LogFAQs > #962486568

79rd
Game: Fantavision
Title: MOONY
Composer: Soichi Terada
Nominator: @rwlh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-31ZXyUaGU

a lot of people i'm close to are big fans of Soichi Terada in general, and i don't really know much about him other than that he worked on ape escapes and is known as a dnb guy in general, but i do like what i've heard! at the time of making this topic i hadn't really become quite alerted to the name at all, so the composer listed didn't stand out to me as significant at the time, but now that I know what other music he has that i can draw comparisons to, that explains a lot!

i'm not entirely sure if this is the exact sound here, but one of my favorite synth presets on any synth you can find it on, is "fifths lead" or any variant of it, especially the roland incarnations of it, and i believe some version of that's exactly that cool high sound you're hearing at the very start here. it's not a very common sound to be used, even though it's part of the general midi standard so is on like a trillion different synths. this is probably mostly because it's hard to use in a way that most would say sounds good (an instrument that in itself is always more than one note, has limited uses by nature), so i'm very thankful whenever i'm able to notice it in something! the echo of that sound with those bouncy rhyhtmic delay timings is wonderfully fun too.

the other big sound i'm most fond of is all the synth pad chords in the background. they have evolving filters as their tones sustain, they morph between slightly different versions of themself organically, and really fill the space with a syrup of dreamy pleasure. i associate that sound (especially as it relates to dnb/jungle as a genre) heavily with super monkey ball, but also "light" from kirby air ride.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si0lThmO5To
(*frustration expletive* you CAN TELL that i made this writeup before the historical gilva account closure. Link attempt 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4CoHFembBk
)

and on the super monkey ball comparison topic: I can't remember the first exposure to dnb/jungle i had, but I do know that despite being obsessed with electronic dance music in the 90s/early00s as a kid, this style felt fairly foreign to me.

Around the same time as each other (~2003) I picked up "super monkey ball" and a Christmas cd called "the reindeer room: a Christmas chillout". They both had a fair amount of dnb and the style...blew my mind!? I had never heard music with these futuristic thick harmonies that make me FLOAT IN THE AIR (where there are beautiful fireworks in the air at night and you can see the moon) before. And the rapid drums atop something so chill somehow paradoxically made it even more chill...and energizing! At once! (this also really does remind me quite a bit of specific super monkey ball songs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qmVkI5PS78
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkZ45dnnQRI

at the time I was really into Orbital which had some stuff kinda in the zone but not exactly i guess, but I was very late to this true incarnation of dnb/jungle as a genre for real compared to other electronic dance subcategories. orbital was more like a dark industrial future usually. i did like a lot of trance music that was more uplifting and optimistic melodically, but it didn't have these giant expansive harmonies that took me to a jetsons-style future city above the clouds in this way. but super monkey ball and that christmas album put me in THE SKY or SPACE, into a very optimistic future in heaven above the clouds. The style evokes "sky", things that are high up, the ground being a distant concept, just as much. so i think it works really well for a game about fireworks for that reason

I used to regret being somehow so late to the genre since it's now one of my favorites. But...maybe I'm glad. It was late enough in my experience that this never felt like a boring and default experience. To the contrary it's pretty much hard embedded in my mind. now that this style represents Future. NEW. Even tho it's from the 90s

I'm glad that when I hear breakbeats and stuff on top of extended chords, that it takes me to the future. Instead of taking me to the 90s.