Lurker > Toxtricity

Partizans
IDOLA The Strange Fruits

not hard matches, very easy choices, picking tracks I absolutely love, but I don't have anything negative to say about the opponents to what I am voting for. Solid day I LOVE OPOONA OST SO MUCH
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+3 Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
+3 Final Destination

feel pretty strongly here, I am not interested in anything in this set outside of these two. unlike a1/2/4 where i'd still be fine with or equally excited about a lot of the options I didn't vote for.
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kateee posted...

are you an alt?

i'm mycro's new account
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in seriousness: I was planning on posting in these topics (and giving ratings for every missed day) actually because on my own I was already working on a "ranking every pokemon" thing just for my own personal fun, but I'm waiting until I was done with it to post ratings in here.

I'd probably just give ratings linearly with 10.0 given to #1 and 0.0 given to last place, but whether that means Toxtricity is a 10 or a 9 in how I round it for this topic (since you're not allowing decimals) i'm not sure yet
(Toxtricity is my 9th favorite pokemon, and Toxel's my 10th, for what it's worth)
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Toxtricity 0

(this is a joke post, do not include this in the actual rating)
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Megaraph Fleet
Class::EXPAJA

feel very strongly about match 1.

2 isn't a hard choice either but I do at least think Cloak of Darkness is pretty interesting even if it doesn't do as much for me as other Ian Stocker music (though expaja also doesn't do as much for me as other Gust music, still more on-target for me than some of the other gust examples this contest). it's not really a close match but i'm not super attached to expaja or super against cloak of darkness either.
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An Endless Desert
-[Deoxyribose]-

very good day today. Final Destination is something I think is very cool, but An Endless Desert is something I think is VERY HOT (get it? because it is a desert !) Loser of this match is definitely getting points from me in the wildcard.

Yay this round I finally get to vote for deoxyribose!!!! I LOVE BASISCAPE
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia4CTx-Zi7o
link for alto's
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Myst 3: Exile - Exile (Bonus Track)
(Saavedro)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVVSu569Rf4

Victims of Science - The Device Has Been Modified v2
(GlaDOS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQHE4Cq-AAE

these are both sort of pushing a bunch of definitions but Saavedro's one of my favorite fictional characters and GlaDOS is also one of my favorite fictional characters and i like both of these songs so I AM PICKing them
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The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride - My Lullaby (Zira)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKFG1FPAzvI
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Steven Universe The Movie - Other Friends (Spinel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v_KfioWSf4
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+2 SEISMIQ
+3 Battle! (Colress)
+1 The world of spirit

thought about this for a while. especially with all of the discussion on discord about the most optimal way to vote...the end result is that at least with this particular set, based on my preferences still voting for my top 3 ranked +3 +2 +1 is the most optimal way for me to vote....FOR TODAY (tomorrow will be different)
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some names he used apparently:

shiny noctowl= cool tower
Tauros = parking is
Gloom = felt strap
Nidoran female = sideways
Drowzee = hack dice
Hoppip = noy
Teddiursa = real9

I know he's also used names like "if only", "i always", "what if", "you almost" , and things like that
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Haste is HASTY, and votes before making a solidified decision and has to revise the votes later!
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goofy names that changes meanings of sentences is literally my brother's way he names every character in everything ever- showed him this thread to ask him to give me his entire list of things he's named pokemon/etc in the past. will update with his responses soon!
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GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE
Kanata no Rafflesia

GO GOSU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good Original Soundtrack University (insert 7/8 Cheerleaders Cheering In Time with the 7/8 part of the song) I LOVE HIDEKUNI HORITA'S STYLE OF MUSIC!!! pso2 music is so cool!!!!!! especially vol 7 and 8 !!!! i'm seeking out music as similar to this as much as possible and it's...not hard to find because i still haven't even listened through all of pso2 yet and also it sounds like basiscape and i am only like halfway through "listening to all 9408340 basiscape osts" but this specific example is such a treasure to me. can't get enough of these types of chords, chords changes, endless drama, all the parallelism and unpredictability and unrelenting increasing emotional intensity of something that started out intense to beging with at the SAME TIME AS being really pretty ahhhh and all on such nice fun instrumentation that is to my tastes. exec z is not bad or anything to me though, but it's like "minimum level to appeal to me" gust. doesn't stand a chance here. you know i always point out when a gust song "doesn't sound like a gust song because it's not by one of the actual gust sound team people" and that is actually totally the case with exec_z haha, but somehow doesn't bother me as much as some of the other examples of that this contest.

i didn't remember either in the 2nd match melodically at all by name, which...although I often say "unmemorable =/= bad" still wasn't really a good sign. All i remembered was that they both "sounded like rhythm game music" and that i thought aieuoon was "too happy and neutral and diatonic safe for me to feel anything from it" and yeah that sounds about right. rafflesia much more compositionally my thing, actually extremely my thing, far more than I remembered!!!! I guess I ranked it 86th which is fairly high, sort of. Really enjoy everywhere it goes! except for the end where it ends like that one cloudbuilt song kao and i always complain about the ending of
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

i have no idea what i am but if i can be the "defender of jazz fusion-ish music," i'll settle for that.

the problem is that's what literally everyone in that group likes lol. the way you stick out based on those exceptions is maybe...kinda similar to the way place did but a different set of songs. leaning more towards things that sound artificial more often.
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+1 Ink Long Dry
+3 Imbrium
+2 Id ~ Purpose

I may change this vote later (not with intent to game the system, I will not take into consideration how others are voting. More just considering changing because I'm indecisive about "criteria on how I want to vote". like if i'm more going for just my ranked top 3 favorites or similar (what i did here), or "what I'd most like to see return", where i would vote differently (I'm not entirely sure I want to see Id or Ink return, even though they're my 2nd/3rd favorites pretty clearly out of this set). So I will think on this for a while but this is what I'm deciding for now, how I've solidly felt since thinking about it anyways.)
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Apostle's Maraud
The world of spirit

Match 1 decision: solid, but painful. This is my 4th favorite vs. 13th favorite. Sad that one of these has to go (happy that automatically one of these two will be advancing!). but it also isn't a hard decision. pretty clearly prefer apostles as much as colress has for a long time been one of my favorite pokemon songs. apostles maraud might be like, my favorite song that isn't "10/10" currently, at least it's pretty DARN close. one of my top favorite basiscape tracks for sure and did you know that i like this sound teaam called basiscape a lot ? if you didnot know that, now you know.

Match 2 decision: less solid. I gave tigar 78th (7.93) and world of spirit 52nd (8.665), so it'd seem like i pretty clearly prefer spirit but it's honestly close. I like them both a lot, world of spirit is more solidly one style all the way through and I don't really dislike any part of it. TIGAR is more varied so it has its ups and downs, if it was only its ups, it'd be way above world of spirit,, but it is not. sorry to thep olymetric for 2 seconds hayato asano being a big computer sound design man so good at the computer
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team prog distinctions from each other apparently:
cako: defender of anime
jona: defender of energetic rock and edm
kao: defender of "pretty music"
place: defender of music that sounds like it is fake
sergiocornaga: defender of retro/chiptunes
toxtricity: defender of dramatic vocals
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Id ~ Purpose
Scourge of the Universe
Douwa Kairou

very little tops the raw emotional I FLOAT IN THE AIR WHEN I HEAR IT experience to me of Id~Purpose's constant 90 tonal center changes a second, even "more interesting examples" of the same thing. Something about my favorite parts of Id has just never gotten old to me. Maybe I just like accordions, maybe i just like thick string/brass chords, not sure what keeps me coming back to this over other examples I like of the same composition style. in the end it's still one of the most popular examples of something with the whole "unpredictable chord changes threaded together by a melodic line" that's one of my absolute favorite types of composition. It's not even my favorite song in the game or my favorite by the composer, and I'm tired of seeing it in this contest, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I like it enough that it's rare to find things I'll vote over it. Thank you for existing Id~Purpose. Scars of Fauna is cool because I like nekomata master but i'm not even sure i can name a nekomata master song that beats Id to me, as much as I consistently love him.

I like Scourge more compositionally by a lot, and I like Tonitrus more aesthetically by a lot. in the end, composition is much more important to me here.

the most epic normal nekomata song vs totto being "prog rock", i like "atelier nekomata" as a sound more consistently but this totto example is significantly more exciting to me
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the ones that come to mind are Place and Zigzagoon going 0/2 and 0/4 : (

and UF8 going 0/0 because of somehow getting 0 things in
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reaaaly do not like the idea of limiting only those who vote regularly to participate. creates a really unwanted dichotomy that's exclusionary to those who may not have had the availability/interest/etc to consistently follow even if they'd like their voice heard in that context. and it's hard to know where to draw the line too

also wow I did not even realize my noms did that well. I'm so used to the near decade of being always near last- years I've gone 0/1, or 1/10, and things. this is pretty surreal even if i knew the noms i got in this time around were more widely palatable than what i usually nominate (and board tastes have shifted to be a bit more in favor of what i like), still didn't expect /that/ level of consistent performance. most of their matches were pretty close though! (is pretending isoleucine doesn't exist)
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LastPandemic
Rude Buster
New World Order

Amazing first match. even though LastPandemic isn't a hard choice it feels bad voting against something I think is as cool as One Final Effort (I feilt this way voting for Ink Long Dry over OFE as well)

I like a lot of Jake Kaufman and Mighty Switch Force, but this specific MSF pick doesn't stand a chance against Rude Buster for me, still has cool bits that stand out to me though.

both in the ToC match are tracks I think are very cool. could see myself flipping here. i sometimes wonder if I've formed an arbitrary attachment to NWO...like if I heard these two things for the first time i feel like i'd maybe have a clear preference for Luna Ascension, but i can't shake my genuine preference, it's too strong. would much rather listen to new world order because of whatever this abstract attachment is, it makes it something i want. just has all the right sounds and energy and emotion exuded to make me keep coming back
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oh right now that round 1's done, here was my full ranking (sorry if it's hard to look at, i have weird preferences when it comes to fonts/colors/etc):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18x7tN7aC9gtIpkxHjghY9xLZ6IKYbKnqEZdGYQxDto8/edit?usp=sharing

i'd definitely move some of this stuff around now, but not as much as usual. really the main difference is I liked discovery a lot more the more times I listened to it so it's somewhere mid-purple zone now. probably like 50th place at least. probably fear not this night as well and a couple others in the high 7.x zone.
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+1 Chani's Eyes
+3 Duality
+2 Nilin the Memory Hunter

mini writeups because why not (in spoilers because you're not supposed to look!!!! or something)

too much funky is my 7th favorite in the wild card poll test! there's TOO much funky. this makes me think of go ichinose because the exact type of funk/syncopation and this slap bass is pretty him very fun i can imagine goingn to the big arakonid ds and there's a real song. it'd be more my thing if it weren't so bluesy pentatonic scale-centric, just feels too hokey and neutral to my tastes and so much of this is just like the COOL FLUTE SOUND THAT I LIKE going up and down

Oh No! WASPS!! is my 5th favorite in the wild card poll test! this is a song that i think some people would expect to be to my tastes in specific because it's constant mixed meter, but i'm actually not much a fan. it makes its downbeats too clear to an extent where i'm more engaged just by generic funky 4/4 stuff. :47-1:00 or so is the part with the most interesting accent patterns to me but then it clarifies its groupings too much for my preferences shortly after. it's also waay too predictable to me melodically and in chord changes in a way i find unbearably cheesy i guess. some of the more atonal piano stuff's neat. i guess i see this as like "if banjo kazooie music was really mixed meter" but banjo kazooie music is such the antithesis of what i like that even making it really odd time doesn't help much. this is really negative for something i'm rankking this high. I still find it fun to listen to! still a challenge to tap to these odd rhythm patterns and i like things that are a challenge to tap to, things you have to learn and memorize to be able to do that with! it's very funny and sounds like a cartoony game like paper mario because it's bug mario

Chani's Eyes is my 3rd favorite in the wild card poll test! OPL line of soundchips is my favorite sound format of any "chiptune or adjacent to chiptune" thing, but one of the most fascinating things in the OPL family is definitely Adlib Gold. It was opl3 despite being adlib in name, 18 channels, L/C/R panning, optional "surround/reverb" module, and also additionally supported 4 sample-based PCM channels. Super overpowered and almost nothing was ever made for it to support all of this at once because of Bad Business Practices by the Bad Guys (creative soundblaster took over opl3 with full dominance, but on a much less capable soundcard, and so the wonderfully versatile Adlib Gold became a rarity and has such little music designed for it). Dune actually only used the FM portion of the soundcard, but the FM was SO GOOD i literally thought it was the PCM sample channels, like i couldn't believe those water dripping effects were created with FM when I learned that they absolutely were. i don't have as much positive to say about this composition-wise but it's passable enough and does enough interesting unpredictable things to keep me engaged; i like it's subdued nature, and i like how it is dark and feels like a dungeon, fairly emotional even if slow and reserved. but what i'm really here for is this being some of my favorite sounds to ever come out of one of my favorite soundchips, one rarely well-utilized despite its capabilities

What am I Fighting for is my 4th favorite in the wild card poll test! I LOVE so many tracks from this soundtrack but this isn't really representative of the soundtrack's style. still fun. cool glitchy stuff, drowning you with cool electronic sounds. Suddenly I'm thinking this reminds me of rivals of AETHER and flashygoodness stuff. dramatic chord changes and melodic forefront that's a melody i like

Come And Get It is my 8th favorite in the wild card poll test! i want this to be way edgier than it is but it is too happy with the major scale millennial whoop stuff to feel that way so then i'm just struggling to find something in here to like. punk-ish things are very hit or miss to me like they have to REALLY hit on the feeling of being edgy raw anarchist harsh sound thing or it turns into some of the hardest music for me to figure out anything positive to say about. but at least because i grew up in the 1900s i am very nostalgic for things that sound like this unconditionally. almost like a delayed nostalgia, for such a long time i purely couldn't stand stuff like this but now i'm like "i miss you blink-182", the raw energy this stuff has is fun regardless of there being a lack of stuff i can connect with sometimes

In This World is my 6th favorite in the wild card poll test! 90sness of the instrumentation makes me happy. the vocal style isnt one that excites me (it feels almost "out of place" like it doesn't fit with the type of music that's behind it to me, and not in a way i find interesting a contrast since i really like the stuff that's behind it that i want to hear!!) but i think it is "good" because he knows how to talk like a salt shaker with a burn to pieces on the sun. FRETLESS BASS the guitar solo is really cool it reminds me of music that people who were born in 1961 listen to

Duality is my favorite in the wild card poll test! one of the ultimate mycro-dowolf-kao songs! we just ran our minilist in siiva400 today and it was so fun! (and it included another song from this game that all 3 of us enjoy as well!) 5/8 and 6/8, beepy keyboard bits that sound like "hitomi sato from pokemon" but more importantly masashi hamauzu-y forcefully rhythmic piano patterns and anime and lots of uplifting modulations upward that make me float in the air! often at really unexpected times. this feels like it would be my favorite song in a masashi hamauzu soundtrack but instead it's by some mysterious person named mamomo. I am so sad that this one didn't make it...i could've saved it too. anime. I don't know quite what it is but something about this always feels a cut above all the other stuff adjacent to it that i like. production is just a tad more punchy in all the right ways, timing of unexpected chord or meter changes is just right and the level of subtlety or bluntness about any of it's deviations from expectation is just the right balance( the three bears )

Marnie Final Battle is my 9th favorite in the wild card poll test! I like pokemon music and sword/shield music,........ and i like "chanting" but i have a hard time with the songs in sword/shield with rhythmic crowd noises. just rubs me the wrong way, sometimes I think they're funny but it's never really a genuine appreciation. excluding that this is a pretty straightforward gen7-8 sounding battle theme and without doing anything i super appreciate, nothing i super hate either, just pretty neutral on it. also is it jkust me or is this referencing aether paradise/etc from sun/moon!?!??!

Nilin the Memory Hunter is my 2nd favorite in the wild card poll test! I love glitch songs, always sad when this doesn't make it in even though i never actually support it and always have it on my "considering supporting" list. a good example of something that intertwines composition and sound design into one undetanglable whole. especially as i've become more acclimated to an interest in orchestral instrumentation this combo excites me even more than it ever did. I think the familiarity of the style of music the composition beneath would have without the glitchiness is also pretty powerful, makes the contrast of it's presence starker than if the composition were quirkier itself. Olivier Deriviere has lots of cool stuff and i forgot to listen to streets of rage 4 maybe i should do that soon!

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Memories Rushing By
Discovery
Battle!!

Final Boss Theme is my 117th favorite in the contest! i talked about this enough last time it was in i think, i both like it more than i used to and less than i used to at the SAME Time which averages about to the same level as it started. I'm even more bothered by the forcefulness of the cheesy blues scale's ever-presence here, just way too viscerally repulsed by that scale almost always; also less fond of the instrumentation than i used to be, i still love vrc7 and n163 but the more i listen to this the more i just think about how much i prefer other uses of those chips. but I'm also much more fond of everything else than i was before ! the chord changes and individual harmonies i still find really cool. the progression is yasui-adjacent but actually even cooler somehow, and I think every layer is pretty expressive. stuff feels like live solos but it's inside a computer. lots of detail was clearly put into this and i absolutely respect that.

Memories Rushing By is my 77th favorite in the contest! I like fluffy piano stuff like this! cool minimalist-adjacent stuff(not really that's not what it is or maybe it is who careS). The way this spends so much of its composition in terms of constant 16ths brings a lot of attention to "which harmonies are interesting?" "which chord changes stand out?" "which accent patterns are distinct?" and maybe most importantly "what organic deviations from the constant 16ths stream feel most effective". rubato slowdowns feel a lot more powerful than they would in something more "rhythmic" or "melodic" because of that initial style of constant even spaced stuff. I think all of those factors are things i care about a lot and even if subtle, it places focus on them because of the nature of this style and that makes me happy! So pretty! Listening to this makes me happy! the sprinkled unexpected chord changes are subtle and i only notice them if i'm paying a lot of attention, but when i am there's a pretty powerful emotion evoked and i'm GLAD that there is! there's lots of stuff i could say about this and i could be more clear about what i mean by tagging specific moments, etc, but this is a Very hectic time for me out of nowhere so I Will Not Do That but i like this song and that is all you need to : ) know

77 and 117 if you replace the 11 with the 77 from the 77ths place then you get 777th plaace which is good luck happy sand patrick's day

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Discovery is my 76th favorite in the contest! like I said on solitude i'm still amazed this actually caame out in the 90s like HOW is it not "moderrn thing imitating the 90s". i listen to so much music from that decade and so little of it feels this "modern." this has traits distinct to the era, but it also is just really ahead of its time i guess. this is full of warpy filter manipulation stuff, fading between distant/muffled vs sharp/clean. i love that feeling of sounds transforming from one to another. the way some of these patches are layered gives the illusion of one sound morphing into another and that's just one of my favorite effects. exciting stereo panning stuff is almost always a plus to me. this has a very wide l/r spatial range and i dig that. . rapid descents into breakbeat AAAah. funky epiano. my favorite sounds here are all the manipulations to the chimes, all the "unnatural" stuff done to such a familiar natural instrument: the feeling that they're reversed, or the downward pitch bending on them, just in general the presence of anything with the chimes for SOME REASON helps make this to me. cool chord changes going up and down a half step. love the synth solo stuff. Every time this ends I get sad because I like it too much!!!! and then i just listen again!! HELP I CANT STOP LISTENINg. wow I ranked this way too low wtf 76 what was i thinking. I mean it's definitely "not memorable" to me compared to a lot of the stuff above it but i also don't consider that as bad a trait as most others do, still i'd definitely rank this notably higher than 76th if i did a reranking.

Rave On is my 156th favorite in the contest! this is a track i liked whenever it was thrown around during my earlier presence on board 8. it fit with my tastes then which were far more centric around timbre than composition compared to now, and cliche minor-key stuff was much my thing. i mean it's probably not surprising when i'm unironically excited about the instrumentation that's considered cheesy in ready to shave and stuff for how adjacent to my older taste it was, i don't really consider this cheesy instrumentally for the same reason i didn't consider that cheesy BUT i do think this in particular...extremely Not what i want composition-wise anymore. almost everything about this composition-wise to me is a negative to me other than "i like minor because it is not happy", i guess i kinda like the constant 16ths fast synth bits and some of the harmonies are neat. but really the only thing saving this from being super low is older board 8 nostalgia and adoration of artificial sounds (some of which i actually think are really cool! the faake choir, and pulsating shiny glimmer at like :28). my qualms with this are especially frustrating now that i know the whole killer7 ost and realize this is probably my least favorite song in the game, would've gotten really into the soundtrack had i known the rest of it was so much more my thing than this. still some fun stuff going on, the level of chaos at the later parts is pretty fun, and

hot air balloon!!!!!!!!!!

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Servants of the Scourge (11th/56) vs. Battle!! (5th/56). close numerically, but i do not have any issue choosing battle here because i am the largest fan in the graph system of "polymetric soloistic/improvized elements in 'jazz' genre" and all the post-tonal stuff that sounds like music i like. scourge is pretty great but my favorite elements take up less than 1/3 of the track so i don't get to go to the franklin the turtle high school reunion shell epic dm donkey chord changes i'm happy that dm dokuro is making smart mental health decisions unlike me and i wish the best for him because his spontaneous tonal center changes for 2 seconds that make me fall over have enriched my experience of being alive when you
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Desire Below (Flow)
HYMN
Despair of ELFERIA

Scrap I/O is my 63rd favorite in the contest! Scrap I/O more like crap I/O actually i like this song but it's one of my least favorite neotokyo songs but neotokyo is one of my faavorite soundtracks so even the ones i rank low I still like more than the vast majority of music : ) the chopped voices always make me happy it feels like when everyone merges into a single being in your nightmare but you're actually just in the corner of the urban bad place with a walkie talkie and you are a skilled hacker which means you can text on a cell phone really fast and are good at speedrunning myst-clones. its hard to pin why this doesn't excite me as much as other fire emblem(neotoky) offerings. i think it is the narrow range the melodic layers explore, only going between a few notes like "demoscene techno music that isn't the songs i like in it". i like neotokyo's minimalism, but this example doesn't execute it in a way that takes me on any journey it just "sounds like cyberpunk so i like it", i like all the 3/16 delay echoes even though they only happen like 2 times but they stick out when they happen. i've commented on loving the way the epiano at 4:36 changes its oscillation rate it sounds like "idm" that's cool this song is TOO LONG it's only 2 minutes long it should be longer like 100 minutes

Desire Below (Flow) is my 9th favorite in the contest! ha ha what a coincidence i was just listening to all of the fire emblem music in smash ultimate over and over again before coming on to vote. I can not decide on a favorite Hiroki Morishita track, this is one of the like 10+ that rank at the top all tied though. certainly one of the most playful morishita offerings, this plays A LOT with triplets vs.16ths, metric modulation, etc. it's kinda like an extension of the "prog part" of monstrosity, but with strangely synthetic instrumentation for this soundtrack. the funny part is you could write this whole thing in 4/4 the whole time if you wanted, it all lines up with the same quarter pulse if you want it to. but I especially like when stuff doesn't align with that, accenting the triplet beats that aren't just 1--4--7--,etc, but more like 1---5---9--- but all in the space formerly represented as groups of 3"this is what 'metric modulation is' why are you being so pedantic (pandemic)" (("THat's not what that word means dear it means when you're excited about tuplets and music puzzles)")) I LOVE THE RHYTHMS IN THIS SONGso yeah of course the rhythms are my kind of thing, more than even much of the stuff I ranked above this in the contest, i like arpeggios, but what i'm really here for is actually not even the overt complexity or synthetic exterior that i think might be where some expect my focus in particular to be. What i'm here for is all the same stuff i'm here for in even the "normal orchestral popular fire emblem awakening song (by morishita (or road taken. that is honorary morishita))", all the casualness of modulation(key changes(Tonal center changes)). it's like the single thing that moves me the most, the same stuff that makes me float in the air when i listen to the Epic Parts of Id~Purpose is what makes this song make me float so high in the air reality breaks and turns into a bunch of crystal spheres inside of a skull in atlantis 3(beyond atlantis2). the shifty chord progressions make me so happy and even though the melody on the glassy sounds are too quiet they're still present enough to be intensely emotional every time they thread together on startling modulation after another. Took me a while to notice this was referencing End of All at some parts, blew my mind when I noticed it!!! So cool!! I have no fucking clue what the context of this in game and i can not imagine this actually fitting with the game but i'm deeply overjoyed that something like this exists in a video game- especially one with as much attention on it as fire emblem. Thank you hiroki morishita for being one of my favorite compoers MORISHITA PLEASE BE ON THE NEW PAPER MARIO YOUI ARE SO GOOD AT THINGS THAT DONT SOUND LIKE FIRE EMBLEM I WANT YOUR MUSIC TO BE LIKE THIS SONG EXCEPT ALSO SOUND LIKE THOUSAND YEAR DOOR OR SUPER PAPRE MARIOAT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD BE MY FAVORITE SOUNDTRACK

james

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HYMN is my 45th favorite in the contest! if i was not at risk of dying from screaming too loud right now i would do a big timesig rhythm etc analysis but if i did that i would die and that would be sad so instead i will just talk about how much this song makes me miss sam. i miss sam. he would know what to do. too bad sam is incapacitated for his own reasons. i miss you sam. sergio is here now. this track feels like it goes by so much faster than the track length and it's already 2:48 which is a pretty short number, I guess it's filled full of ideas I LOVE weird probably microtonal chords who the fuck cares about music it's so stupid girl in the song is singing fun notes i like them polymeter! I LOVE MALLET PERCUSSION COME ON PYRE SWORD I WANT TO SEE YOUR PERCUSSION LIST this track has instruments that makes me so happy!some parts of this remind me of studioo ghibli which is a company that makes anime like kingdom hearts and the proud family

Adventurous Inventors [Staff Roll] is my 136th favorite in the contest! i NEVEr remember what this song songs like after I am done listening to it it's like that section of my memory stays erased...so i better get typing so i can know what this song has in it after it's done!! delay echo cool synth sounds it sounds like tron legacy which is not as cool as tron 2.0 or tron 1982 to me but it's still pretty cool. this is pretty trancey. i'm listening to these tracks from bottom to top so this is the 3rd big kick drum dance floor song in a row i am listening to in a row. i am not complaining about that! i like going to be in the rave party even when it is not music i like very much but i like this music so it'd be better than normal. This has some slow string piano music that sounds like "hope from uimineko" genre of music but it's layered ontop of dance music that sounds like "worldenddominator for umineko" genre of music and that contrast's pretty neat feeling. ok the song is done and i don't remember what was in it anymore. I hope i can understand from my text description!

i'm a detective i'm good at solving mysteries and i have figured out that the word cyrillic looks like the word "crystal" which looks like the word "crystar" which is a rhythm game because revenger is a song in it so that is how it is connected to hymn(incorrect spelling, i know, i'm so sorry)

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Despair of ELFERIA (7th/56) / goldenslaughterer (20th/56) yeah you japan colors in your mounths what's your going to do about it so good at zts atelier nekomata master while i'll tell you soimething boys, i've been all around this harpsichord town and golden slotter has some of my favorite breakbeat chopping effects in the whole umineko series but the song doesnt have anything in it so i like other zts explorations more sorry buster WHAT THE fuck i NEVER Nnoticed the guy screaming in the song at :38 that fucking freaked me out because i have been screaming a lot because i'm a mixed up guy with a mental disease I LOVE NEKOMATA MASTER XYLOPHONES I want to go to japan but people wouldn't like me if i was in there because I am too loud but if i went to idealized fake fictional fantasy japan where there's "celtic music playing in it with sus2 piano chords hitting all the notes like steve reich's dance club" then i'll tell you what's up bronzong
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Epic Epileptic Apocalypse
P-R-O-G-R-A-M
Flying Clouds, Drifting Haze

Silence in the Sunlight Filtering Through Trees is my 114th favorite in the contest! MMMh FAKE PAN FLUTE I LOVE THAT SOUND i like "90s new age" nature meditation cd and echoy piano and echoy percussion. this is definitely more like the kind of falcom track I like, i'm not super fond of it melodically (i feel like i'd like it more if the violin line was just not there or was playing Some OTher Melody) but the atmosphere, instrumentation and everything surrounding it is wonderful. the synth pad chord this starts off with aaaah. the very starting melody is about a 5th off from where I'd expect it to be. this plays a lot with that I guess, tonality here by my interpretation is like both c minor and g minor at the same time and this makes it ambiguous which is the REAL DEAL and i like the sound of that. I've noticed I like stuff that plays with parallel fourths/fifths or chords built by duplicating another chord up a 4th or 5th or fourths/fifths synth chord patches or similar things involving ambiguity on where the tonal center is in relation to stuff a 4th or 5th away. When freely playing with modes that stuff gets to be explored. I'm not sure why that sound tickles me so much, it's why i love half the PSO2 music I do (it's Hidekuni Horita's THING it feels like), it exudes Some "feeling" that's abstract and intangible, and whatever it is, i like it. this probably sounds like a crazy overanalysis because what this is doing isn't even that weird i'm just thinking out loud about down an unrelated tangent wondering why i like something as simple as the first 5 notes of a g minor scale at the beginning and the reason is because i perceive the rest of the song as c minor pretty heavily so it makes it be THAT thing that i think feels cool for some abstract reason i can't define ok

Epic Epileptic Apocalypse is my 109th favorite in the contest! I'm known to like "weird" music and that is true, but it's not like i automatically like every type of weird music, just certain categories i like are considered "weird." I wouldn't say this is really a type of weird i actually like. It's close...I consider "the feeling of reality being distorted, glitched up or broken" a high-tier category for me. This has that, but it's like, mostly just because it's rapidly swapping between basically completely different songs. some of those are types of songs I love! others are too silly or "normal" for the atmosphere I'm looking for in this "type of weird" music to really shine through. (I should clarify also, I don't dislike the "normal" or "silly" portions of this, I actually have something vaguely positive to say about every individual bit, but in the end their presence results in a [very interesting] atmosphere that I think is COOL but not quite the one i am looking for). I'm glad something like this exists though, I respect experimental stuff whether it's a type i enjoy or not. One aspect I like about this extremely specific style is how almost natural some of these abrupt tempo changes between sections feel, it's not like Your Best Nightmare or Class::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE; where sections of contrasting styles have radio static or whatever between them, they're immediate and it makes this feel "organic." This track reminds me of those weird AI generated images of rooms or places that freely segue between different environments in a noneuclidian nonsensical way at a distance, but looking zoomed in at any tiny bit of it feels like a vaguely coherent environment. lots of portions of this remind me of the "RIO/Avant-Prog" bands i like, I was just listening to Mr. Bungle today who definitely falls into that category (so does "Boredoms", so this comparison should not be a surprise). Randy Wilson seems like an incredibly interesting composer that I should check out but i still have not yet checked him out but i will do so eventually

A very close match, one of the closest in the contest for sure. even if i'm voting on what's expected to easily be the losing side, I'm happy with its opponent advancing!

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P-R-O-G-R-A-M is my 34th favorite in the contest! yeah this is a ranking topic spoiler but i've expressed liking this unrelated to that topic anyways but still spoiler tagging it for whoever cares that much, if anyone! as usual for these spoiler'd ones I'm going to go on endlessly about this when we get to it in my topic SORRY IM TAKING SO LONG i don't think it's surprising i like this though i like crazy synth sound design in stuff with "complex chords" and it sounds like THERMOSPHERE from EINHANDER lol. i don't know what my favorite kirby ost is but this is definitely one of the contenders

Blue Skies (Infinity Remix) is my 106th favorite in the contest! Epic Orchestra Ace Combat Music is definitely a thing I like that i didn't used to like; doesn't matter to me how stereotypical or trite it may come across, it feels INTENSE and COOL when i hear it with my ears and I start floating in the air like in the sky where air planes are! IT's crazy to me how i had such a period in the past of rejecting "epic orchestral" stuff, it was definitely heavily tied to "identity" like "i like quirky cartoon synths slightly more usually, so that means I ALWAYS ONLY LISTEN TO COMPUTER SONG" but no shit like this makes me explode because it's so big like a helicopter that is really big or a very big air plane. I actively LIKE the predictability in this, as counter as that is to things i often say, it never touches any tropes i dislike, only tropes i love. 4:48's key change and all the string line leading up to it feels so good! the choir, brass, strings, everything comes together to make this exciting and an enjoyable ride. I don't find it a memorable ride tbh, there's other Ace Combat series music in similar style to this that stands out to me much more, but I'm not complaining that this exists!

not as close as the other two matches but I still respect Blue Skies a lot.

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Flying Clouds, Drifting Haze (10th out of 56) vs. Revenger (16th out of 56), a very close match. Revenger easily takes it in terms of broader strokes- instrumentation/production/overall style and "feel" of it, aura it gives off, emotion it exudes, I like the "type" of song it is a LOT more. FCDH easily takes it in terms of actual composition for sure though, and I think that's a bit more important to me in the end. if both of these were done in the style of revenger (or in the style of fcdh), I'd like fcdh significantly more, i guess that's the way i'm thinking of it. FCDH just gets all the little details right even if Revenger's more my type of song, and those details are why i have fcdh ranked a number of placements above. Both are great though and I'd be happy with either advancing!
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Konran shoujo Soflan-chan!!
The Wyrm's Jewelbox
Invitation Flower ~ Autumn

Hopes and Dreams is my 101st favorite in the contest! Yay! a Toby Fox song I can say nice things about ! : ) I like this song! It's very happy! and very HOPEful ! I like these types of rhythmically repeating short strings patterns, some harmonies in this song are cool. lots of sus2 chords~! That's my favorite chord ever (maybe) for SOME reason! 7ths/sus4s and other more complex chords I really love the full thick sound of present throughout this thing. I don't think this is a particularly high point of Toby's music mixing/production-wise but it's certainly not his worst (it's mostly the guitar in the mix, reminds me a lot of my frustrations with "atelier music with guitar in it", i don't necesarily dislike the timbre but it's mixed in in a way that muds the stuff that interests me up). Regardless, I can appreciate the composition behind that hangup well enough that it's not dragging this down too much, there's at least clarity of the elements I most care about. I always at least moderately liked this but it's grown on me a bit, more to my current tastes than in the past for sure, not one of my favorites from the game or anything but i certainly don't dislike it, top half of the ost at least

Konran shoujo Soflan-chan!! is my 79th favorite in the contest! This song defines itself around its hyper-complexity rhythmically, and...i wish i could be excited about it because that's totally my thing, but I can't hear it over the high pitch girl being a person! This would likely be top 40 or even top 20 if the vocals weren't there, not because I dislike the vocals, but because they're mixed so loudly I can barely hear the interesting stuff behind them! Very similar to my complaints about speed star kanade except even more frustrating because like, yeah I "kind of like" speedcore, but this type of over-the-top complex-for-no-reason prog/jazz fusion is among my favorite type of music! There's crazy interesting harmonies in some layers in the background, tons of rhythmic insanity and I can barely hear it! Another issue I have (this is detached from the music itself and not impacting my judgment), I also think I find a bit of frustration in how much this defines itself around its complexity in a way that feels kinda insulting. I know tons and tons of absurd avant-garde/prog/math/fusion stuff that goes this far rhythmically /regularly/ (and vgm and stuff in those same categories), so it's like a second hand embarrassing feeling seeing it advertise itself as if it's the most rhythmically intense thing when there's other VGM (and even other rhythm game tracks), that at least by my definition, take this sorta thing much further than this ever does. It's still cool and I am glad it exists, I just wish it sold itself more 'honestly' or something, it makes a big deal out of forms of complexity that are not even necessarily that outlandish compared to so much of what's out there (through its lyrics, self-description, etc "The answer's a 5/4 metr... eh, aah- wait, you changed it again, didn't you!" is literally part of the lyrics...as if changing a song from 5/4 to another timesig is this CRAZY prog thing when it's practically the least rhythmically weird thing some of my favorite music does). my big problems are that and that I wish I just could hear all the cool things it's doing that I can barely hear behind the person! other than that I think it's fun and sounds cool and it definitely engages me musically

Actually a pretty close match, but ANIME PROG wins me over...FOR NOW

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The Wyrm's Jewelbox is my 20th favorite in the contest! 2000. 20000002.00. My favorite discovery of the contest after the "discovery" of "Seto Kaiba". This thing is a pretty good representative of "kaonashi & mycro" music haha. Odd time (mostly just 5/8, with the not-odd-time parts with 6/8 and 4/4 taking up big chunks), "big marcato string chords on cool rhythms", and constant modulations as how the harmonic language in the music works (this is the most "key mycro-kao overlap thing" probably). it's like a more electronic version of my favorite basiscape or hiroki morishita stuff. like REVENGER meets CONQUEST~ABLAZE except in odd time. the constant 16ths Fake Piano is so JUICY and the constant 16th synth is so JUICY PART 2, instrumentation and "soundscape" is just all so JUICY PART 3 it feels like an organic computer.

Thrashard in the Cave (Arrange Ver.) is my 97th favorite in the contest! cool chill chords~! love echoy cool filtered epiano sounds. very "Acid jazz" which is not a real genre of music because "acid" is not a real instrument the way Cave Story is. oh now the drums are dnb cool!! This is s o chill i am in the moon cloud that is red i'm like the werewolf having a nap in the moonTHe SYNTH lead is so expressive, like that patch is the exact type of sound that makes me think "I like synthesizers", it warps and morphs between so many different timbres, and all the vibrato/portamento/pitch bendyness makes it come alive. soloistic nature of it is great.I LIKE "JAZZ HARMONY"

JEWEL

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Seize the Truth! (54th out of 56) vs. Invitation Flower ~ Autumn (8th out of 56). Extremely un-close.
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Ready to Shave
Redial
Chocolate Missile

MARIA is my 190th favorite in the contest! as time's gone on the reasons for me hating this track have changed. I used to be more bothered specifically by it hinging on a 4 chord progression that's one I do not like, but i don't think that's quite it anymore. it's not like just because i like "complex music" that i inherently dislike "simplicity" when half my favorite music is specifically extremely minimal and simple, and i can name plenty of simple 4-chord looping songs where i love them specifically for the progression (even "common" ones, though not usually the particular one represented in this song). at this point my frustration with this song comes completely from something else. it's the same thing that makes me despise epic metal versions of christmas songs or "Pokemon - Route 1 [EPIC METAL COVER]". it's like, i mean just put simply I don't want this "epic" instrumentation applied to music that i perceive as "happy" and this sounds like fucking graduation ceremony music to me. the guitar solo sounds much like it's in the wrong place to me I hate it, but i'd like it if the music it was present within actually felt dark or something I'd be excited about it. it's maybe a stupid hangup, but i think most of why I like electric guitar when I like it is because it feels "edgy" and "cool" and when it's soaring over something i perceive as extremely not that then i lose interest

Ready to Shave is my 24th favorite in the contest! I like how this goes 4 bars of 4/4, 8 bars of 5/4, [7/4, 3/4, 5/4, 4/4]x2, 12 bars of 4/4, 8 bars of 5/4, [7/4, 3/4, 5/4, 4/4]x2, 24 bars of 4/4, 40 bars of 5/4, 1 bar of 3/4, [5/4, 4/4]x14, 4/4..........THIS is the definition of my taste in music in 2011, maybe not as much as burning force medley but it's pretty close. What I wanted most at that time was "prog rock" composition applied to "80s synth" stuff, aand that's EXACTLY what this is. IT's HARD TO FIND music that sounds like this! Prog lost popularity after the 70s ended very sharply, and the few prog bands who did continue into the 80s lost a lot of their complexity too. So whenever I'd find some prog band that had something this mixed meter that came out in the 80s and SOUNDED like it came out in the 80s, I'd be overwhelmingly excited! This is literally "more proggy" than most of my "80s synth music with prog composition" that I'd dug deep for and saved and held dear then (though a lot simpler- especially tonality-wise, than the stuff I seek out now. but this type of "stereotypical dramatic song in minor" was my favorite back then anyways). If I'd known this existed back then it'd be legit a top 10 favorite song for me ever. The instrumentation isn't quite my favorite 80s-adjacent stuff, synths are a bit more analog-y, not any FM here, and a lot of my favorite 80s production tropes aren't really here, but it's still undeniably 80s sounding! the xylophone peeking in the back sometimes alongside the synths is great. i don't perceive this as a joke at ALL mostly because i have a hard time paying attention to lyrics or having them ever influence my reaction to a track, if anything "silly lyrics" just makes me think of prog bands i like like Zappa or Bubblemath anyways. likewise I never found 80s synths "cheesy" or ""dated"", can't think anything other than EPIC SOUND when I hear them, they're just timbres I like the sound of, and I'm always happy to hear whenever they're still used in modern music (or actual 80s music of course!)

a

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Distorted Happiness is my 135th favorite in the contest! i'm in the smaller camp that really really wishes this were the anime version, the detuning /made/ this track for me, and even the more normal rest of it has less sharp production here than what i recall. this'd be significantly higher ranked if it were the anime version. I still like this more than all the other caligula tracks in the contest though! dissonant bits are successfully climactic in timing and really fun. I love the edgy distorted vocals and whispering. Some really cool sounds here too, the weird high pitched distorted electronic thing at 2:55 is INSANE cool sounding to me. the more melodic parts are nice and fun and dramatic, cool rhythmic playfulness in the rhythms of the melody sometimes. Dislike nothing about this, really fun listen.

Redial is my 72nd favorite in the contest! I LOVE BOMBERMAN HERO OST. i like jungle/dnb/etc as a thing and bomberman hero's probably the most raw, pure example of jungle-style music in a game soundtrack. this isn't one of my favorites in the ost (actually just skimmed through the ost and realized this is basically my least favorite track in the game lol oops, did not even realize that, if THIS is the low point of this ost for me though it shows how much I like the soundtrack!), I think maybe it's a bit too bright/hopeful/happy/melodic/catchy for my liking compared to the rest. Plenty of others in the game are weirder or darker and have more focus on just "cool chords and atmosphere", but i don't dislike this at all~! 0:32's held out chord pads are REALLY GOOD and sound ALIVE. I've talked before about how I find it hard to appreciate n64 music a lot of time, i could go into the technical reasons behind why, but in the end, this eschews my common frustrations with the system's music, definitely one of my favorite soundtracks on the n64. i think the jungle style's actually a good deal of why this gets around the problems i typically have with the system's music too. it can get around me feeling like it's not full enough by using chord samples and drum loops and things (and as a result, actively leans into the types of harmonies and chord changes i like most). definitely a fun game ost to look at the sequence data of as well.

hero. i'd likely be voting distorted happiness if it were the anime version

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Megalovania is my 53rd favorite ToC entrant! I don't want to waste my time trashing this again when I already did with the Smash version in the main bracket. I hate this version slightly less but it's still one of my least favorite Toby Fox songs- I really never think about how popular/memetic/whatever it is when making that assessment as I said last time, it's hyper-popularity is pretty out of my consciousness. My frustration with this isn't that it's "annoying because it's popular" or anything dumb like that, it's just legit probably my least favorite track compositionally in the whole ost, but at least this is my preferred version of it sound-wise. really hate how i'm probably coming across as contrarian anti-toby fox in this contest because I'm NOT, I like a lot of his music! This contest just happens to somehow have Smash Megalovania and Battle Tower BOTH which are possibly my 2 least favorite toby fox songs. Undertale version of Megalovania's maybe a bit higher but it's still not representative at all of what i like about toby's stuff.

Chocolate Missile still 14th favorite out of 56! EAST(EASY) MAtch. feel VERY strongly about matches 1 and 3.
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Who Am I?
Birth of a Wish (Become as Gods)
Yesterdays Opponents are Todays Ingredients

YO-KAI Disco (Hell's Entrance World) is my 107th favorite in the contest! as i've said before i'm kinda not as fond of yasui as a lot of others who share similar taste to me, but this doesn't show the side of him that bothers me too much. I used to like this track so much more, think I ranked it in the top 10 or so of some contest (pretty sure i supported it, at one point). It pretty pointedly describes the aesthetic i wanted my music plastered in in like 2012-2013, FM Synth Jazz Fusion/Funk Fun music. The harmonies in this are great, which is typically the thing I'll always have positive to say about Yasui music (well that + loving his instrumentation), I always like his individual chords. it's the way he moves between them or his melodic style that's more hit-or-miss for me. In this case it's not super offensive to me but it doesn't invite me in that much either. I think the overall feel of this is too "fun" for my tastes or something, that's really all that's holding me back, this only does the "yasui predictable chord tropes" I don't like a few times. but there's really some interesting unexpected movement that puts this above a lot of yasui stuff for me to counter anything i mildly dislike. 1:00 starts out this really realllly cool chord progression thats like "whoa that's a really cool chord progression" yeah. Overall amounts to like a "yeah that's pretty cool", but it's nowhere near the level I appreciate Massive X or his Network Transmission songs.

Who Am I? is my 59th favorite in the contest! repetitive evil 7/8 time chanting! THATS GOod it feels like if Myst IV Revelation - Main Theme was not as cool. The instrumentation outside of the vocals is pretty cool, many of the prominent instruments are ones i like, mallet percussion and oboes peek through just enough to make me happy. I think a lot of what I feel when I listen to this is that I'd just rather be listening to Myst IV: Revelation - Main Theme, because it's so SO similar to this song except has much more interesting stuff going on in it to me and just has more to it. but I still have lots of fun listening to this one! the 4/4 parts of Who Am I definitely don't excite me as much as the 7/8 bits, but they're also pretty necessary for variety and an overall intriguing flow so I welcome them. When the 7/8 rhythm comes back in at 1:14 it's really effectively dramatic of timing, taking you right back into action after a relative respite prior. Something about BECOME AS GODS repeating chanting that spends a lot of time expressing every single syllable on the exact same chord (monotone but like, not monotone...because it's a chord...you know . .. what i mean BECOME AS GODS) is a really BECOME AS GODS REALLY appealing effect to me. It's really intimidating BECOME AS GODS in sound. I think maybe because it's so unnatural, but is being expressed with the most natural instrument- a voice. People do not usually speak in such rhythmic monotone, and they BECOME AS GODS certainly do not speak in synchronization with other people repeating the same chord every syllable BECOME AS GODS. definitely something i've realized is one of my favorite effects. like i've listened to so much hymnnos and other similar stuff and until BECOME AS GODS recently never really thought about how much i'm attracted to moments that are chanting repeating the same chord every syllable. and certainly never thought about why I like that sound so much. BECOME AS GODS it's because it's a natural 'instrument' doing one of the least natural things, and that in itself gives a really uncanny feeling i realize i specifically love. BECOME AS GODS

Who are you?

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Title is my 124th favorite in the contest! Tim Follin. Like I said on Plok-BITCH i think this song has the typical follin problem of this really "trapped" feeling melodic style, it uses up every "obviously right sounding" note WAAay too fast and has a hard time exploring outside of that range, so then it never has anywhere new to go. theres so many parts where I could really love it but the melody's just sticking to the same few "safe" notes and i'm really unimpressed with it despite how technically impressive this is soundchip-use-wise. That's a lot of the frustration too, this is what I WANT NES music to sound like, I get bored with NES music that's really plain most of the time and this is basically my standard of what i want stuff coming out of this chip to sound like, so I wish I liked the music beneath it too! That said I don't actually dislike the "tonality" of this at all. I love dorian mode! I LOVE DORIAN MODE it is so "celtic jrpg fantasy mus"(fire island volcano). I love QUARTALS and this has the big quartal moments like 1:02-1:09 which is my favorite part of the song!! Also lots of fun tempo changes, style changes, key changes, it's never "boring". I just wish i liked the actual melodic style more, the skeleton of this track is great and the meat SOUNDS COOL and is what I want NES music to sound like, but the actual composition of that meat is unsatisfying in the end.

Birth of a Wish (Become as Gods) is my 41st favorite in the contest! I feel like i've made it clear that i like this specific track before already at this point so this isn't that much of a "ranking topic spoiler" anymore but WAT EVER i like this song a lot! it's a great example of how much nier music has grown on me and definitely one of my favorites from it! I love MONOTONE CHANTING except not "monotone"Because it's a CHORD but it's the same chord on repeat every syllable that sounds so cool ! with weird filter effect! It sounds so cool! the composition of the rest is great too, transposing marcato string quartal chords~! Exactly my favorite tonality here. and the lower choir boy is cool and "epic" too. I love this instrumentation, as i've expressed on other nier tracks, wonderful percussion! really timbrally varied. The aesthetic of the image in this youtube video is very well evoked by the music's style! I went on about this quite a bit last contest and i'll go on about it quite a bit when I get to my topic. but basically yes I love this song and I enjoy it even more every time I hear it!

repetitive chanting winning my vote over a cool chiptune part 2. sorry sergiocornaga i promise chiptunes aren't dead to me i still like them !

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Yesterdays Opponents are Todays Ingredients (9th out of 56) / Laguerra del Mundo (39th out of 56). pretty easy choice
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ya well tell that to billy michtlle
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Fire Island Volcano
MAIN MEN
Skyclad Observer

Fire Island Volcano is my 42nd favorite in the contest! this track has grown on me so much, and saying that as someone who already liked it. I thI LOVE POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEONink i initially didn't quite get into it the way I do other PMD dungeon themes because it takes so long to explore out of the same diatonic scale it's stuck in for like the first 57 seconds (even if it is DORIAN which is COOL because it means this is "CELTIC" JRPG MUSIC). the didgeridoo intro always misled me to think this didn't have any of the tonally crazy stuff i like about this ost. then 1:38-2:14 happens and it's like abruptly overwhelming how often the tonal center's changing, in true "pmd dungeon theme fashion" !!! the exact type of tonality i obsess over this soundtrack for actually used for like maximum effect out of nowhere! I guess it's saving that overstimulating complexity energy for a climactic finale moment. I LOVE POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEONalso yeah i love the instrumentation i like big strings and big "world music" instruments which i guess includes combining "didgeridoo" with "jrpg fantasy music('celtic')" music. it's still not quite what i like most out of this game's music (really the vibe of "subdued, not immediately gripping dungeon theme that's really complex, but doesn't blast you with it's intensity, you're rewarded with intricacy if you choose to focus on it but it still fades into the background when you let it do that" vibe is exactly what I like the soundtracks most for, almost every other dungeon theme is like THAT, and so the high energy of this defeats that being one of the key traits i look for.) I love this regardless though and it still has the really playful tonality that explores all over the place, constantly changing tonal centers, not stuck all in a single diatonic scale. That's one of the key things I look most for in music from this series! This explores what I like about this soundtrack much better than most of the music that represented this game for so long in the history of vgmc and I'm very happy this is finally what's a representative for it (alongside infinite dungeon 2!!!)

Fucking In Heaven (Simons Gt Mix) is my 158th favorite in the contest! i mostly only like this for the Type of song it is, even if i'm not super down with this example of it. I like chopped sample-manipulation based electronic music from this period, though i never actually got into fatboy slim particularly, remember finding it hard to sell him on me compared to like The Crystal Method (to name someone who's often compared anyway). I remember even being confused why they were so often compared just because i couldn't ever get into fatboy slim but i could dig everything he was compared to. love the chopped feeling distorted atonal guitar stuff. Wish this was less empty. this specific example of this style just doesn't click with me even though i normally like it. the really neutral blues progression guitar moment at 2:35 is an example of just like...there's so much cooler atmosphere this could have if the most boring type of music to me wasn't what this harsh weird chaotic stuff was juxtaposed with. but i love all the harsh distorted sounds and stuff!

I LOVE POKEMON MYSTERY DUNGEON

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MAIN MEN is my 113th favorite in the contest! I kinda imagine a good chunk of the people who typically like the same things i do these days won't be super excited about this. There's definite a lot of "nostalgic for when my taste leaned more towards stuff that sounds like this even though i don't like music like this that much now" going on in my appreciation of this one. super simple minor 6-7-1 progression (i used to like this, and still like this case of it), super grainy low quality samples (i like this even still), kinda meandering melody wandering randomly within the same diatonic scale without ever doing interesting even with in it but it's EPIC and DARK so i like it...so many of these are things I'd complain about in other music but I love it here. I think the aspect of this that's most to my current tastes is how a lot of the harmonies actually uses kind of dense chords (especially in the piano), it's not just sticking to open maj/min triads and that's very important to me. I also really love how STEREO panning-heavy this is written, very AMIGA. There's also specific samples that are really really to my taste timbre-wise, the low slow decaying synth sound at like :08/:12 is amazingly 80s feeling. Gives me the vibe of the album "Power Windows" by Rush which is an album I am very fond of particularly for the soundscape it offers! particularly reminds me of the darker tracks on it like Mystic Rhythms and Emotion Detector. would love to hear an authentically "80s synth-heavy production" style version of MAIN MEN.

Patronus is my 134th favorite in the contest! this has the sound of something I'd expect to rate super highly, but just falls short of being something i'm really excited about. it's a case where how rhythmically forcefully on-the-beat it is (the vocal layers at like :27) winds up coming across as like a condescending simplicity rather than the intimidating primalness i'd want that sort of "really simple repetitive vocal line" to be. not sure where the line is between those two perceptions because it honestly seems arbitrary that i interpret this as "dumb" but I'll listen to like "Magma - Ork Alarm" or even "Who Am I?" (tomorrow's match) and be successfully intimidated. something about all the chromatic stuff in the vocals at :38 bothers me too. The parts I like more compositionally are the less dark parts, but I want to like the dark parts the most because they're the coolest in every other way!! Honestly can imagine myself completely forgetting this song exists and listening to it 5 years later and becoming obsessed with it and being confused why i criticized it at all. At the very least I love it's "electronic music with dark chanting" aesthetic.

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Rapal (36th out of 56) vs. Skyclad Observer (34th out of 56). Very close match! giving it to skyclad because i'm more in the mood for the sort of fancy electronic production effects it's full of. I like a lot of things that sound like Rapal to me, but i like those things more than Rapal itself. Still, can see myself flipping on this one.
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Welcome to today's topic for Video Game Music Contest 14, a tournament of the best tracks from games, as decided upon by you, the voters.

Links:
Contest info - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss/edit#gid=320804650
Bracket - http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=473292
Discussion and results thread - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78524521
Bracket playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1REnVI_W6yELaDP6Zac8b0Wq
ToC playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RE-TQMj19D0k5nm-0zeH12J
VGMC compability sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lpX4faqnn_geI0y4i6MrZ2AXpV6SWXoWrIA6_eyx-yM/edit

Rules:
- Listen to both of the songs. Links have conveniently been provided for both songs. Even if Song A is your favorite of all-time and Song B is from a series you hate... Listen. To. Both. (If I have suspicions your vote is not based on a fair and impartial preference, it will be disqualified.)
- Obvious contest rules apply (no alts, one vote per person, no rallying, etc.).
- Please make your voting options clear, rather than burying them in text.
- Each set of matches lasts 24 hours, even if the new one isnt up by then. (Matches do not begin until at least 10:00 EDT.)
- Always vote on the versions of the song provided, not versions from different sources.
- If you know ahead of time that you're not going to be around and you want to vote in advance, post your choices in the discussion/bracket topic.
- Please do NOT post tallies/score updates in the middle of the match, as this has a tendency to directly influence matches.
- You don't have to vote in all the matches, but it'd be cool if you did!

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Match 1

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon - Fire Island Volcano
https://youtu.be/62ep8uK8nfQ

Gran Turismo 2 (PAL) - Fucking In Heaven (Simons Gt Mix)
https://youtu.be/0ehtTdzOT8g

Match 2

Top Gear Rally - Main Menu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oubq22rV9sE

Otocad'or - Patronus anata no shugo
https://www.you

A Line In The Sand
Rainbow Road
Class::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE;

A Line In The Sand is my 60th favorite in the contest! i used to be so much more enthusiastic about this track and follin stuff in general. I still find it technically impressive and i do like some of the compositional ideas, but in the end it relies on too many traits that are at odds with what i want (too much blues scale...well actually in this specific song even worse, just a plain pentatonic scale but used in a "bluesy" way. and in general i feel like follin music tends to have a really 'trapped' feeling melodic style, the kinds of solos that feel like they use up every "obvious" pitch class too fast for any of those to be effective, and then never venture outside of that set of notes. and as much as i want proggy music a lot of "proggy" ideas in follin stuff feel contrived to me, like the rhythmic grouping of the 7/8 in this song, despite being 7/8, just feels so hamfisted and straightforwardly layed out to you "4+4+3+3" as if that's a big deal). but that's my negativity about this specific track out of the way. I actually think everything else outside of what i just described is pretty amazing. mmmm~! layered complex chord samples with cool pitch bendy things done to them, "oh yeah also it's in 7/8". The thing I've become most fascinated by with this is how the entire :49-1:56 portion of this track has ambiguity on where beat 1 is. from what i've observed about half of people I know hear beat 1 of the 4/4 section immediately after the 7/8 ends (making the rhythm like "K---KS--K-K-KS--", also making a rhythmic turnaround at 1:56, needing a single 1/16 or 17/16 bar right there), and the other half feel it where there's a single 16th note beat gap between the 7/8 portion and beat 1 of the 4/4 portion (making the rhythm "---KS--K-K-KS--K"). I alternate between feeling either of these two things (sometimes randomly within the same listen), not consistent about one or the other. but that type of rhythmic downbeat ambiguity is something I look for and it can be hard to find! but this is ambiguity done in such a subtle, groovy way without calling attention to itself. It's amazing (it may not even be intentional, but that doesn't matter, it feels amazing all the same). Once 1:56 undeniably beat 1 works in a way the first crash hit each bar is beat 1, but literally half of the duration of the track where beat 1 is is ambiguous. there's very little other music in the entire world that pulls something like the exact feel of that off and no matter my random qualms with the blues scale or 7 portion or whatever, I deeply value that this is one of the few pieces of music I can point to where i can say it pulls off that ambiguous downbeat feeling- and done in SUCH a viscerally funky groovy way somehow all at the same time. this may be a vaguely lukewarm response to this track compared to what people would expect me to say if they know my taste, there's other follin music i like much more, my favorite from this game is Akrillic!!!!

Giant's Cry is my 151st favorite in the contest! haha complaining about blues scale in follin music, welllll this bases itself off of like the most plain blues scale riff ugghhh. FUCK OFF BLUEs SCAALE STUPId .if you're going to put the TRITONe NOTE in the song at least make it DIssonant and not "cheesy"]. this feels like a boring rock or metal song from "the 70s" that i would not like. i like a lot of music from this game but not this song! :45 is fun! the slowdown there's pretty funky. the whole wavetable sound of this game is pretty cool (cue deo). Also think all the melodic layers are neaat and expressive. subtle pitch bends and increasing vibrato the longer a notes sustained. stuff like that makes the melody come to life as this organic thread and i like that sound about it! this might look like a high ranking for something i'm this negative about but i do like listening to it, I think the vibe of la mulana music is distinct enough that i can be happy that it is entering my ears even when it's not one of my favorites

"Plok - A Line In The Sand" more like "Plok - BITCH"

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Rainbow Road is my 71st favorite in the contest! this track's pretty emblematic of soyo oka's fusiony style, interesting harmonies, etc, some very full harmonies for a snes tune, or even when not full, implied to be thicker than they are. the tonal center shifts like :16, and the way the melody highlights them, they feel SO GOOD it is very hopeful and like a rainbow in space. I fluctuate between being bothered by the instrumentation and thinking it's cooler because of the grainy weird sample loop point. at the moment though i'm finding it a detriment, this is compositionally /wonderful/ but it'd be so much more powerful to me if not in this format (or if in this format, arranged more like dkc or waterworld or PLOK or something)

The Grimoire of Alice is my 167th favorite in the contest! if i could hear a pc98 touhou song that impressed me as much compositionally as later touhou i would WANT TO HEAR IT but none of it gets to the level of the touhou songs i like in 6+, instead it's just like "ok cool i like fm synth" except thers 90000 pc98 soundtracks that use fm synth in a more cool way to me also. (there's probably good pc98 covers of my favorite 6-and-later songs but those are not eligible probably unless there's good examples in touhou fan games or something!!!!!) i'm pretty neutral on this one, doesn't do anything offensive to me but doesn't do anything to excite me either. i like the constant ascending 16ths stuff it's fun!

fm synth is the WOW THE BIG PINK OUTING

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Class::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE; is my favorite ToC entrant!!!!!! I talked about this enough last year but yeah it's things i like! glitchiness, breakbeat stuff, atonal portions, Epic Melody Part On the Sound , ODD TIME SIGNATUres, cool chanting voices, natural and electronic instruments in combination having fun, lots of edgy parts, insanely cool sound design. relentlessly weird song. i still can't believe it's a contest champion (despite it being gust), and something this bizarre managing to win vgmc13 restored my faith in this community by a lot, it definitely wasn't well received 5 years prior

Face of Fact is my 40th favorite ToC entrant!

ar tnodunkico,. wow what a "limited sound format" day outside of the toc match
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relevant for the day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O8bJuJZtJg
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[...continued from above]

-[Moonlight Concert is my 69th favorite in the contest! I love the unashamed dissonant harshness the first 15 seconds of this beat you up with. and i like delay echoes and hearing those random fist on piano keysmashes echo around with cool effects alongside them feels cool! this sounds like music "dowolf" likes lol it feels like vocal gust sound team music it's TOO SHORt wow that song is so short. bye fun bouncy 6/8 song! fun flute! fun minor/major flipping. fun vocals! that song made me happy to listen to!!]-

-{but not as happy to listen to as I get every time I listen to Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - Dungeon - Geofront 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i could've kept going with the sao song for even more posts but this is TOO BIG already, had more comparisons to Shnabubula-Starbound i could've made, more little details that excite me. but honestly i don't like writing thorough deliberate analyses i just like typing stream of consciousness stuff that happens to get 'technical' so that's WHAT YOU get}-

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Douwa Kairou is my 4th favorite ToC entrant!

Emil/Karma (NieR) is my 26th favorite ToC entrant! ok this one's a new one. "I like nier music more than i used to part 45", the percussion in the music from this game always stands out to me. it always somehow feels so COLORFUL, and it's rare for non-tonal percussion to feel like it has as much timbral variety as i feel like i hear in every song in this. tonal percussion, of course, i always expect to like those timbres they're my favorites, but just like random background drums, i can't just NOT pay attention to them they add so much vibrance to this stuff. the composition o this song sounds like a funky castle. the whole song sounds like it's an intro to a castlevania song that doesn't exist. it lasts longer on the same chords/chord loops than i expect it to and has a lot of 'predictable classical music functional harmony' moments that sound like it would be played in a harpsichord in a castle in a video game in a castle. I don't dislike that here even though i sometimes do (i used to dislike nier for being like that too often, i'm still not a fan of that type of tonality but i think in nier music it's contrasted with enough other variety to not feel banal, and to even add to the spectrum of possible feelings it can express, the less predictable moments stand out more because of that contrast). all that said there is definitely music from the niers that i like much MUCH more than this.

near (this match is not "near" (it is not close))
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[...continued from above]

-(Dungeon - Geofront 4 is my favorite in the contest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is also my favorite video game song! It is also my favorite piece of music!
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kaonashi1 showed this to me on January 18, 2019 (expecting me to like it but not necessarily /this/ much), and it was immediately something I liked, but it took a while for it to sink in that there was literally not a single piece of music I ever wanted to listen to more than this one. the title of "favorite video game song" has been held by many different things over the years. but title of "favorite piece of music" had not changed all the way from 2012-2019 (it became saofb dungeon 1 some time in the middle of 2019)
/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAVHSf9vh80
this is the piece of music I considered my absolute unbeatable #1 favorite for like 8 years. a 14 minute entirely synthesizer math prog insanity hole. and like honestly in some states of mind i might still say this is my favorite. but anyways i'm linking it because I feel like there's actually a lot of similarities that made me like the saofb one as much as I like this. it's not just that they're both rhythmically intricate, it's the TYPe of rhythmic intricacy they both explore. 4:16 - 4:31/4:46 - 5:00/8:05 - 8:15 bears a striking similarity to the echoy high synth at :27/1:56 in geofront. In geofront that bit is repeating just a simple 4 note pattern but the rhythms it's expressed with change every time it loops. the actual pattern is like 7+7+6+6+6 which is a lot simpler than the stuff starbound does, but my point is that it's the same "feeling". this is probably a completely random part of the song to start with but it felt like a nice way to segue from talking about my "other favorite song" which is still my favorite song but this is also my favorite song they can both share first place! OK IM GOING TO START FROM THE BEGINIng now more logical intro
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this starts off with a pretty simple, but "misleading" clever string rhythm (by the way I especially like strings as instrumentation when they sound like steve reich having a big idea in mechanical sounding rhythm patterns like this) like it sounds like it's "going to be 7/8" well not it's 1-2-3-4& for one bar and turns into -&-&&-&& on loop until :14 and it's really hard to actually catch onto what's even happening imo, even though i've heard this 349058 times I still get thrown off by something that seems like it should be so simple, but something about it isn't! it wouldn't feel so weird if the first bar wasn't different from the rest because of that first bar i guess i feel the start/end of that string loop being in a different place than it is. end result is a nice "ambiguous" sound and ambiguity is one of the top things i look for! The first 14 seconds are like, nothing, compared to the rest of the song hahha.
/
:14 is the first punch of WHOA this song hits me with. The looping pattern of 5 triplets happens on the buzzing synth sound layer, 5/8-stretch-to-the-other-tempo layered on top of of the 4/4 HAPPY MONTH/DAY 5/8 TIME DAY and at the SAME TIME The strings are at that "the tempo of the triplets" in groups of 6 triplets. So you have the simultaneous triplet-against-16ths polyrythm, but the stuff going on at the triplet tempo is polymetric with itself too. 3 layers. 4/4, groups of 5 triplets, groups of 6 triplets, all on top of each other, like gears of different sizes intersecting and taking time to realign, my favorite types of rhythm feelings!!!!! aaaaah!!!
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yeah :28-:41 is the part that reminds me of my favorite part of starbound i already talked about ok
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:41 now it's EDM! and I think that's IMPORTANT for me. that's why its 10/10, like i talked about in tong nou it's just like, really hard to find music that hits just the right combination of all the types of things i like. early 00s trance sounding edm and minimal/repetitive music avoid the complexity that i want; electronic avoids natural instruments, etc. i want all these things in combination. this has them all in combination! absolutely fits into at least 4 of my 8 yt playlists at once and right at the border of potentially falling into all the others too. what i appreciate the most also, this tackles every angle i like at once without being like an inconsistently styled medley or something. it's constantly everything i want all the way through simultaneously without being a bunch of separate disconnected sections. That's i think pretty important too. no matter what mood i'm in i'll want to listen to this ENTIRE song. where with other favorite songs i'll be waiting for specific bits depending on my mood, waiting for the "prog" part when i want prog, waiting for the "epic melody" part when i want that, or waiting for whatever bit has timbres i like most. This /constantly/ has every possible element i could be looking for present for basically all of it, it establishes an aesthetic of "just epic and adventurous enough, while still being just playful and fluffy enough" "just complex enough, while still being just minimal/repetitive enough" "just electronic enough, while still being just orchestral/natural enough" "just distorted and weird enough while still being BEAUTIFUL" without any of the contradicting things overwriting the opposing thing. sorry talking about that kinda thing is REPETITIVE(just like this song O_O ) when it comes to my favorites, but hitting that overlap of contradicting traits is one of the most important things for a song to REALLY speak to me so it's why i keep mentioning it with these very top ones. and this does it better than anything i know of and that is why it is my favorite EVARrrrr OMGGGZG.zg EPIC *WOOOOOOoPskh8*
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1:08 hits it's the same feeling as the sudden triplets 0:14 blasts at you, but without drums to guide you, feels like a complete tempo change (despite not actually being a tempo change) and shifts the focus completely to the layers at the speed of the triplets. the strings being 5 instead of 6 now shifts the focus to the pattern of that buzzing synth that'd been going the whole time too. I also like how the string patterns like 5+5+5+5+4 looping, rather than just 5, just adds to the discombobulating nature of it all
/
OH NO! It's 1:22!!!!!!! HELP!!! THIS PART IS MY FAVORITE PART OF THIS SONG MAYBE but i can't decide on my favorite part. the warpy synth comes in and does a ridiculous pattern in 16ths on top of the "only triplets are happening right now" backing it bit and it FEELS SO COOL. i interpret the synth pattern as like 9/8+6/8+9/8+9/8+9/8+9/8+12/8 looping atop that. which...i mean honestly this is just meaningless numbers time signatures are stupid it's just a RHYTHM THATScool it's all chunks of 6/16 and different numbers of 6/16 making up larger containers making up larger larger containers
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1:36 THE BIG TRANSITION MOMENT it's just "normal triplets" now but it gradually turns into Kick kick kick kick (normal 4/4 song) and then the kick drum drills into the ground like a DRILL and relief from industrial sky spiral
/
throughout ALL THIS there's all these strange held out electronic distorted sounds and mechanical things in the background, skewing this track just sliightly out of reality. i remember kao acting with suspicion that a lot of the stuff like that was like, a mistake and not intended to be in the song and saying it made him like this less! but that's definitely a factor bumping this track up a bit for me actually! WOW I DISAGREE WITH KAO THE PERSON WHO SHOWED ME MY FAVORITE VGM SONG THANK YOU FOR SHOWING Me MY FAVORITE VIDEO GAME SONG (AND SONG) KAONASHI1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)-

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Credits
Dungeon - Geofront 4
Douwa Kairou

Ar-ciel Ar-manaf is my 138th favorite in the contest! i think of myself as a fan of gust soundtracks and especially the ar tonelico/nosurge/cirlcigmhslihme[oairmg (exa pikachu) series, but i wouldn't expect myself to feel that if this track was all I knew, just isn't a representative of anything that makes the sound of this series special to me (i guess, once again, unsurprisingly because it's manyo, not an "actual gust sound team composer".......then again i don't say that about the morrigan songs lol). I don't dislike anything about this, it's pretty and makes me happy to listen to it! I have fun listening to this song! I like the overall aesthetic of it i just watched disney atlantis movie and it reminds me how much i like things like they could be used to depict imaginary ancient culture in the year 4903i50394 where there's a big towert thats a computer program and you sing the macarena into the microphone because the entire universe is a video game song forest floating in the sky in japan in the united kingdom and then everything glows cyan in mysterious symbols. I LOVE HIgh BASS SOLOS this song has them. i think my reaction to apex of the world is very similar to my reaction to this song: [1] don't like it as much as other music from the game/series, [2] I have to actively be paying attention with ALL Of my brain to notice the things in this song that make it cool to me. it doesn't draw me in, and if i let myself leave it in the background it'll just register as like "boring song but in a style i like", but when I do let myself give it the attention that it deserves, it's a real treat. strangely i find it far easier to register the things i like about this when i listen to it at 2x speed lol. it's moderately tonally complex, lots of sudden sharpening or flattening of notes in the scale at times i don't expect but bring emotional STRENGTh. unusual for my tastes: the "predictable" chord changes are actually my favorite parts of this, they're just the most dramatic feeling parts to me here

Credits is my 37th favorite in the contest! "with GUSTs up to 25 miles an hour" UH OH!!!! FRUMS is a composer I have a lot of respect for, for A LOT of reasons. always impressed with their sound design, just crazy interesting choices all around. weird effects, distortions, glitchiness, fun sounds!!!!! also i'm not one to believe that the tools you use have a significant impact on the end result of your sound, but I always find it really cool when I learn someone's a renoise user (because it's my personal favorite piece of software, in any category), so it makes me happy to know that is also what frums uses! and honestly, it "sounds like it" just simply with how freely sample manipulation and glitch filled their stuff is haha, it's like what renoise is designed for. One other (not surprising coming from me) thing I respect about frums is how rhythmically creative everything they do is. Even when it's completely in 4/4 the whole time, there will be fun with tuplets or rapid dotted rhythms patterns or something. In this case it's actually uhh.h......44+20 (where the 20 is 3+3+3+3+3+3+3+1, in like...32nd note beats haha. and the 44 is just [4x11]/32). this ridiculous rhythms make "more sense" when the drums come in and i think the gradual acclimation to them by repetition and seeing other layers follow their patterns is a neat experience. also really love how minimal and repetitive this is like i just like things that are like that! complex-but-repetitive can be hard to find! but this is so detail-centric it's almost overwhelming despite how repetitious it is, and I dig that exact zone for music to be in. Honestly this song is what I "wanted" fax factory to be like i think. a bit less constantly resetting every bar, longer phrases and more rhythmic intricacy even if still hypnotic/quirky/repetitive in that same exact way. I have a thing for things like weather reports/crowd noises/just random talking, being used to enhance the atmosphere of a piece of music. Weather reports specifically because of the song "Tout est bleu" by Jean-Michel Jarre which is a song i have liked since the year 2000 and the album it's from really heavily influenced my taste in electronic music. ANYWAYS THIS SONG USES A WEATHER REPOrt THIng except instead of just being a background thing it actually gets really chopped up and destroyed in typical frums explosion way I LOVE FRUMS MUSIC ITS SO GOOD TO LISTEN TO

both of these songs have to do with the word 'gust'

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The Apex of the World (Rain)
Variations on a Ra Melody
Dark Legacy

The Apex of the World (Rain) is my 87th favorite in the contest! i remember liking this a lot more than i do. chanting at :25 is fun and the piano rhythms alongside it are fun. this doesnt viscerally excite me to an elevated extreme the way a lot of FE music does, but at least has the right vibe. the artificialness of the piano at like 2:02 and other production elements around that bit area cool they sound like deemo(blue reflection slow song). i don't dislike three houses music (I literally had this track on my "considering supporting" list) but i think i have to be very, very intently, actually listening to the song, to get anything out of it, where the Awakening/Fates music i like will immediately excite me even if i'm not paying much attention. this isn't a "bad thing" it's just a difference and means i'm rewarded for actively paying attention, but as a result at some times i'll rate this way higher/lower than others. right now's a time where i'm having a hard time paying attention to it so i'm not getting as much out of it as i wish i was

Onboro is my 183rd favorite in the contest! something abouit this song makes me Mad when i listen to it. there was some melodically similar fake dubstep chiptuine song i once felt the same way about and i'm not sure how to describe it there's just all thes notes at the start that arae too normal but are like "edgy" but not "cool" they just sound "stupid instead and i want thgE" lth[dlpb[ the drums are too fast shupt up i don't like this song. i don't really have anything positive to say but the reason it's ranked higher than all of 184-192 is because it's "obnoxious" and ""edgy"" (i dunno if anyone else would even use the word edgy to describe this, I use it too much but whenever I use it it's a positive descriptor, it's a trait i look for lol) in a way that feels like "a Sonic heroes song i dont actually like but makes me nostalgaic for 20034". I guess some more actual positive stuff i could say: I like playfulness of the synth patches. some of the guitar chords are also really cool.

where's waldo

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Variations on a Ra Melody is my 40th favorite in the contest! "Pure PCE jam that pushes its chip to the edge and back." - Place, 2020. ALways a pleasure to listen to a Basisc-[the enigmatic voice calls from the inside of the A logo in the art work: "BASISCAPE DIDNT EXIST YET YoU FUNKY FLOWER"] ok Fine you funky language precision DARK BEAM. Always a pleasure to listen to a HITOSHI SAKIMOTO original sound track : ) I love Hitoshi Sakimoto! he is one of my favorite video game music composers and founded my favorite video game music sound team. the strangely loud delay echoes is appealing to me, it feels like proto-yack sound design, Senko no Ronde DUO for PC Engine. also love how I always feel like this is in 3/4 but it's just a 3+3+2 4/4 rhythm but i don't notice because it hypnotizes me too much for me to get a solid perception and that's GOOD. sakimoto has a variety of traits/styles i like but I think my favorite is something he did a lot more often in his music for old soundchips than in full-prod stuff: Having really prominent held out bass notes that don't share the same scales as the rest of the music (particularly, using the note a half step above the tonal center). :46 feels SO intense somehow, and it doesn't feel wrong at all somehow even though it seems like it should. Instead it just seems GRAND and mysterious. I talk about unpredictable chord progressions all the time being a thing that consistently emotionally impacts me, this isn't even that it's just a single note managing to have the same effect that entire "weird chord changes" have on me (though the abrupt modulation at 1:00 is pretty unexpected and definitely threaded together by that bass pad thing). I think the very slight detune effect and exact timbre he's gotten out of this chip for that bass floating in there is beautiful as well. the abrupt quartal run ascensions in triplets at 1:40 are so VIDEO GAME(prog) lol i love their presence so much

Arcade Menu is my 121st favorite in the contest! Grand Theft Iuto has somg big funky e clavi and the good epiano sounds and hm. i have a hard time saying anything about this one. my reactions are really similar to the ridge racer one in earlier. I like this style of music but it isn't an example that stands out to me so instead my reactions just numb but like "oh yeah i like 'the kind of song this is' " without being impressed by any of it in specific, other than things that apply to every song in this style. It's cool and i like listening to it and do not dislike anything about it

cars6

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Dark Legacy (15th out of 56) / 1NF3S+@+!0N (Theme of Crabulon) (28th out of 56s). Kinda close, not really. both "7/10" ratings
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Place posted...

Pure PCE jam that pushes its chip to the edge and back. Reminds me of the stuff I used to listen to when I started really diving into the deep end of VGM. Ryu Umemoto and his later analogue Garoad; stuff in that really twinkly, future-forward sound sphere. Passed over this one in the vote, but would have definitely supported as this is probably my favorite discovery so far.

...what? ys6 is for ps2/windows/mobile/psp (and most of the Ys PCE music is literally just CD Audio)
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The Least 333sec
Seto Kaiba
New World Order

The Least 333sec is my 50th favorite in the contest! i love "progressive rock" as a genre and this is pretty solidly that genre haha. VERY Emerson Lake & Palmer to the point it's probably a reference to some of their specific work. mmm the transposing quartal blocks like at 4:00 are so TASTY. lots of fun dissonant improvised sounding elements throughout this as fun flourishes! been fond of this track for a while but 1) didn't even realize it had a long version, and 2) always forget it is "actually vgm" for some reason. the soloistic elements mixed with 'fake classical music' elements are super fun. despite this being solidly "prog rock (genre)" I feel like it is missing a lot of what i look for in the style, not enough weird meter stuff and not tonally unusual enough. doesn't mean I don't love it though! what it does have going for it is relentless unpredictability and it DOES Have "ambiguous barline in mixed meter" sections and that's one of the things I always have to dig for since it's so hard to find things that are like that. 3:00 - 3:12 is probably the bit most like that. In-game it's noted as all 4/4 with a single 3/4 bar (at 2x the tempo of how I feel this). I personally would write it as all 4/4 with a single 7/8 bar (right before 3:08) at half that tempo), but it reaaaaly is testing it and has very little to keep start/end of barlines clear and that is something I love the sound and feel of a lot, especially how subtly this does that! Really fun piece and i love what it does but definitely wish it went further with the things about it that i like that it does

Battle! Uxie/Mesprit/Azelf is my 161st favorite in the contest! gen 4 is about tied with gen 7 for "favorite mainline series pokemon ost" for me and it's one of the few where i actively get into the battle themes. this is NOT an example of that, and i never understood this one's 'popularity' and i like most of the other battle themes in this game waaay more. I don't hate it, just definitely one of my lower ranked tracks in this wonderful soundtrack, but there's a lot here I like! It has the weird minimalism-esque nature (intro just being constant 8ths on the same string chord is very steve reich! and i love whenever that bit fades back in). and it definitely feels distinct, like something only junichi masuda would write, and i value that. tonality is very weird in a way i'm not even sure how intentional it is, but i like that. very unique simultaneous dissonant tension and hopeful serene beauty present somehow at once

swablu

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The Ruined City Kishgal is my 64th favorite in the contest! Wataru Ishibashi!!!!!!!! my favorite falcom composer!!!! please come back to life . . . : ( .. .. this feels so much like a lot of my favorite shmup music, the big synth chords transposing around are so yummmmm~! chord progressions based entirely around modulation are my favorite! i can't decide whether or not i like 1:06's violin, it's weirdly loud compared to everything else and out of tune, and i feel like it'd feel like it works intriguingly melody/chord interaction with the background layers if it weren't out of tune (and if it weren't mixed too loud to hear the background layers well enough). As is, a moment that would be /really cool/ is more just like "weird", and i obviously like weird but in this case i'd have liked the "cool" more. regardless, overall love the instrumentation, chord progression, general aesthetic and shmup-style adjacency this has. reminds me a lot of MASSIVE X with that fun syncopated transposing chord stab based progression. constant 16ths here are fun! Fun song!

Seto Kaiba is my 7th favorite in the contest! also probably the song I'm most exicted about being in! simply because I'm considering this a "new discovery" from the noms phase even if i'd listened to this ost before and liked it. FL nominating this made me realize this is my favorite song in the game (and just, straight up one of my favorite VGM songs ever), can't believe it never stood out to me before! the fact that this pseudo-"new discovery" (or at least "new favorite") is ranked up here with all these looong long time favorites that most of the top 20+ is, is a pretty big deal to me. RIGHT AT THE START there's that insanely cool [3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+2]/8 over 4/4 polymeter-y thing going on. love those over-the-barline groups of 3 they feel SO COOL, and the constant groups of ascending 8th notes in that synth sound are great for enforcing the "polymetric" feel. nice and EPIC start i love the big string hits. then when :17 hits its suddenly ultra catchy prog-funk. the fun chromatic elements and transposing organ sus chord stabs AAAAAH it JUST LIKE JINCUBA (sus2 chords, especially if parallel transposed around, are basically my favorite chord). The organ playing with the idea from the strings part at the beginning, :29, that feels SO COOL its I DONT KNOW ITS COOL. These same motifs used in such contrasting styles in the same song but flowing so naturally. The organ flourish transitioning to :40's another one of my fav bits. One of the things that makes this one so good to me is how contrasting :17-:40 is from the darker feeling intro and :40-1:04. Once :40 hits, it's like the ideas of both that first dark polymetric epic string hits section and prog organ synth funk section are layered on top of each other at once and it...somehow works?! like :40 is "the most epic part" and it flows so well and doesn't feel jarring against the playful synth funk part right before it, it's literally made MORE intense because of that contrast (and also because of the key change hahaha). The pitch bending in the synth solo at the end is SO GOOD. AAAAHHHHH I LOVE THIS SONG. I LOVE POLYMETER even if it's simple 3/8 over 4/4 I LOVE SYNTH CHORD sTabs and I love funky prog organ sus2 chords transposing around like a Finely Crafted Fusion Funk. all in the context of EPIC DUEL Vs The EDGY CHRACTER . this song makes me wish i was more into yu-gi-oh, i'd probably love it but i just never actually got into it as much as pokemon and digimon (which are my 2 favorite fictional universes maybe...uh, pokemon and digimon and sonic and MYST lol are what i'd say are the series i'm most deeply into) and other things it's often compared to. maybe i should pick this game up!!! after this got into vgmc, I was actually just watching random episodes of the anime with no sound but while listening to music from this game playing over it and it fit (like literally lined up with the action) surprisingly well.

Blue-eyes White Dragon

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steelchambers2 (33rd/56) / New World Order (13th/56). still feels about right

Hackmon
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Celestial Resort (Good Karma Mix) is my 128th favorite in the contest! I really love how this one starts rhythmically (i really don't like the actual note choices though) and it flows really nicely into the drums coming in. Goes from bouncy over-the-barline stuff to straighter 4/4 and layers those ideas atop each other. Definitely not the side of celeste music I like but it's not terrible and still has cool things in it i think are cool. 1:50 where it gets atonal (literally microtonal "out of tune" I think cool broken evil computer sound that gives that). Very mixed feelings.

The Best Is Yet To Come is my 139th favorite in the contest! I like this A LOT more than i used to holy shit. I still am not a fan of how simple the melody is and how much it avoids using anything outside of like 4 notes ever but somehow that aspect doesn't ruin this to me anymore. it used to bother me more that it was this really simple thing being presented in a GRAnd context. I think now I can appreciate the atmosphere/instrumentation with enough of my focus on that so that it's not like this tone mismatch of "hey look it's a powerful song *presents a not powerful thing*", that was the whole crux of the problem for me. but i no longer feel that, i think it's cool! wind solo at 1:15 is expressive and nice. only reason it isn't higher is because i do feel like it kinda drags on a bit and there's not much here, but i like the "feel" it has anyways. Something else that's a pastiche of this specific song but maybe a melody i like more, that'd make this for me and make me /love/ it, but at least now it goes from "usually bottom 5 of the contest" that it's been the past 11 years, to the "i like this song" zone

very close match. I actually thought I was voting TBITYC at first (and might flip to it). both tracks I have very mixed feelings on and could flip if i decide to prioritize differently.. I dislike more of celestial resort, really do not like it's tonality except at the 'weird' parts and am not fond of the specific synth patches it uses, but the elements I like I REALLY like. TBIYTC I like more overall throughout, but doesn't have any individual moments that stick out i just like "the type of song it is"

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Sunshine Coastline is my 50th favorite ToC Entrant! a pretty anti-me song by nature, it's everything i dont like about falcom music, the chord progression it stats off with and the drums are not my thing; and melody line is too much of the focus yeah i say these things too many times BUT I LOVE the piano part at :35-:54, when that bit kicks in it becomes so HOPEful and I get happy!!! just random little bits i like Was definitely disappointed with this being a contest winner but it's not as bad a falcom pick as it could be a i guess. though now that i realize i actually like the majority of falcom music it makes songs in the vein of this and seize the truth winning and being what represents it even more frustrating a feeling

Luna Ascension EX (RoA) is my 19th favorite ToC Entrant!!! this song makes me so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love floating in the air flashyGOODness is so GOOD that's probably why the word "good" is in their name yeah i know i talked aobut this r1 who cares i like this song it's so fun!

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Main Theme
Celestial Resort (Good Karma Mix)
Luna Ascension EX (aka OST 7)

-[Akeldama is my 70th favorite in the contest! I can't believe it's not Ken Nakagawa! this does a good job at sounding like Ken Nakagawa lol, fits right in with the original Rorona ost even though it is Hayato Asano. I legitimately thought it was Nakagawa until I looked it up, imo Asano doesn't do stuff this clean sounding usually unless he's being electronic (Blue Reflection / the weird ineligible Ciel Nosurge songs) so hearing him tackle pan flute accordion forest music this crystalline in sound surprised me, the production is great! this isn't musically super interesting to me, mostly just all within the same diatonic minor scale the whole time and its few deviations from those 7 pitch classes in the same tonal center the whole time are pretty predictable, but music of this aesthetic doesn't have to try as hard to impress me compositionally as other styles I like do so i'm still a fan! Unfortunately i can not show my support for this because of what it is against.. . .]-

-(Main Theme is my 3rd favorite in the contest!!!!! A 10/10 song for me. HERE We go ok so where do I even start. I guess I'll just explain how it fits into the general qualification of what i even give 10/10
\
the rare stuff i'll give 10s to is anything that simultaneously (a)-I've liked at the level of "one of my favorite songs" for at least like a year, (b)-hits every corner of my taste in music at once (or at least as many as possible), and things that do it are difficult to find because my taste's pretty self-contradictary! but, this does it. basically no matter what i'm looking for, i'll find it in this song. This is simultaneously:
[1] electronic (VERY cool sounds)
[2] (and 90s dance music as its form of electronic at that) ((also recognizable samples of the period- including one used in my favorite game ost, sonic shuffle!))
[3] "world music (natural)", lots of my favorite "real instruments" present here, especially love all the tuned percussion and sitar. the echoy vocals are fun too
[4] also sounds like i am in giratina's non-euclidian distorted reality house when i am listening to it. the reversed elements and relentlessly chaotic parts enhance that
[5] hypnotic aggressively 4/4 and repetitive, and as counter as that is to much of what i'm known to like, i actively love that about it. and the parts that aren't that?...well
[6] the intro is actually subtly very rhythmically fascinating lol, cool pseudo-polymeter / metric modulation, and the way it transitions to changing my perception of the tempo so smoothly when it kicks in, depending on what layers are playing, is fucking amazing. like the difference in feel (where i feel the pulse) of before vs. after :33 is strong when i'm paying attention but not something i notice when i'm listening passively
[7] has a "weird chord progression" (the exact type of feeling of chord loop this has in that piano is ridiculously hard to find, and something i actively go digging for and struggle to find things similar to. only consistent source of it is zzzv music. probably my favorite aspect of this)
[8] in general fairly complex and dark
/
biggest thing with this to me is i really really strongly love it's "melody" on that harsh stab sample at :41, at the same time as this having one of my favorite chord progressions ever in ANYTHING ever written. I also think it's fascinating how that melody is later used in Transmigration from the same game (which was in last year! transmigration has grown on me i think and i already loved it to begin with!). In the context of transmigration it's really beautiful but in this one it's really harsh and tense. and that difference is mostly just because of the pace/instrumentation difference between this track and transmigration, it's not like compositionally wildly different. I think maybe that's a reason I find repetition to this track's benefit as well, getting lost in this and having its weirdness blasted at me repeatedly gives me time to comprehend the bizarre stuff and realize it's not as bizarre as it initially sounds.
\
This gives the vibe of dark, tense, and ominous, but almost expressing that darkness as if it's a Good thing. like you're falling into a chaotic death realm of unreality, a strange unfamiliar world, you know you'll never see the things you once loved again, your former life gone, but the strange place you've fallen into enlightens you to how vast the universe is, and your position in it, and you realize that it's not a bad thing that this happened to you. it's like, idk. I just like things that give me that exact feeling. whenever i hear it i just feel like "wow i am really small and the universe is really big", but more grand than that, like the TRUTH of how reality works is being revealed to you actually everything is just a simulation the MATRIX. the TRUMAN SHOW. it feelsl ike THAT. that feeling of having just taken the pill that kills your perception of everything you thought you once knew, all the darkness that comes with that, but also all the awe and wonder that comes with it. that is what this song makes me feel every time I listen to it. all these distant sounding elements really help evoke that to me, the really high echoy whistly windy patch at 1:14, and honestly (again) the piano's chord changes. the backing synth pads at 3:50 fill the air with exactly the right feeling to enhance this to me also
/
unrelated to the song but this track is relevant to my interests in other ways as well. My VERY FAVORITE genre of game is "Myst-clones", that is why "MycroProcessor" is spelled with a Y instead of an i. Something about the interface of 1st-person-point-and-click, and presentation of environment as prerendered 3d, really lends itself to the types of gameplay experiences I like, and just the type of atmosphere I most like to experience in a gameMACROMEDIA DIRECTOR IS THE BEST GAME ENGINE. i love abstract "multimedia experiences" in "CD-ROM" format in the 90s. Eastern Mind only pseudo-fits the definition of myst-like but i still categorize it as a Myst-like anyway. Ridiculously over-the-top surreal/weird is always a plus to me, it's that on top of me just liking the format of game it is
\
NOt to be a HIPster about something so trivial but i was deeply interested in this game long before it amassed a huge cult following, I remember looking up prices for the disk online and they were fairly cheap since no one even knew what this thing was. Now EVERYONe knows and it's like $600 for a physical copy or something at least last time i checked. definitely a bittersweet feeling to see this get a huge amount of attention, positive feeling to see something I love be appreciated by many, but also frustrating to see it kinda get a status where i feel a lot of people are only in it for the "haha wtf weird game LOL so Funy" freakshow showcase piece reaction (and no longer being able to buy a physical copy reasonably). though at the same time, the attention has allowed it to reach more people whod be most genuinely interested in something this niche, and that's wonderful (i'm not even close to being the biggest osamu sato fan here!)
/
definitely worry that this being presented in such a silly way with the game's bizarre intro video being shown and the goofy preview pic will make people interpret this as a purely joke/meme nom or something. but it is very deeply, genuinely one of my favorite pieces of music to have ever been written. and the fact that it's to such an intriguing piece of media of categories i have passion for is a wonderful bonus!)-

-{osamu sato's head spins around in sync with the beat of all the songs of the day todayl}-

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Solitude
Another Winter
Battle!!

Pressure Cooker is my 129th favorite in the contest! i used to like this more, i used to like the whole vvvvvv ost more than I do now. still think it's great but this was never even a standout pick from the game for me. think i talked about this enough in bost, don't really have much new to say here

Solitude is my 103rd favorite in the contest! when i learned this was actually a soundtrack from the 90s it blew my mind, this whole time i'd assumed it was modern and just imitating the era...what i'm saying is, it's stylistically really ahead of its time while still having traits that are distinct to the period. that results in a combination of sounds i like! chill string pad chords fill the atmosphere up so that i feel like i am in a hot air baloon in the cloud. still haven't listened to this whole thing but i intend to because i'm very impressed with what i've heard! love all the voice samples peeking in. also love all the portameno/pitch bend-y synth stuff. that said, other stuff from this game i'd rank much more highly than this, what i've heard of the soundtrack has some of the most interesting timbres i've heard in any game music that's that old!

V

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The Venerable Ancient Battlefield ~ Suwa Foughten Field is my 137th favorite in the contest! This is a touhou track i think of as "the side of touhou I like" as of RIGHT now i have just decided that. even though i only ranked it like 5 slots above rftm which i think of as "neutral". anyway this song has surprisingly surprising chord changes, not what i expect from zun. startling key changes, and like :35-:52 is honestly pretty insane, definitely my favorite chunk. that section has suddenly a change to 3/4, sudden dip into dorian for one chord (and technically blues scale at one point hahaha) completely out of nowhere in a way that's not predictable but never sounds wrong. touhou instrumentation is fun!!! some parts of this remind me of junichi masuda, like the transposing bits starting at :23.

Another Winter is my 84th favorite in the contest! "nostalgia for 2009" song (i know this game did not come out until 2010 shut up also I swear i remember it being in vgmc4 but i guess it wasn't in until 5) . kinda like pressure cooker it fits more with my older taste than currently, but i still think it's pretty fun! the really open feeling atmosphere of the parts with the delay echo chiptune layers (ie 2:14) still get me every time! very simple fast drums but in a way i actually like for some reason and i am not sure why i actively like this case of it and hate over half of other cases of something like it. especially love how this starts but like 90% of other songs that are out there that start a similar way i would roll my eyes at. can't put a finger on why this is an exception

way closer match than these numbers make it look. could flip

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Battle!! (XBC2 Torna) is my 5th favorite ToC entrant! I still love this song!!!!!!!!

Evolution Era (Deemo) is my 41st favorite ToC entrant! deemo music has a cool "aesthetic", piano-focus but with glitchy electronic accompaniment. I love all the reversed piano bits in this sooo much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this does lots of interesting things, the busier piano parts with something different happening every 16th beat are great! the ranking is low mostly for vague reasons like "in the end i don't find it memorable or 'emotionally engaging'"what ever that means. I'd love this aesthetic applied to other composition more for sure (i like other deemo music much more than this). I definitely liked this more in vgmc9 than now.

easy match...the other two today are close but this one is not. also lots of "I liked this more in the past than now" songs today, one in each match, but the only case i'm voting for one of those is another winter for some reason despite how enthralled i am with this touhou one
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Kudamon (Data Squad version of design, if you need that specified)
Reppamon
Garurumon
Dorumon
Ginryumon
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Shinjugamori Rebel Army
Roll Me In
Servants of the Scourge

Stargazer is my 179th favorite in the contest! Daisuke Achiwa is really good at making the half of songs in gust games that i put at the bottom half of ranking of the ost. this is very unrepresentative of the sound of this game, like even maria sounds "more like it could only be in a gust game", other atelier picks have a distinct sound that makes these soundtracks worth listening to and this has none of that. oh well. i don't actually hate anything about this though, i keep thinking i'm going to but it actually avoids the chord changes i'm afraid it's going to do in favor of ones that i am ok with. i wonder why achiwa went for so much more appealing a direction for me on at2 than everything else he's on, like even though i prefer nakagawa's tracks on at2 significantly i love achiwa's there too. i wish this were like, Vrtra or something here. i don't mind anime op sounding things but i definitely haven't ranked them highly very often in stuff like this, maybe my standards for that aesthetic are just really high/specific even if i think of myself as liking it

Shinjugamori Rebel Army is my 19th favorite in the contest! ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO LISTEN TO A BA*gets shot by Manabu Namiki who is good at shooting things because he composed to the shoot them up genre of games* oh what a shame now I am DEAD well i can still talk about this song. I didn't realize this was my favorite in the game until gdq did the run of this game and I was reminded that this existed and that it's one of the most me songs namiki's done (which is saying something...because it's namiki and he is good at making music that is PRECISE to my tastes). 7/4 part (cool) 6/4 part (cool) why would some one care about odd time signatures so much when all of the other things in the song are so cool "basiscape chords ('notes layed out nicely' - Haste_2, 2020)". constantly modulating and changing tonal center near every chord change, though that's like a standard of shmup music (especially basiscape (especially namiki)) and that's probably why so much of my favorite video game music is shmup music. my favorite element is the flute in the background because thats how it sounds like a forest while still being a shmup song with constant 16ths atonalish stuff that tests the definition of "consonant" I LOVE that layer but i like the flute also they're a nice blend of beautiful and tense! I love shmup music I love basiscape music!!!!! AHHHHHHHH! I LOVE THIS SONG

anime

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Licht (VS Ferry) is my 178th favorite in the contest! this position is probably not surprising. i guess the new granblue stuff (outside of azusa chiba's 10 second jingles as i mentioned earlier lol) hadn't impressed me from what i've heard, but this is the one of the 3 i ranked the highest slightly. probably because i'm not bothered by its production, the piano+violin parts are pretty! and i like how it is at least Sliightly Epic, well the other ones are too but in aa way i like less, or something.

Roll Me In is my 159th favorite in the contest! i've said it before but katamari is one of those things that everyone who likes similarish music to me likes, and i have never been able to get into it, and it makes me wonder what I am missing. maybe it's just that i have a hard time getting into really happy stuff as much (especially these days)? I do like (LOVE) the WEIRD katamari songs like blue orb. maybe i should take a deeper listen to see if i find anything else at that level to me. this is pretty typical of the sound, some things I should like on paper (interesting chill jazzy harmonies on epiano, particularly), i don't mind listening to it, it's just sorta foreign to me to imagine enjoying it as much as a lot of people with really similar taste to me seem to. this reminds me of jazzanova which is a band i don't know as well as i should. the sound of this is very cool regardless of how negative i might sound about it. I like jazzy things!

jazz!

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Servants of the Scourge (11th/56) / Big Blue (44th/56). not a hard toc choice at all
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I'd get Digimon Mystery Dungeon which is literally one of the top games I've always wanted to exist. perfect!
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Mechalullaby
Blind Justice Torn Souls, Hurt Faiths ~
goldenslaughterer

Don't speak her name! is my 149th favorite in the contest! this has grown on me, i used to only really care for the Morishita contributions to Fire Emblem...they're still the only things i get /really/ excited for, this doesn't come close to the portion of the soundtracks i care about (i don't hate rei kondoh, he's done a few FE tracks I like and I like most of Okami!), but i at least think this is alright. it's EPIC and has some Big Moments (mostly cool modulations) that feel cool. idk i don't think i have much new to say about this that i haven't said before. when the plucked strings and glockenspiel poke through it feels nice! i don't find slow orchestra music boring anymore like i did in vgmc12 when i ranked this really low. i mean i guess 149 is low but i like this field way more than average haha

Mechalullaby is my 130th favorite in the contest! the piano line in this feels SPOOKY. even though the chord changes in this are pretty straightforward, they don't feel like they are? they're really spaced out in a way that makes the familiar chords all feel fresh. This sound design is wonderful, bubbly sounds are cool, i love delay echoes!!! vocalist is singing in a vocal style that I like! BEEP BEEP BEEP sine wave having fun it feels like a Hitomi Sato pokemon song turned into a POP song on the RADIO. this flips between the relative minor/major a lot, which i often find difficult to find "effective" compared to stuff where the scales beneath have to change, but this manages to be like entirely the same diatonic scale the whole time and just changing the context around that scale has a lot of power.

wow!

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Second Dark Matter Battle is my 68th favorite in the contest! another track much like don't speak her name, song that keeps getting into contests from a OST I love but the song not being representative of what i like about the ost AND, just like don't speak her name, this has grown on me...well not really, my opinion on this has been all over the place (part of this has to do with initially judging from an HQ rip, but later judging based on really low quality uploads that made it hard to hear elements about the track i cared most about, and only realizing later that my initial introduction was way higher quality source and thats why i "used to like it but stopped liking it" but then later "started to like it again". all depends on how well i can HEAR it lol since my interest is so dependent on tiny details that get lost with low quality). I think also maybe there's a lot of bias against it because i like at least 75% of the ost (and pmd series music in general) far more than this song so it's always been a frustrating recurring contest rep for one of my favorite soundtracks/series even if I still like the song. anyways i've talked about this a lot already in the past, it has things i like, 4ths/5th parallel harmony in melody lines, REALLY cool big chords, big flute! EPIC. starts with the fun voice. I LOVE THIS SONG OK i've said most of what i want to say before i didn't even need to type anything here

Blind Justice Torn Souls, Hurt Faiths ~ is my 67th favorite in the contest! TOMOSUKE! I stopped exploring tomosuke music for like no reason, should get back to seeing what else he has that i do not know about that i might like. This is like if you made Bach music but turned it into something I love somehow. chord change at :30 is whooooaaa. has really cool subtle mixed meter rhythms in the harpsichord part as its kicking in at :40 which flows really smoothly with those chord hits and the constant 8ths. This is like if Umineko music waS REALLY COOOL (umineko music is really cool). 1:45 is TENSE O_o i'm going to be STABBED by the big church guy playing the harpsichord I like the vocalist and church organ is a fun instrument I like instruments. There's so many chord/key changes that hit at just the right moment. I think i tend to prefer this at the parts without the EDM drums but I LIKE how the edm drums are there because the contrast of those sections to "it literally just sounds like classical music" sections is necessary for the calmer moments to be effective (and vice versa). 3:27 is a very cool tense chord transpose on church organ angry moment and it's very scary and wonderful climax of intensity to this thing!! Amazing track, so many other details i could've pointed out. ermine showed me this a while ago and I had a reaction of mild positivity but the more I listen the more I like it.

the only "only 1 place difference" round 1 match I'm aware of. Needless to say, ultra close match!

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Strike the Earth (25th/56) / goldenslaughterer (20th/56). very close match. I like strike the earth more compositionally but goldenslaughterer takes it in terms of atmosphere and sound design. other shovel knight stuff would beat goldenslaughterer easily, then again other umineko music would make this a no-contest vote for umineko. could flip later if i change my mind.

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honestly all 3 matches today are very close! just barely prefer one over the other every time. could flip on any of them
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