the atonal death computer synth zone at the same time somehow. Very effective in-context and out both. I love the timbral world this lives in as much as I like it's fairly consistently adventurous composition

7. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
- See above. I like it slightly less but sometimes I flip flop

8. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon "3" (Gates to Infinity)
- this ost gets a lot of flak compared to the other pmds though i think that's heavily because people also just dislike this game as a game. I find it about equally engaging to 2 in terms of memorability and interconnectedness of its songs to itself. leitmotifs reused throughout the ost are solid. tons of versions of the same themes, and interesting deconstructions of them in various ways. but also i just like the sound, klonoa-y and pso2vol7-8y, I like nature and feeling like i am a pokemon in the pokemon world exploring mysterious ice cave and treacherous mountains/forests/etc, and this ost makes me feel like that. composition's intricate in subtle ways without being distracting: that makes for very good "dungeon music", i don't get bored of listening to dungeon themes for 9 hours on loop but it's not forcing me to pay attention to it either. that type of dungeon theme's probably my favorite general category of vgm so i value that. overall good balance of both EPIC and QUIRKY at once, wide emotion range explored

9. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 (Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky)
- same as above pretty much. On sample-based DS limitations though rather than full-production. I don't necessarily prefer one or the other but it does impact this a bit differently. There's a lot more punchiness here and focus on the composition than on the instrumentation/production for its effect. sometimes i flip-flop and say i like this more than gates to infinity's ost

10. Ar tonelico II
- Some of the coolest instrumentation/production effects in any game ost ever. Crazy synth sounds fused with "world instruments", intertwined beautifully nature&technology. board 8 has a tendency to focus on the vocal tracks a bit more than I ever do, i don't dislike them, but my favorite stuff in at2 specifically is all the instrumentals. There's nothing that sounds quite like it, even other stuff by the same composers doesn't really hit the level of this ost to me usually, but i do like my Chanting Voice People as well!

11. Border Down
- jazz fusion meets y2k synth edm world. Yasuhisa Watanabe's one of my fav composers. crazy sounds all over the place and usually pretty intricate.

12. Senko no Ronde DUO
- Yasuhisa Watanabe again! Less jazz fusiony this time and more just wonderfully futuristic electronic sounds drowning you in a metallic glass prismatic laser beam. Some of the most unique sounds i've ever heard live in this soundtrack, and chill chords everywhere relax me even if there's 90000 things happening at once and crazy dissonant stuff at the same time.

13. Einhander
- 90s dance music and jazz fusion and prog at the same time what the fuck (oh no it's one of THOSE AGAIN

Confronting Myself
To the Distant Sky
Douwa Kairou

Confronting Myself is my 30th favorite in the contest! remember when this was my 8th favorite?! (16th in vgmc13). I still like it the exact same amount but that's how much I'm fond of this field compared to vgmc12 i guess! I literally have a youtube account called "Polymetric Manectric" so it is not surprising i like the fact that this has many parts that are Polymetric (starting right off that way from the beginning!), and 9/16 over 4/4 is a pretty cool polymeter type. I think it's cool how the 9/16 bounciness is enhanced by the way the drums work, it doesn't feel like it's the 4/4 that it actually is underneath until the section following. I like Big Chanting People in my songs, fav bit of the chanting is the starting section and the 9/16 layer being at the same time as it makes the first 30 seconds by far my favorite bit of the song and all the other parts similar to it. I also like cool warpy synth sounds and constant 16th bing bing bing bing computer sounds in my songs, the parts that continue with that even outside of the polymeter parts like the beginning are really cool and connect sections that'd otherwise feel unrelated very well. The glitchy section is COOL and I'm glad it's deconstructing my favorite part of the song rhythmically even more than it started as. This is a lot of things I love at once! I've talked about this a lot before so i'm just repeating myself. I like this song. The END

Thermal Base 1 is my 81st favorite in the contest! This is honestly a pretty similar pick to Confronting Myself in 305 ways...sorta dramatic synthy music with cool weird sounds and constant 16ths and from indie 2d platformer. (I didn't want to have to make this matchup partially for this reason, but all the alternatives I had left made matchups that had even worse issues!) I prefer this instrumentation SIGNIFICANTLY to Confronting Myself's actually, some of the coolest SOUNDS of any song in the contest imo!!!! Some of these synth patches have an interesting metallic timbre that makes them in themselves a chord or at least interpreted by my ear as 2+ notes always moving parallel to one another as far as i can tell. Lots of this weird parallel harmony/transposy stuff that reminds me of like all the pso songs I've gushed about for that reason. I know exactly what a lot of these synth patches are, presets from 90s synths i have familiarity with, but others i have no clue and they're probably "just presets" too but that's not something I look down upon, this selection of sounds is VERY COOL to me basically. Composition-wise i'm more neutral light-positive about it aside from the parallel harmony stuff so it's nowhere near as high as Confronting Myself in my ranking, but I am fond of it and wish I could vote for it. This soundtrack as a whole is consistently pretty cool to me though i'm not sure there's any track from it i'd take over Confronting Myself, but i'd definitely consider supporting other picks from it in the future. This reminds me of MEGAMAN ZX/ZXA TUNES (official arrange album(s)) and that is a soundtrack(s) I have fondness for! It's both the instrumentation and composition reminding me of some tracks from it. also this sounds like metallic madness past HA HA it's so funny i wonder if that is intentional reference because of being fake sonic game

sonic

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To the Distant Sky is my 120th favorite in the contest! siivagunner to the distant sky is a very pretty song. Oooooh glassy synth bells that sound "90s" !!! Pretty !!! Honestly the appeal of this to me is pretty shallow, just like the sound of it and nothing more haha. Still things i regularly talk about appreciating, thick full chords filling the landscape colorfully and softly. It's pretty ! makes me nostalgaic for some thing that doesn't exist, some anime i never watched or whatever

Zadok is my 181st favorite in the contest! This is one of only TWO 4.x rated tracks in my ranking. THat means that I dislike it enough to always want to turn it off when i am listening to it, but that I actively appreciate specific elements of it A LOT, usually that's what 4.x means anyways. "Mixed extreme positive&negative but still dislike enough to not want to have to hear it". I LOVE 80s, this isn't as authentic 80s as i'd like, or at least not the aspects i look for when it comes to 80s synth stuff but it's alright at being it. There's lots of REALLY COOL interesting fusion chords and movements between those chords at some moments, production is nice and full and AAAAAH. Parts like 2:20 are SEX musically and timbrally both. Ooh prominent high bass part at like 2:31 time for lasa to point out how often i like that type of flourish or solo. So many things to love here, but I can't stand the ROCKIN boring megaman x song with driving gungugnugnugnhgugh boring drums boring song and STUPID synth melody it starts with that sounds so dumb i hatae that starting synth melody. ok sorry i don't like being mean to songs Other Drift Stage tracks are more my thing. Sorry song : ( Maybe i'd like this if the drums had gated reverb snare oh wait actually it almost does does and i like the parts that have that. Constant 16th note synth bass is a cool 80s song i like. I am so inconsistent with which type of simple things make me want to punch the screen and which things i love lol. Lots of cool synth stabs, synbrass/saw/bell chord stabs that are aaah! ok honestly the drums are cool at the parts that aren't really straightforward but fuck this song at the straightforward parts

19807. Want to like Zadok but it's too anti-me at too many parts. it'd easily get my vote if it were only certain portions/layers/etc of it. Sorry Drift STage i do like your music but not this time...

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Flaming Bonds are Being Tested is my 32nd favorite ToC entrant! Another Go Shiina song! Not quite as "creative" as the one yesterday, and not quite as "Only Go Shiina He Is Unique" as the one yesterday, but still has the same "enthusiasm" i look for in his stuff. I think I appreciate how this one is less forcefully melodic and more just bombastic fun without trying to enforce any specific focal point on any one layer. Cool synth solos, the detuning at 5:13 is insanely fun. spanish guitar reminds me of ace combat zero ZERO which i dunno if i've ever thought of before haha

Douwa Kairou is my 4th favorite ToC entrant! Yeah I like odd time signatures and this has that for a lot of it. only really 5/8 and the parts that aren't odd time are bouncy 6/8 but that's still pretty fun! The 5/8 is very blunt and choppy sounding and sometimes i don't like that but I like that here, I like when stuff in 5 isn't clear about its underlying grouping. So much 5 stuff is like "THIS IS 3+3+2+2 or 3+2 take 5 part 9003

Sonic Shuffle
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Heading Back to Town
Sound of the Wind
1NF3S+@+!0N (Theme of Crabulon)

Heading Back to Town is my 111th favorite in the contest! man this song is so Go Shiina it's kinda funny, it's like a showcase of all the "go shiina things" you can do in a song. big chanting boys at the beginning in the background, prominent violin melody, random reversed effects, other glitchy bits, random jazz fusion elements, random timesig change to 6/8 that re-contextualizes the melody to fit with it, some pretty cool chord changes. these are all elements that are in other go shiina songs (though not usually all at once), but in other stuff he goes about those traits in a much more adventurous way that's more my thing than here. there was a period where i listed Go Shiina in my top 5 vgm composers which was a weird statement honestly because I knew very little of his stuff. he's not even close now but i am fond of how extremely distinct his style is, even if this isn't the most unique example of it

Desire Blue Sky is my 146th favorite in the contest! I used to say the only thing I actually liked about this was the weird sound at ~1:10. well i had other positive things to say sometimes. idk it's not a terrible piece of music but it doesn't stand out to me much. I like the saxophone that sometimes sounds like it's a violin. I think I've said that before too. yeah this is ok. sure. basically i just like the instrumentation, some cool very cool sounds in it, almost "y2k dance music" at times and i dig that, though i wish it was mixed a bit differently, I want to hear some things that i can barely hear and don't want to hear some things that take up too much of my ears. and there's not much else to it of interest to me. probably would've been a huge fan of this in 2000 but this song didn't exist yet.

Go! Shiiina! Use VIOLIN FUSION

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Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke is my 142nd favorite in the contest! I have talked about this so many times that i absolutely do not need to talk about it again but here is an update of note: I like Metal Gear Solid - The Best Is Yet To Come more than this song now. That did not used to be the case. You will learn more about why when that day comes I guess. I don't dislike this but in the end it's like a really random touhou pick that i only know as well as I do because of participating in every vgmc since 3 and this being in every vgmc ever and often getting very far. i don't think i'd naturally be attracted to it over other touhou options if it weren't for its omnipresence in this stuff drilling its melody into my brain, but i have nothing negative to say about it either.

Sound of the Wind is my 85th favorite in the contest! I guess this is sort of a ranking topic spoiler but who cares this is a much different version (which may rank differently) and i've talked about versions of this in previous contests before. A lot more my thing than it was in the past. ESPECIALLY now. I didn't realize the singer in this version was Donna Burke until today, interesting! She's the vocalist on a number of my fav vgm tunes. changes in vocalist are one of the things that impacts my reaction to something the least- i'm probably one of the least-picky-about-vocals people i know, so i'm not sure i have a preference for jp vs. eng and i find it fascinating that there's such a divide here on that. I'll talk about the sort of instrumental version of this in my ranking topic anyways so i don't need to go super in detail here but yeah FFCC music is cool and i love the really folky foresty instrumentation with really distinct instrument choice set, this track in particular has a bunch of moments that remind me of MANNHEIM STEAMROLLEr and yeah it's cool. it's beautiful song : ) pretty song I like this song. My favorite of the day

final fantasy 26

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1NF3S+@+!0N (Theme of Crabulon) is my 28th favorite ToC entrant! This still doesn't click with me as much as other stuff from calamity so i always kinda felt alienated by the overwhelming enthusiasm toward it over every other thing from this. I don't hate it but it doesn't really have the traits i look for in the ost, chord changes aren't nearly as much the 'only dm dokuro would write this' unexpected impactful chord dramatic stuff, way more trance-y and funky than the other options, etc. I still enjoy it, the parts with piano melody are cool because they remind me of ROBERT MILES - CHILDREN especially with all the other delay echo stuff. it DOES have it's own share of really cool chord changes like the fast rush of insane harmonies right before the loop. it reminds me of the aspects i like about yasui and there's nothing here i dislike, but it's hard for me to get into naturally, I think it is too "fun" or something > : (

Rivers in the Desert (P5) is my 47trh ToC entrant! I don't really hate this or anything but every time I listen to this I find less and less to like, meanwhile every time i listen to Last Surprise (Persona 5) I like it more than the last... I think I just find Rivers in the Desert just too empty for the amount of energy it exudes or something. like the simple dance beat focus with nothing behind it just feels like unwanted noise to me. Has its cool bits but mostly I'm wanting other persona picks. Favorite element is definitely the strings. the cooldown section at 3:43 is nice too

terraria calamity mod more like Terraria CLAM mod
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also just realized this is the song Whereabouts of Light reminds me of. when I said it sounded like Joe Hisaishi I didn't even realize it was a literal specific song that's uncannily similar that was driving in the similarities for me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdpEnkcT7Io
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Endeavour
FEEL the POWER in YOUR SOUL
Dark Legacy

Endeavour is my 38th favorite in the contest! "phantasy star online" music consistently appealing to me composition-wise no matter the composer, no matter the instrumentation. It's absurd how perfect it all is to me no matter if they're doing epic vocal orchestra thing like this or if they're in synth jazz world, or ambient new age-y stuff or WHAT ever. Kenichi Tokoi did a bunch of my favorite Sonic Adventure-and-later sonic music, so it's not too surprising I'm fond of this as well, ii does remind me of some of his contributions to that, but i find it interesting how much this sounds like "phantasy star online" so successfully while being written by a completely different person, and for entirely different from typical instrumentation. Like I know the pso2vol7-8 stuff has similar instrumentation to this but I hadn't heard that yet when I first heard this about a year ago (apparently kaonashi1 showed me this track literally April 18, 2019, almost 1 year anniversary of "me knowing what this track is"). Okay so what do i actually like about this uhhhhh THESE CHORDS ARE REALLY BIG and not predictable, and all of the things I do not predict are VERY emotionally intense. This starts off ultra simple, just single line of a vocalist singing a few notes, but then the piano comes in with some pretty neat chords backing it that aren't what i'd have imagined would back it just from the vocal line, and it re-contextualizes the vocal line to be completely different to me and I LIKE that feeling. Once it "actually starts" and picks up speed there's much more prominence to that piano backing and it's a cool way to start. Sections like 3:34 - 3:58 (and similarly the part starting at 1:04) are my favorite here, those brass chords have SO MANY NOTES in them and are so thick and timbrally ALIVE without feeling cluttered at all. Among the most beautiful I'd consider any brass parts to be in any VGM song i know of. I LOVE THIS SONG I could talk about it for 39 years. but i could do the same with most pso series music i've heard too

B2 Battle is my 93rd favorite in the contest! I associate this track pretty heavily with some videos that used clips of this in those videos and I liked what the music was back then, but i don't think I've ever heard this in full and high quality until like this year. That cool pitched metallic sound that comes in at :09 is REALLY cool, my favorite timbres tend to be tuned percussion, and this is a good example of that! transposing synth chords peering into the background at :28 are amazing too, that type of thing is both one of my favorite things in terms of composition AND instrumentation both simultaneously. Really cool nomination and i'd take it over about half the field, if this had more to it it could be one of my favorites, but I like the tone it sets a ton as it is.

WOW

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FEEL the POWER in YOUR SOUL is my 169th favorite in the contest! I like Hideki Naganuma in general but I think almost more in the sense of "wow it's cool this music exists" than actually stuff i naturally get into. his sampling-heavy style is super fun and plays with a bunch of fun production techniques that are fun too! and just sound cool. this is ranked fairly low but i don't hate it, just don't super get into it the way I do with other a lot of other Naganuma picks. has all the traits i'm describing and i don't dislike any element really. I like the style this track is, just not the substance, composition isn't as much my thing as other stuff from this guy.

Central Park is my 192nd favorite in the contest! This track has a weird combination of histories for me, positive ones! I used to actually like this! Had it on some personal CD mixes. How did it wind up at 192nd now? um. well it's not like my taste is completely static and exactly the same as it was in 2010, can't stand this now, my preferences have definitely changed significantly in the past 10 years. Relatedly, Matt Gray also composed Driller for the c64 game "Driller" which had a version used as music for one of my favorite games of all time- Seiklus. That track fell to the same fate (i even have a personal replacement ost for seiklus where i replaced all the music files with music I like more...heavily because of my reaction to that particular track, though i do love some of the other selections, and I do like Driller MUCH more than this to the point i consider myself to at least somewhat like the tune). That said there's still nostalgic fondness for both from me (both from last ninja 2 music in personal mixes from ~2010, and from my deep fondness of Seiklus as a game in regards to Driller). I also just like the sound of C64 music, I think it produces really cool timbres and I'm quite into following the sorts of tricks used in c64 music for it to be as full as it's allowed to be within its limits, which I have fun watching with this. So why is this literally LAST PLACE?! um. because i hate it lol. basically all my complaints about metal beat except more extreme. Extremely straightforward chord progression, really plodding near patronizingly simple rhythms, almost painfully on the beat and predictable & guiding in pattern. Does not help its case that it's so slow and long. It doesn't have the level of edginess or "epicness" that 183rd-191st have to save it from being the literal bottom, or the quirkiness some of the stuff I dislike above 183 has, just really emotionally completely boring to me on top of its banality. Don't want to drown with all the negativity I could about this one, it's endless. but despite being literally 192, it's tied in with fond nostalgia of various things, and I think lots of the sounds this makes are pretty cool

wow

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Dark Legacy is my 15th favorite ToC entrant! i don't know how i basically do not remember this at all from vgmc9, was just as much my kinda thing then as it is now. Naoyuki "Nekomata 'BaSTeT' Master" Sato is a composer I consistently love who makes music that coincidentally sounds like ELEBITS for some reason hmm i wonder why...................................................?!! HMMMMMMMM Yeah i love all the signature naoyuki sato distorted sines/epiano-y sounds that go "bleep" in cool harmonies. I like how it's mixed into the Epic Orchestra here but I'd probably enjoy this more if the more "distinct to naoyuki sato" elements were brought out and it sounded more like 'elebits except edgy' and also if it was not SO fast drums. 4:19-4:26 just being endless 3+3+3+3... forever instead of 3+3+3+3+4 4/4 how it is when it's first introduced is a cool way to have this climax. calm outro 4:28 to the end being in 5/8 randomly is cool : )

Whereabouts of Light is my 27th favorite ToC entrant! This

holy shit lol hi another pokemon account. Sneasel's actually my favorite pokemon! sorry uf8 @ ing my discord username got you pinged
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[...continued from above]

VERY close and i could last minute flip later if i decide to...but "being reminded of something else that I like more than the actual thing in the contest" is a less good reason to vote for something than actually liking what's presented in front of me here, so I'm going with Amusement Park. I'd probably come back to listen to NWO more often, but I definitely "actually like" amusement park much more
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The Cold Science of Supremacy
Desert
Amusement Park (Dynamic Vocals)

Sky of Twilight is my 110th favorite in the contest! I used to like this a lot more because I could focus on the little bits I liked. There's definitely stuff I like here, some bits with cool synths i like, cool abrupt key changes, I LOVE the absurd rock organ beating you up in hell prog section at 3:05-3:47, suddenly relaxing pads immediately following that, lots of bits i find cool. but it's mostly overwhelmed with the stuff i don't like...don't like the simple kick-snare-kick-snare drums at the faster sections like :18 and even less like how they're mixed. its a straightforward ANIME song in the end and, that's ok...I can like that sometimes, this does some things I like, and I'd still vote for it over only a bit under half the field, but it's not enough to win me over when it's against the at least 109 songs, I probably ranked this too high as is

The Cold Science of Supremacy is my [Ranking Topic Spoilers] 75th favorite in the contest! I suppose it's not much of a spoiler anymore since i'm already pretty much at the 7s now in my topic, this song is "at least a 7", so it is no secret now that I "like this song" to some degree. Anyways I probably shouldn't make a huge writeup about it since i'm going to do so there anyways, but I like this song. I like DARK atmospheres, and one of my absolute absolute top tier favorite dark atmosphere categories is like "evil lab" and that defines what this song feels like. This is extremely simple compositionally in some ways, unsettlingly so, and in this case that is actively to its benefit for me, even if i often talk as if i dislike simplicity. In this case the simplicity heightens the "dark laboratory" atmosphere x12000 because of its unsettling artificiality. It has very interesting sorta unconventional chord changes for sure, starts off with total transposition down 3 half steps for the first 3 chords, and then caps off each phrase with a very almost cartoonish SPOOKY HALLOWEEN (silver ermine) chord change that leads back to the start and holy shit is it effective here. some other similar stuff going on other places. chord progression actually strangely reminiscent of grant kirkhope (but like, the perfect dark side of his sound rather than banjo kazooie), I used to listen to perfect dark all the time because of seeking stuff that had an atmosphere similar to this (both effectively instrumentation-wise and note-wise). This sound design is crazy and enhances every cool thing about this. all the delay echoes, warpy pitch bendy scratchy synth sounds and bell-like synth patches paint such a vivid series of "you do not want to be in this evil lab place" pictures in my head it's absolutely perfect. Thank you for introducing me to this piece of music Ermine !!!!!!!!!!!!! Sad to see it being destroyed here : ( it's already on multiple personal playlists of mine. Probably my fav of the day... Expect an even more detailed writeup whenever i finally get to it in my topic

cold

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Flotage (Stage3-B) is my 144th favorite in the contest! Every Basiscape track in the contest is in my top 56...except for this one which is in my bottom 56! Ooops! Well they still got 6/7(?!) of them on my VERY good side to an extent that's almost overwhelming in its impressiveness. Anyways I love the chords and crazy futuristic electronic synth production of this I just HATE blues scale and that is why this is knocked down like 100 slots from where it would be otherwise. sometimes blues scale can sound effectively 'edgy' where i'll like it, sometimes it's like "the cool man" music, but sometimes i perceive it as "hokey old people music invading an otherwise cool song" and that is the case here, especially when it's used in a really inorganic way, really can't stand :50 - 1:02 for example. It feels to me like "How do you do fellow kids?!", someone trying to be hip and cool but it in such a mechanical way I can't take it seriously at all. To me pentatonic blues scale is a scale that if used has to be way more organic about presentation to not feel cheesy. I love like Jake Kaufman's and Shnabubula's frequent uses of it as some random examples, but you have to be that level of soloistic and "alive" for me to not think it as a literally stupid note sequence. The bit just before 1:26 bothers me for another reason (it feels like crypt of the necrodancer). anyways i don't think this is horrible music, I think it is "good" it just does things that i don't like, and if i ignore those elements what's left behind is some pretty cool stuff. neat track, but not for me, but i can't complain because 99% of basiscape's music is near tailor-made for me, they can't be perfect all the time! bye for now

Desert is my 96th favorite in the contest!!! Yaaay! I like this song ! I love the sitars...it's very pretty : ) I don't really have much of a reaction beyond like "I like the type of song it is" but I do! It's a pretty straightforward example of it but that's all it really needs to be to appeal to me when it's this style I guess. I guess the piano chords are really neat chill sorta jazzy voicings and I dig that fullness it brings to the table. Also one of my fav "90s production tropes (I know this isn't from the 90s (though I guess 2003 is close))" is the pitched down metallic sound at like :05 / :13 / :48 / :57 / 1:11 / etc. just love really distinct percussive sounds in that vein i guess! One other thing I guess I'll point out is i often notice how my favorite melodic content is stuff where the first two notes are very close together but the third note is way above the first two, this starts out its sitar part immediately that way. Also none of the notes are the same pitch class, but are actually pitch classes right next to each other, something about that, I just notice I tend to like melodies where it's like really distant notes from each other but all close together in pitch class? Like all 3 of those notes could be transposed to make a muddy cluster of dissonance, but spread apart sounds beautiful instead. I also love deserts and this sounds like one!!! la la lal al la oh wow this is apparently entry #83 to vgmdb?! WOW early bird

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New World Order is my 13th favorite ToC entrant! About half of why I like this track is that it always reminds me of one of my favorite prog bands, The Gourishankar. They're russian and have kinda similar "not entirely clear english" english vocals. but also the production is very similar, 90s synth presets mixed with more modern stuff! (Example: https://gourishankar.bandcamp.com/track/endless-drama ). I do like the shared elements in themselv

IDOLA The Strange Fruits
Hinagiku
steelchambers2

IDOLA The Strange Fruits is my 28th favorite in the contest! Hideaki Kobayashi and really the pso series in general even the stuff the other composers bring (Hidekuni Horita is my new favorite thanks to vol7-8) is one of the most consistent sources of music that touches all the compositional areas I want music to touch. Crazy transposy chord changes with unexpected modulations here. As a bonus i tend to like pso instrumentation-wise too! In this case the instrumentation appeal is COOL SYNTHS and they fit well with the strings and overtly fake choir pads. 3:30 is SEX parallel harmony transposing those intervals around that sound like "some weird super mario galaxy song that no one talks about but is one of my favorite ones in the game" or something. pso music honestly sounds like "if super mario galaxy music was more 'prog' " now that i think about it lol. lots of moments with the triplet grid layered over the 16th grid having fun intersecting times. Always passes my observation how cool the change to 3/4 at 2:00 is, it's so subtle about it. So many of the chord change loops in this evoke this feeling of uncertainty, and I guess that makes sense because the changes themselves are literally not predictable, they're swirling all over the place. Strangely the thing that's always stood out to me the most about this one is the distorted guitar-like synth layer kicking it all off at :19, the 5+4+7 pattern excites me. I love stuff involving "5 16ths" as a length of a thing starkly separated waaay too much it feels SO COOL and the low piano hits accompany that feeling well. PSO MUSIC HAS COOL SOUNDS IN IT AND I LIKE THEM. Very inspirational music and I need to listen to every single thing in the pso series eventually. probably starting with going through vol1-6 of pso2 thoroughly because if i do i might be able to actually say pso2 is my 5th favorite ost without it being a fake description of a ost i haven't even listened to all of yet

RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against- is my 164th favorite in the contest! wow i ranked this uhhh, kind of low for "sounds like a rhythm game song"-style but I guess i can see why. the chord progression here is just really not my thing, too much emphasis put on 'predictable' things so then i find it really cheesy how highlighted those moments are as if they're significant with how expected they are I guess, ie :18 i don't like, lots of stuff like that. I like the breakbeat elements though oh wait those are only there for like 2 seconds. INTENSE ELECTRONIC RHYTHM GAME SONG WITH CRAZY XYLOPHONE AND COOL EFFECTs is a good genre for me but i have to actually like it compositionally and this i don't, basically. Still a 6 (the 6.x zone goes up to 165th!)

wow I love pso music !!!!!!!!!!!

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Beyond the Darkness is my 162nd favorite in the contest! This is pretty straightforward ANIME sounding thing. Sometimes I like that but this isn't a case where I do. I love the moments with the upright bass though those are cool, lightly jazzy elements in general are nice. cool piano comping in the chords. the predictability of the chord progression at the dramatic parts bothers me though like in the solo at 2:04, i know exactly what it's going to do before it even happens so i do not like it so that drops it from the potential higher slots in the ranking it could have for sure. whoa the chords right before 5:02 are cool

Hinagiku is my 16th favorite in the contest! I love LOVE this type of hypnotic repetitive minimalist looping stuff. Some of my favorite music in the world. Very steve reich-y. This hits a bunch of unrelated categories of my taste at once and I value it for that deeply. 9/16 time is cool, love how this explores a bunch of different groupings within 9 too, sometimes it's 3+3+3 (Which almost feels BOUNCY, and more like "3/4 with triplets at a different tempo" than the more mechanical 9/16 feel the rest presents), sometimes it's more like 2+2+3+2. The 5+4 layered on top of the 3+3+3 at 1:30 is GOLDEN. It's really trippy how the very first note you hear at least to my mind gets registered as the start of the bar, and it's gradual that as more layers come in I realize that was never beat 1 at all, it's actually the 2nd 16th note beat of each bar! but i can go through like half the song feeling it the first way, even after having listened to this like 90 times, it still toys with my perception and that's one of my favorite things music can do. Sometimes that sort of "false downbeat" "ambiguous barline" etc stuff wears off after a ton of listens have solidified a perception a certain way. I can't say this has fallen victim to that, and that's powerful if something can do that for me. I wish I could listen to Tin Soldiers from Neotokyo for the first time again for all of that rhythmic ambiguity to take its full effect, but I can't. but this, it's like every time I'm listening to it it's the first time I've heard it, it's very hard to find music I can react that powerfully to every time. I like the instrumentation, low quality vaguely dissonant sorta mechanical jagged chopped wonky tape loop full of winds, beneath contrasting more organic pretty singing, the slow introduction of bell-like mallet percussion and strings as it progresses fills the space gradually. AHHHHHHHH I LOVE THIS SONG

Hi

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Metal Beat (Metal Masters) is my 52nd favorite ToC entrant! I didn't used to be like this but these days I really have a hard time getting into every single fake demoscene european vgm song that sounds this condescendingly straightforward like i'm 3 years old and need to listen to the simplest possible shit with some stupid melody that sounds like it's stupid. Alberto Gonzales has music i like but this is not it. It's "technically impressive" and that's why it is not last place because I do care about cool soundchip use it's one of my favorite topics, but this has no semblance of music I'd ever want to listen to composition-wise. Only part I don't hate is the first 35 seconds. I can appreciate modal total-transposition chord changes I always talk about how much that's what I love most, but this is using that in a way that feels lazy, none of the melodic layers string together the total transposing chord changes at all and it's just the previous chunk of the song copypasted and then duplicated up by x# of semitones in a way that feels actively patronizing in its simplicity. This does like everything possible to make sure you're never lost and understand exactly what is going on in the music and that's the antithesis of what i want

steelchambers2 is my 33rd favorite ToC entrant! ok this is more my speed in a similar category. one of the more surprising retirees but I welcome it even if it isn't my favorite exampl

this joke made me smile : )
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Sky Tower
Partizans
Endless Nine

Sky Tower is my 73rd favorite in the contest! A long time ago i made a fairly embarrassing writeup for this that described that intro ostinato as "alternating 7/8 and 9/8" even though it's literally just a common 7+9 4/4 rhythm lol. To be fair I still feel this track really heavily that way. I feel the start/end of each bar during the parts that have that layer as if it's alternating 7/8 and 9/8 every bar rather than just anticipation rhythm/syncopation, honestly even when it's not playing the ostinato I still feel that really stark division over it. It's just so...idk, something about that ostinato draws me in as simple as it is, and makes the pattern it presents very stark with these rigid boundaries at those rhythmic positions in feeling to me. Wish it was louder in the mix at places like 3:30 and stuff. Fairly neat chord progression (though far from the coolest this series has to offer) and the melody does a neat job winding its way around it to highlight the coolest changes in 'which notes sound good with the chord' yeah(well basically it's just DORIAN MODE so that makes it DESTINY like big climactic sky tower climbing..up it..pokemon CLIMBactic ha ha). It's not like that unique but it's always one that lifts me up. always loved PMD series music to an extreme and to this day multiple soundtracks from it remain near the top of my favorite game soundtracks ever of every soundtrack ever (though the first not as much as 2 or gates to infinity). This isn't really like the best example of what I like about this series' music, but I still think it's very pretty and fun! new arrangement doesn't really improved/detract much for me, maybe slight preference for the original

Faint Dream ~ Inanimate Dream is my 185th favorite in the contest! despite how "it all sounds the same" touhou music is, my reaction ranges from strong dislike to stuff I love, pretty evenly distributed. It not a style I automatically love or hate, but the details can make or break it for me, zun's attracted to both some of my favorite and least favorite subtle compositional stuff and which sets of things he's pulling from determine where I'll rank stuff. a shame I'm such a fm synth guy because i feel like the pc98 touhou music almost never interests me as much compositionally as 6+ do, when stuff stopped being pc98. This is an example of that i guess, I don't /really/ hate it despite how low i ranked it, melodic line's ok and it's kinda dramatic which i like. I like the constant 16th stuff in the tonal layers driving it. Some pretty random feeling changes in tonal center that aren't led up to at all and I like that. I'm not a fan of these types of overly fast metal drums though outside specific circumstances, that's the main thing knocking this down low. The harsh-ish fm (despite me normally liking harsh fm specifically), density and hecticness of this just makes it really uncomfortable/stressful to listen to to me, more than the average touhou track for some reason, despite the elements I like

easy, maybe underranked the touhou though

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ElectriCITY is my 122nd favorite in the contest! man all these "i probably would've loved this 10 years ago" songs in the contest, this, somnom, the escape goat one. I was so attracted to constant 16ths synth stuff, delay echoes and these hypnotic electronic landscapes, stuff reminiscent of tracker demoscene stuff, etc. I like this much more than the things I compared it to though, I'd say I actively like it now. Sitar is a cool instrument in here, whole thing is hypnotic and flows in a pretty cool way. oh my god the delay echo'd weird flute a 2:23 is so extremely my thing. Pretty chill and I "like the atmosphere" of it but there's not much of interest to me compositionally, just think it has cool sounds

Partizans is my 23rd favorite in the contest! Honestly might even like it more than thatALWAYS A PLEASURE TO LISTEN TO A BASISCAPE ORIGINAL SOUND TRACkHitoshi Sakamoto, Noriyuki Kamikura. I'm pretty sure that on this specific ost that the tracks like this that are credited like "Composed: Sakimoto, Arranged: Kamikura" imply that the arranger basically wrote the whole thing but is using motifs written by the person listed as composer, just based on style-awareness. Anyways regardless of whether this is actually "mostly kamikura" or "mostly sakimoto" it starts right off the bat exemplifying the Opoona sound (and "basiscape when they're electronic" 'sound' as well). THE ALBUM ART FOR THIS GAME IS TOO BRIGHT. I love the (3+3+3) 9/16 against 4/4 polymeter for the first 30 seconds...wow!~ It's just like Confronting Myself and Imbrium's variants of polymeter!!! Also cool that the 4/4 layer is kinda subdued until more time goes on, easing you into the more conventional pulse from the more spacey loose one. It makes for a really strong pay off at :30 when suddenly everything IS synchronized and fairly straightforward musically actually. That contrast between chill floating in space ambiguity and "this sounds like intense fake orchestra music in a medieval CASTLE" is something I see as pretty strong about this. Every individual chord and chord change is so cool. Opoona reminds me of Klonoa music, it's like if you combined Klonoa music with...like a really laid back Mushihimesama...or something. PAT METHENY GROUP PORTAMENTO SQUARE WAVE SYNTH LAYERED ON TOP OF THE EVERYTHING(rip lyle mays). O O O O the chord change at 3:44 is so EXPLOSIVE. AAAHHHHHH. Right before 3:58 I expect a low quality voice to peek in and say "V" for a split second I LOVE BASISCAPE I CAME UP WITH THE "BASISCAPE" OPTION IN THE POLL

easy but had nothing but positive to say about the sim one

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Luna Ascension EX is my 19th favorite ToC entrant! Flashygoodness is fun! Their sense of melody's addictive, fun pitch bendyness, very "expressive". Fun fake chippyness, and this feels full and cool despite most of the instrument sources being very simple fake chip stuff or common things. I find it hard to say much about this...don't dislike almost anything about it and I think it's exciting and the type of catchy I like!

Endless Nine is my 12th favorite ToC entrant! Endless Nine is actually my 9th favorite Umineko ep1-4 track! (I thought it was going to wind up 9th in my ToC ranking too which would've been funny but enough other things slipped just barely above it last minute). I wouldn't imagine people expect me to say that if they don't already know that because I'm pretty vocally averse to dai's portion of the ost, but Endless Nine's a major exception where I'm a big fan. MYCROSOFT SAM!!!! I think a lot of it comes down to instrumentation for me, I kinda automatically love mallet perc used in a SERIOUS way, especially if it fe

Haste_2 posted...

Hey Mycro, I have a minor suggestion for the compatibility sheet... I know this isn't the main purpose of it, but it would be nice if we had an (updatable) list ranking all the users by Win %. Last year I got frustrated trying to figure out who had the highest win %!

You can figure it out by looking at the very bottom of the data sheet. We could add a userfriendly view for it but it just adds more formulas that'd slow the sheet down more than it already is. Dire and I agree it's probably not the healthiest thing to obsess over anyways haha, but the info's still accessible.
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Class::EXPAJA
Eulogia
Battle!!

Class::EXPAJA is my 88th favorite in the contest! This doesn't really sound like much of what I expect out of this series and maybe that shouldn't be surprising because it is composed by Kenji Kawai and not "an actual gust composer" he is just imitating the sound of "gust music". I still like that sound but it doesn't actually "impress" me I just think the music style is cool. I like the kinda long phrasing of the rhythms of the chanting at the parts that have the chanting, they don't have a clear start-or-end to my ears even though they actually do have a clear start and end in REALITY. Never realized how much of this track is full of "church organ" that's "interesting". The main thing to keep my interest here is that it never feels predictable to me chord change-wise, it's just all over the place by my perception, though although that is something I like it doesn't do so in a way i aactually find emotionally effective or anything more just like "whoa that's cool". "cool", doesn't leave me bored with it anyways

Miracle Matter is my 170th favorite in the contest! I';m a huge kirby series music fan to the point i sometimes think of it as my "favorite popular series for game music" but this really has like 0 of what I care about in it. It's only this high because i don't dislike listening to it, and i can kinda appreciate the cool warpy acid bass synth sounds, but this song feels to me like it literally has nothing in it to me. i think i'd call kirby 64 one of the weaker kirby osts but that's not actually true because it has that one song that i like in it "yeah that one" and it is not this one.

easy match though i wish it was not easy because i normaally like kirby music : (

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Eulogia is my 65th favorite in the contest! I listened to the first 30 minutes of this song and then turned it off because this is an Umineko song which is not as good as Touhou music which is the same as bad umineko music. Time to SKIP this song. What the fuck this song is too long it is 5 seconds long!!!! Because the Game Name is cool sounding (it sounds like it's similar to the word "invisible") this one's gettin' my vote.I LOVE HIROK"I KIKUTA. This sounds like if secret of mana music was new. Honestly it isn't as gripping to me as most of his stuff, including other stuff i've heard from this game, but I still dig the vibe. FRETLESS BASS IS SO 90S EVEN THUOGH ITS 2020 NOW. I like the ethereal voices in the background and the harp and the violins and the sounds. But mostly the Fretless BAss which automatically makes things "90s new age". This picks up really gearing itself to my compositional interests at 1:38 where for like 5 seconds it's like Hiroki Kikuta's trying to scream at you "HEY GUYS IM HIROKI KIKUTA COMPOSERING THIS SONG FOR YOU HEAR. I MADE "Into the Thick of It from secret of mana"" and then goes into 5/8 for like 2 bars at 1:54 and that's cool. This song makes me reaally happy, both fun instrumentation/atmosphere and fun composition, right up my ALLEY

Cloak of Darkness is my 145th favorite in the contest! I love Ian Stocker! I think he's a really cool composer, his music's really DELAY ECHO drenched and that's always a plus for me. Really pitch-bendy too in a maybe kinda stereotypically tracker-user way but that makes sense because that is what he is...and I value that sound a lot! Once this picks up with the piano and faster drums a minute in i'm like wooooaaaa coololl man... this song sounds like a funny song : ) hee hee. This reminds me of Robots GBA but it's not quite as much my thing as that. I lose a lot of interests when the really straightforward arpreggiated chords happen at 1:48. I don't really dislike anything else though, I love the general sound of it. the only reason this is so low really is generic statements like "it's not memorable to me" "Idon't feel anything from it" crap that who cares that is TOO SUBJECTIVE to be meaningful commentary. I think the reason for why I don't feel much from it is basically that the chord progression doesn't really go anywhere that's to my interests even if it hints at that it might do so a bunch. Like it modulates in this cool intense way at 2:19 but then it goes right back to its neutral sounding original home zone and then i feel unsatisfied. Honestly have like exactly the same complaints with this as I do with Dreamy Somnom Labyrinth, and it's a very similar type of track too. This one speaks to me a bit more, but doesn't quite hit the mark for me. I do like other work from this composer though and it has the exact same very distinct style, just happens to hit the right marks for me in those cases rather than this example I guess. IAN STOCKER SOUNDS LIKE GHOST TRICK

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Battle!! is my 5th favorite ToC entrant!! I feel bad that i have a lot less motivation to talk about the ToC entrants since I've already done so before and am not sure I have much new to point out. But yeah this is even more my thing than it was last year lol. Cool complex chords, jazz elements mixed with strings and stuff is fun. Man I'm noticing that upright bass part is COOL. quartals...transposing chord blocks.mmmm TASTY. oh man i forgot about the 5/16 over 4/4 polymetric piano comping moments those parts I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH THOSE PARTS OF THE SONG this song is so funky : )

Slag Dance is my 42nd favorite ToC entrant!!! I love autotune/vocoder/etc type stuff and always have. This just relentlessly throws the voice under that with no care and it's wonderfully playful. VERY cool instrumentation all around, some of the coolest of anything in the contest imo even though I'm ranking this pretty low. Although I do like it this is not at all what I'd pick to represent Ayesha (and ayesha is not what i'd pick to represent atelier music in general) but I guess it's better than some picks for tha.t. . . PHRYGIAN MODE is a scale i like because it sounds like a spooky ancient desert ruins with the bad dangerous defense system automatons made out of bricks (regirock) going to beat you up.. Eiffel 65 turned into a girl and then made tense desert level music for a 3d platformer jrpg about minecraft. with as much as I like here on paper i'm not sure why this has never been able to be rated super high by me, maybe just because it's straightforward about what it's doing even if i think what it's doing is cool. a more funky "hydro city act 2" level of diversion from this but in the same style/general melodic sense/etc would be ranked far higher by me. but this really straight forward four on the floor kick punching me in the face exactly 4 times evenly spaced every bar without much else in the song for such a high chunk, just way harde

UF8 posted...

on a related shmup fighter ost note, i think i forgot to ever mention this actually, the song that was on my noms this year that i ended up not posting because it was from the same game as another song (and i never supported that one) was from senko 2... another reason i didn't go with it is because my knowledge on senko's soundtracks in general isn't as strong as i'd like so i wanted to go through all of them before deciding (and didn't have the time to...) so maybe i might also post some senko stuff next time who knows probably

senko no ronde series is a lot of music to go through but i'd definitely recommend it for what i know of your music taste, i'd be very likely to support most stuff from that but every time i say something like that i don't actually support it so don't trust me to actually follow through with that
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Megaraph Fleet
Dance With Me
Big Blue

Megaraph Fleet is my 51st favorite in the contest! 5+3+5+3-ish rhythm in the first 40 seconds is really up my alley. Even though it's just 4/4 there's lots of ambiguity at where the "hits" are ("how it's grouped" to quote the way i phrase this most often myself) depending on what layer you're paying attention to and I LOVE the feeling of stuff like that. love epic ethnic chanting and strings : ) Aaah big key change at 1:01 feels so good. My main complaint with this one is the guitar is extremely uhhhh, i don't like that choice of guitar sound at all, nearly ruins this for me. I like the FACT that there is a guitar playing the exact things it's playing, just...a different tone to it would feel way less out of place to me. Just feels far too fake how it is. If it was a more appealing guitar sound to me this would be unquestionably much higher ranked and unquestionably my choice but as it is it feels like a unignorable gash in something that's near perfect to me otherwise. Waait I just realized that if you made sonic become yellow and then put a jester hat on him he would turn into spark the electric jester WHAT the FUSE. oh hey look it is Falk, that is, the guy. The choir layers are so cool!!!!!!!!!!!

In Circles is my 99th favorite in the contest! I used to like this waaay way more than I do now, and called it my favorite Darren Korb track, but i've fluctuated my reaction to it a ton. I even got to a point where I acted like I actually thought i disliked this! I'm back to "I like it but not as much as I used to act like I did". it's been in these things so much I've taalked about it a lot so i dunno if i have much new to say of value. i like 5/4 time and triplets and the instrumentation is cool and i like dramatic vocal stuff. Regardless there's plenty of other music from this game, Bastion, Pyre and Hades that I'd rather see than having this here again.

a very close match, honestly. but i won't save you, in circles [times joke has been made count: 26], for now. I thought this would be closer after my first listen of each of the two here but I've had Megaraph Fleet on loop for the past many minutes now so I think it is safe to say that I am voting the way my initial ranking implies.

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Dance With Me is my 125th favorite in the contest! Everything I've heard from this game has been super fun in sound. I love Tenpei Sato's instrumentation choices usually. Sorta "latin"ish, I LOVE AACCORDIONS. I find it really cool that a lot of World Dance Music is so most more willing to explore minor as like "this is fun music you can dance to" and not like it always has to be seen as this scary taboo thing to avoid for celebration. Examples like this are filled with so much drama and tension and release and that makes it EXCITING and I think that's an important feeling to be filled with for something like this. This is pretty dense, lots of stuff going on at once and all of it interacts with each other in ways that clearly depend on each other. A lot of how this is composed reminds me of Go Ichinose? Maybe it's silly to so often compare things to pokemon pokemon is a really eclectic series in terms of sound but there's some series of chord changes all over the place here that I feel like I've heard in random pokemon songs all the time. Just lots of those playful chromatic deviations for single bars from the diatonic minor center it sticks with like ~:59 and stuff. They keep this track feeling alive. Love the way this loops from like 1:07-1:12 wow. Oh no the song fades out too fast! Come back song I wanted to listen to more of you!! *plays this song on loop for the next 20 minutes*

L L ~Infinite Beating ver~ is my 188th favorite in the contest! I like the synth bell-like sounds this starts off with. then the song "actually starts" and it becomes one of my least favorites in the bracket because then it gets to doing that thing i don't like where the drums are just these quarter note pounding on loud cymbals and too fast without being interesting fast to me and yeah it is not my thing at all. . . . I like the synth sounds but these solos to me feel really unexpressive to me and trapped in some dumb diatonic/blues scale stuff that doesn't really interact at all with the chords or any other backing behind it to the point i can't feel any emotion at all from them. Just forceful show of speed without any substance. That's a type of thing I used to get annoyed when people complained about it and 10 years ago i might be annoyed at current self for reacting to this song this way but that is definitely how I feel about it now. Sorry 10-years-ago me! and fl81!

very easy match here. I like dance with me even more than the ranking number implies probably. prinny's soundtrack is cool and i need to remember to listen to every tenpei sato thing eventually...

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Battle With Saruin is my 55th favorite ToC entrant!! : ( the only one I like less than this is six feet thunder. This might be more okay with me if I did not hate the drums because they are too fast and boring and loud at the same time sorry I complain about that so much in "fl81 music". The only thing redeeming this is i kinda like the synth layer and rock organ layers, those do some fun stuff. Sometimes. Sakurabaish sliding up and down the rock organ is one of my favorite sounds and this gets blips of that for a few seconds sometimes. Lots of expressiveness in the solo layers when they happen and that's cool. but really in the end i'm just forcing myself to come up with positive things to say in a track that's drowning me with elements making me just wishing it was over at any moment

Big Blue is my 44th favorite ToC entrant! : ( i don't really like this either for very similar reasons to the above, but I've always kinda liked it melodically at least, and the elements that bug me are nowhere near as prominent as with Saruin. I like saxophones and mario kart 8's arrangement style usually appeals to me but this definitely doesn't represent what i like about it in the slightest. Still I have positive memories associated with other versions of the track, the melodic line grabs me and so even when arranged in a way i'm not fond of i can still dig the bare bones of what makes the tune the tune in this case. There is also plenty for me to love here, some cool series of chords that extend out held out parts in a cool way like right before :20 and 1:24. Some of the constant 16th backing organ stuff is fun throughout and like honestly I like this instrumentation and even like "arrangement style" but I can't get into it in combination. Big Blue on other instrumentation is more my thing, and this jazz fusion rock Mario Kart 8 style appeals to me in cases where what it's playing is...not really straightf

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Hidra Heteromycin is my 35th favorite ToC entrant! something about this song makes me think of a TOMATO that is sweating because it is too large and is struggling to sing this song before it is eaten or explodes from becoming too large. i do not know why but that is what i always picture. I have a hard time taking this seriously even though it's clearly meant to be serious and that bothers me. the same "the drums are too fast so i re-configure my interpretation of it as goofy carnival music". I think if this were mixed differently, didn't have the guitar (I really do not like the guitar layer in this one) and had different drums, I'd really appreciate this one's composition, but those elements turn this from "cool gust song" into this really hectic unappealing thing to me that i can not wait for it to end so i can turn it off and stop listening to it. I LOVE it melodically and i love everything the vocals and violin and background synths and everything do! The background chanting beneath the actual vocal melody is GREAT. The weird high metallic filtered percussive sound at like 1:20/5:30/etc is really cool. Wish there were an alternate version of this that focused on those elements. I love vocal ar tonelico series music but this track is definitely one of my least favorites in that category, mostly just because of the guitar/drums but the overall mixing drowns the elements I want to hear most too. The slower parts without them definitely save this from being something I actively dislike and remind me that I DO like this song, I just...don't...like this song.

Servants of the Scourge is my 11th favorite ToC entrant! Ah, another "I like this song because the chord changes make me float in the air(fall out of my chair and onto the ground in an infinite loop)" song. DM DOKURO tends to focus on that type of thing a lot. Actually thinking about it his tonality sense is fairly similar to Yoshimi Kudo and I'd compare this track to Kudo's contributions 13sentinels as a result. Was listening to some stuff by dokuro yesterday and just being excited every single time what scale being used had to change near every chord. This is LONG and I definitely prefer some phases strongly to other phases here (tbh most of what I care about happens in the first 2:52 and i'm not a fan of the later phases much at all), but it's still enough to make me happy : ) luckily my favorite portion is honestly just the recurring thing that this starts with. Very "unexpected chord changes that are DESTINY(epic)", and sometimes the melodic line's threading those together nicely~! I LOVE CHIMES like the chimes at 1:02 : D those are so fun to listen to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! literally every single one of these chords is making me FALL OVER with it's presence after the previouis its like id purpose except on synthesizers instead of on orchestra and accordion and choir singing people. I miss Scourge the Hedgehog I hope that he and his HUSBAND do ok at moving to their new apartment

why is terraria calamity just a bunch of worms...........
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Fear Not This Night
Shop 'til You Drop
Servants of the Scourge

-[Deoxyribose]- is my 56th favorite in the contest! so I "sort of" introduced 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim to this community (even if prody and kao AND deo used songs from this game in vgm guessing games before I could go forward with my plan to nominate Isoleucine in my day 1 nomset...) at least I was one of the main people to bring attention to it anyway, so I have a lot of attachment to it. It's my favorite soundtrack to have released between vgmc13 and vgmc14! This song doesn't exactly represent what I like about it the most...in a personal ranking of every song from the game I gave deoxyribose "36th place" out of 83 songs lol, so there's at least 35 things I'd rather have in than this from this game but like...this is still "favorite soundtrack to come out in the past year", even a mid-tier track from the game is still appealing enough to get in around the top quarter of my ranking of this bracket -[ha ha, bracket.....]-...i love Yoshimi Kudo (Apostle's Maraud composer...)...I love basiscape!!! alWAYS A PLEASURE TO LISTEN TO A BASISCAPE ORIGINAL SOUND TRACthe thing I like the most here is all the fast 16th arpeggios, it's a feature of most of the -(Amino Acids and Monosaccharides and Stuff)- tracks in the game, and I like the specific energy it brings. In this case the synth bass is having LOTS OF FUN. Like I said in Apostle's Maraud, the thing I like most about Yoshimi Kudo tends to be his unusual chord progressions (I mean...basiscape in general is known for that but Kudo's uniqueness is specifically about "chord changes" rather than interesting individual chords like a lot of the others there go more for). He'll change the tonal center at an unusual time in the middle of what'd otherwise be a standard looping 4 chord progression and it creates the same intensity of a total key change but like on repeat, music feels like it's infinitely ascending my body into the sky... It's the type of chord changes I like the most and I'd put Yoshimi Kudo at "zan-zan-zawa-veia tier" as far as "composer that I like specifically because their chord progressions make me explode". I don't feel as strongly about the chord changes in this song as some of Kudo's others from this game but it certainly still has element at parts, maybe actually most noticeable in the victory loop phase at the end? I love the choir layers here they make this song sound like a organic BEAM.

Fear Not This Night is my 82nd favorite in the contest! I like thiss one because it reminds me of enya..... I love melodramatic stuff lol. I guess the chord progression here's a big factor in why I love this so much too, the alternation between major minor every few bars is INTENSE and the melodic line highlights exactly the right moments of those chord changes nicely for me. Vocalist is nice, and I love these constant 8ths pounding strings because they SOUND LIKE ENYA (I like enya...). In general like the instrumentation and fluffy DARK "high fantasy" forest(field) castle landscape outdoors with a bunch of MOSS on all of the bricks with a bunch of twinkling fire flies at night that glow iridescent colors and there are dragons that look cool probably and probably have cool elemental powers or something idk i dont know anything about guild wars other than that i like a lot of the music to the series, this included apparently. These string chords aaaaahh they're so PUNCHy somehow they punch me more than the literally intense punchy synths in deoxyribose, what the FUSE. WHY AM I VOTING FOR THIS SONG. Wonderful magical music right here from the composer of one of my favorite video game soundtracks Freddi Fish and Luther's Maze Madness

This is a far closer match for me than I imagine most people would expect me to feel.. both songs are ones I like more for the "emotional intensity derived from chord changes" than anything else but I feel like Fear Not This Night actually hits me stronger than Deoxyribose despite that type of feeling being what I most like in 13 sentinels's ost and deoxyribose going for it in a way that's more overtly "me". Fear Not This Night is far more simple and 'generic' in how it presents the shit i like about it but WHO CARES i just HAPPEN TO LIKE IT MORE FOR SOME REASON it's not like my reason for liking music is "because it does unconventional things", just happens to lean that way. This is a case where it does not lean that way, I can't deny that I prefer Fear Not This Night at a raw emotional level far more even if I appreciate some of the technical cool things about deoxyribose. I guess deoxyribose is just not really the best example for me of that from its ost and I feel bad that I'm so heavily considering voting against it (I am voting against it...and for the first time voting against my ranking!!!). Sorry "Yoshimi Kudo & Basiscape", do not worry though I will vote for you...pretty consistently, in future matches. Thank you for understanding. It probably does not matter today anyways...ha...ha... Maybe I'd feel different on a different day (obviously I did when I made my ranking) but I think Deoxyribose is more ranked high on principle of "I like the kinds of things this song does" than actual raw enjoyment of that example of it. we'll have to wait until -(Isoleucine)- to see me ACTUALLY get excited beyond belief about 13sentinels ost.....!

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Snake Eater is my 160th favorite in the contest! I talked about this last year...I want to like this because it has lots of elements I like, cool jazz chords and funky SPY music. Something about this song though is dramatic in this precise way that bothers me that I've never been able to put a finger on exactly why it passes the threshold of "acceptable" to me, because I love stuff that takes stuff really far and i just gushed about how much i love fear not this nights overdramticness but just...i dunno. All these really long held out notes in the vocals linger on the tension just sliiightly too long for me to the point that it feels almost actively stressful to listen to somehow. and also this is catchy and if there's something that's catchy but i actually don't like it melodically that means I REALLY don't like it because it will get in my head and i don't want this thing i dislike to be in my head so yeah. but this is still like a 6 because I like enough elements : ) I used to like this more. but i've started to care less about the elements I like here and the amount i'm bothered by the elements I don't has increased for sure. Sorry snake song! I like snakes, my favorite metal gear solid song is Shop 'til You Drop from No one can piss on mr domino

Shop 'til You Drop is my 54th favorite in the contest! Transposing chord samples : ) fun break beat!!! fun 90s drum samples. mr. dom

"chrono trigger composer" more like _pop'n music 20 fantasia (2011) (One track only, "Tradria")_ composer

(I love mitsuda so any mention of new work from him is exciting!!!)
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An Endless Desert is my 29th favorite in the contest! I LOVE steve reich-esque minimalism. HAPPY day/month 7/4 TIME DAY!! Very good timing of this match being today!!! maybe it will be good luck?! 7 is a lucky number...! Hey there's another reversed choir-ish pad sound right at like :17, very similar to the one in wings of terror phase 2! I like that part! One of the cool things about this one is how the piano's rhythm is consistent but it actually takes 2 loops of that rhythm pattern to go for the alternating back&forth to sync up with the rhythm. This slowly seuges between portions that are really really busy and overstimulating, and portions that are actually quite empty, sometimes I'd dislike something very empty but here i like what's going on enough that it makes for a really nice contrast. I actually find this track very hard to follow, despite knowing exactly what it's doing, but "hard to follow" is one of the single traits I most look for so this makes me very happy : ) ) ) I think the biggest factor is the way the piano ostinato tying it all together lasts 2 bars tonally even if only 1 rhythmically, really makes me "lose the downbeat" unless I'm actively focusing on counting "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" through the whole thing. Really from the start I don't expect this to get as busy and developed as it does, the slow build's to my tastes. I LOVE THIS INSTRUMENTATION so many fluffy woodwinds : D and I love the VIBRAPHONE(favorite instrument) that is in here sometimesTHIS reminds me of "National Treasure OST" god that flute moment at like 1:40ish is so ORI AND THE BLINT FOrest or something,. it's really beautiful and makes me think of a "cool forest". This is an extremely kaonash1i(mycro) song, thank you for existing cool song.

VERY easy match. One of the easiest in the contest for me.

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goldenslaughterer is my 20th favorite ToC entrant! My mind rarely jumps to this one when it comes to thinking about "why i like umineko music" "why i like zts" etc. It has COOL SOUNDS but it's probably one of my least preferred of the big zts songs compositionally, just doesnt dive into the elements of zts's style I like as much as wed/ded/lec/etc. Very musically straightforward and almost plodding and slow feeling? like almost like drudgery to get through even if I like it. I still "like the sound of trance music" and this has that, it's still distinctly "zts umineko song" and I like "zts umineko song" as a sound. My favorite elements are the breakbeat elements, stuff like the pitched down drums like at 6:44 or near the beginning is cool. My absolute favorite part is the drilling ppppdddd%%%%%nnnBBbbb stutter effects in the drums like right before :21, and in general the gated on-off-on-off every split second rhythmically timed at :14 in the drums is a really cool effect. Great way to start this one off, wish that kind of stuff showed up more often throughout.

Chloe is my 2nd favorite ToC entrant! Hi!!!! This is very "in the pretty forest with an accordion and a flute" song genre and that's one of my favorite types of music these days. but more importantly it's composition is right up my alley. 5/4 time yeah that's cool i'm like the "odd time signatures" guy my signature on board 8(Gamefaq) is literally the word "time" but that's not even most of why I'd like this, i'd still be a huge fan of a 4/4 version of this. The biggest thing keeping my interest here is snakelike winding of the melodic layers around all the crazy chord changes. well they're not that crazy but they're at least the type I like. one second it's dorian mode and the next it's minor and the next it's some slightly different chromatic thing, and the melody and chords compliment all of those constant changes intertwined deeply. Actually I guess the melody is entirely (or at least mostly) in dorian the whole time, but the chords surrounding in are not, and the melody specifically hits the "this is the note that's only in dorian and not the note that's in minor" note every time the chords involve that note instead and the moments that are that thing are powerful to my BODY i guess. Big key change at 1:12 is really nice and fun too : D this song makes me so happy!!!!! I love this song!!!!! What a nice song to end today on ^^

I love chloe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Final Destination
An Endless Desert
Chloe

-(Battle Tower is my 184th favorite in the contest! I do like toby fox, but i like most of gamefreak more than him, significantly, I wasn't too thrilled about his inclusion in their stuff because I like mainline pokemon's sound team so much how it is and felt his dissimilar style would get in the way. Also maybe in part because I think Toby excels most when writing to his own stuff, and his tracks without their ability to interact with each other in a larger work really makes them lose a lot of what makes his work special and detailed (and "detailed' is imo is decidedly what this track is the antithesis of). Though that said I actually like Little Town Hero's ost fairly well (likely heavily helped by that Hitomi Sato worked collaboratively with him and she is easily my favorite GameFreak composer, but still, the 'obviously toby' stuff i liked there too), but this. This is easily my least favorite song in Sword/Shield, by far. To be fair that's not saying all that much because like, I love the ost for the most part, but this song is ALSO in my 2 least favorite battle themes toby's ever made as far as i can remember (the other is also represented in this contest...twice). and I do not dislike toby fox as a whole! but if this was what was trying to sell me on toby fox i'd assume i hate his stuff. definitely would take like literally any deltarune song over this and most undertale or toby homestuck over this too. Just an extreme letdown on both the fronts of "what i look for in pokemon music" and "what i look for in tony fox music" simultaneously
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Right off the bat I can't take it seriously with how ICE CREAM TRUCK(fl81) that brass fanfare starting it off sounds, & the fakeness/undynamicness of the sound is incredibly gross to me, every note the same exact volume and expression level on a theme that simple. Once it gets in i like it more...sort of, but I also hate "stuff where the kick-snare-kick-snare drums are going TOO FAST" in songs that are trying to be epic intense songs SO much. It redefines the track as "goofy carnival song" in terms of how i perceive it and so then it registers as the same category in my head as like "epic metal cover of really happy chirstmas song" which is my least favorite thing i can think of. I might instinctively wince more at how stupid I find this song to be more than any other song in the bracket even if I like other songs in the contest significantly less. This is some of my least favorite instrumentation&mixing I've heard in any song in this contest also, it's impossible to pick out most of the elements because they all sound like someone throwing all of the objects in a kitchen onto the ground while the kitchen is on fire and burning all recognizability of any layer to melted gbisomdlvxlkcber j. Simultaneously unpleasant and unsatisfying in sound, i can often actively dig grating unpleasant sample choices and whatever (See: Final Destination) but this doesn't feel deliberate at all and is just a clash of disgusting painful mud to me with none of the jankiness even being interesting jankiness
/
The reason I have it as high as 184th/192 though is...i can not deny that it IS successfully pretty EPIC and I like that : ) I like it melodically at some parts, has lots of DORIAN MODE which I have praised a bunch on a number of songs in the contest now I think. Dorian Mode is a very DESTINY scale that works well for "emotional intensity" and I appreciate the more melodic layers here for that. 1:41's cool...and I think the way this often brings back ideas from earlier in the track later and uses them in different ways is mildly cool. The build and flow is very cool. Just wish it were...bits of music I actually liked that it was 'using in cool ways' instead of bits of music that make me think of toddler playing two notes on a glockenspiel. I'm trying to be positive I promised myself I would not be too cruel with this writeup because I very deeply, vehemently despise this song, even if it does some things I like. Part of the frustration is that it's invading a series I love the music to and prefer every other song from this game & admire gamefreak's normal sound team. Part of it's frustration that of ALL things toby fox could've contributed, it was one of my least fav things I've heard from him. And toby fox has done stuff i LOVE and listen to regularly and enjoy every second of. So it's just a huge letdown. I might be placing this kind of high for how much i'm trashing this, since I do prefer it over the stuff below, but my visceral reaction of negativity toward this is more intense here than the songs I actually like listening to less. but I also do not deny that there's a lot of things I appreciate here so it is getting points for those things
\
This is a very long writeup for a track I feel very negatively about, i don't like talking about what I dislike as much as talking about what I like, but I wanted to articulate my thoughts on it as carefully as possible, expressing that there ARE things to it that i like, and explaining that part of my visceral frustration with it is the context behind its existence, and how much of an exception this song is as far as opposite reaction to what I would hope from either "pokemon" or "toby fox". Very not for me & more than most music, because of what it is, I really, really wish it was)-

-[Final Destination is my 53rd favorite in the contest ! I'm a geniu .s haha, when I listen to this song all the marimbas go into the inside of my brain. Hirokazu "I like complex chords" Anto, he'sso smaart aand vcan control the world. This is pretty short but that doesn't stop it from being amazing and full of things i love. Chord progression is super interesting and involves the kinds of strange ambiguous modulations I like. Even if a lot of the chord changes are just literal full-on transposition, because of how much is going on and how funkily the actual tonality is presented through like 5 interacting layers it feels a lot less straightforward than it is. It's very hard to tell /what/ it's just modulated to for me, 2 semitones above? below? That ambiguity is the kind of stuff I live for. This is strangely "messy" and something about that's really cool. a lot of Hirokazu Ando music to me feels almost like "overly precise" but this is like the opposite while still retaining the same funky dense chord filled fusion funk fun. The instrumentation here's very much to my liking too.]-

-{Easy ..match...}-

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Wings of Terror Phase 2 is my 189th favorite in the contest! oh boy more of this type of song that is a kind of song i really dislike, except unlike battle tower it doesn't really have much redeeming for me at all. AZUSA CHIBA PLEASE SAVE THE GRANB

goldenslaughterer sounds more like "rhythm game music" than Chloe does...
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Strike the Earth is my 24th/56 favorite ToC entrant! Shovel knight's ost does a bunch of things I like. Jake Kaufman's style appeals to me pretty consistently and I think he's actually (unlike a lot of artists) more inclined to focus on elements I like when limiting himself to limited sound formats like this too. Just melodically fun and cool little vrc6/2a03 sound design tricks all over the place. Cool thick harmonies show up in just the right places for me to feel like this is "cool" whenever that kind of thing happens. Fun appregios all over the place threading lots of moments together and keeping this busy so i'm never bored, always at least more than one thing to focus on if i decide i'm uninterested in one element or another. I used to like this song more than I do but there's definitely other Shovel Knight music I prefer, like both An Underlying Problem and The Alchemist's Haven which have both been in before I prefer to this at this point. oh well! this is still a cool song thank you song.

aeeuiiieiuuiiu
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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

AI[UE]OON is my 148th favorite in the contest! I love accordions! I love bagpipes! and I like cool electronic sounds in the mix! if i was judging this based on solely instrumentation this would be a track I'm very excited about, but composition-wise I think I have a similar issue here to what I have with some of the mozell stuff. it just lingers too much on only pentatonic scale notes, like the most "neutral" feeling ones, uses them all too often/quickly for any exploration within that limitation to really be effective in any way to me past the first 2 seconds. like you might as well replace every single note in the song with the same exact note on the keyboard and it would feel about the same to me. Lots of "soloistic" layers don't feel imaginative or impactful at all, and honestly feel extremely cheesy because it keeps returning to the same 5 notes that have already played 900 times in the song already. So yeah i like the general style of this song but it does nothing for me in terms of composition.

Blooming Villain is my 177th favorite in the contest! I was expecting to like this more when I first heard it. I tend to at least slightly like persona music and this starts off in a very "edgy shadow the hedgehog" way which i also appreciate but, it just has too many large areas of emptiness for me to get into it. The first :56 has little dips into chromatic deviations from the tonic/4th/octave plainness to make it juust edgy enough to feel like an edgy song and i like that. but just man if some of these parts had more than one thing going on i could be very into the tone this sets, but the emptiness just leaves me wanting more. Like the contrast between :56-1:10's emptiness to the very melodic portion that shows up right after IS powerful, but i'd rather the contrast to be like...not whatever's happening at :56 and be some other thing. When the melodic section comes in finally though after a whole track of very neutral/tense/empty stuff, it's very striking and I do appreciate that about it.

Don't really feel very strongly here but my preference is pretty clear. Don't actually dislike either, but neither stand out to me. two tracks that feel very "neutral" that i'd love if they just did sliiightly different things than they do.

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Kanata no Rafflesia is my 86th favorite in the contest! Rhythm game music continues to be awesome, as usual! The happy part is that this track's already a really nice tune, but it's improved a ton by exciting staccato elements because "ALL"\\\\\\\3\\ this song makes me so happy : ) all of the alternating between major/minor/etc makes this one pretty effective emotionally for me. This is pretty contrasting with my complaints about AI[UE]OON because it's changing what scales are used in the song like every 2 seconds and the melodic line highlights every single one of those changes. It's the same sorta reason I'm so obsessed with G-O-S-U and many of my other favorites, though less extreme about it since the tonal center remains the same the whole time. It never feels like it's failing to explore options and I value it for how 'dynamic' that makes the melody and chords and everything else backing this, never feels like it's 'trapped' in a limited range and explores from its center just enough to feel alive and for every note to have a chance to feel effective. Paints a picture in my head of the environment in the background art in the youtube video and that's a pretty environment so I am happy that it paints that imagery to me. All around solid, only complaint is i find the way it ends with that triplet stuff really cheesy but luckily that is only like 2 seconds out of the entire thing

Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ is my 39th favorite in the contest!!! This reminds me a lot of Neotokyo, particularly the elements I like most...has the same mix of artificial and organic instrumentation and very similar pace&flow. I love the echoy rhodes keyboard sound I LOVE DELaY ECHOES and rhodes keyboard is an instrument I usually like, I also really appreciate the impact the delay echoes have on tonality...they make normally consonant sets of note dissonant because of the previous note overlapping with one that's like a 2nd away from another, things like that. I like the sound of that a LOT, and as a result my favorite portion is definitely the first 2 minutes. The gradual oscillation between "tense dissonance" and "chill lounge chords" all in this echoy spacey setting really touches a bunch of my strongest areas of interest. Overall, throughout, the breakbeat stuff's neat and the choir enhances a ton for me too. I'm basically just "listing the elements in this song" because I like them all lol. It's hard to talk about this one because it's so easy to just get lost in it, so much of the appeal is abstract broad large-scale things rather than specific moments and i find it harder to talk about that kind of thing. the big brass BRWWWaahs are powerful even if they're pretty cyclical and simple just walls of sound recurring on the downbeat every few bars. The hypnoticness of those repetitive sections is undeniable because I find it hard to actually "pay attention" to them. Yet sometimes they DO imply actual chord changes, and are intense once they do so, but because of how much i've been lost in a mental abyss by the parts prior to them, they're actually not even like conscious? It's like i can't even think about "wow emotionally intense progression" it just happens. These looping choir parts are really mesmerizing. man this even has these long sustained violin notes held out just like neotoIMBRIUMkyo...during when all the breakbeat chaos is happening too. Dissonant repeating organ chords like 5:23 are amazing and remind me of N Decisive Battle from pokemon b/w. Actually in a lot of ways this track feels like a "polished" version of much of the stuff Junichi Masuda tends to go for, but realized in a much more full way. I LOVE stuttery drilling sounds in BREAKBEAT STUFf dariusburst has a sound i consistently like and this is no exception.

auuueoeoeou

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Innocence and Emptiness is my 37th/56 favorite ToC entrant!! Oh yeah I have actually ranked all these now so now they'll have a ranking number. Kind feel the way I do about this that I do about blooming villain and aeiueoon, i like the "style" it is but it's too musically plain to actually interest me beyond like "oh i like the kind of song that it is", and in this case it's not doing it any favors that it is 7 minutes long that doesn't really feel like it pays off for me. I don't feel like talking about any details about this one really because I've done it

oh yeah that's a good point i forgot even though i'd react to that if it was anyone else typing only the game title in a normal format.

also GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE translates to WAR-OFFENSE-SUPRONT-ONE from Corsican apparently
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