LogFAQs > #938913836

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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