LogFAQs > #938429316

Zeal Continent
Massive X
Despair of ELFERIA

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

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

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

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

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

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

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

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

time