Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 40! RoboCop / CosmicHero / XaaaCi / StrSunset / Connexion / Sunjammer

(+) Yeah! (+)

Title Theme
XaaaCi.
Connexion

Oh no I thought I would really like Cosmic Hero according to my favs bracket, but I guess I've never really been into the dark and intense Carpenter Brut songs...wait this isn't Carpenter Brut? Well I guess I still feel the same way about it where it's a bit too samey throughout with only brief breaks - there's probably some slower song from this game that I really like in comparison!

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Title Theme
Strange Sunset
Sunjammer Midnight Special

skulltrumpets posted...

I'd honestly kill to see what Dunn would pull off with hardware better than the game boy.

Toxtricity already posted Jurassic Park, but here's a soundtrack that showcases Dunn with virtually no hardware limitations:
https://youtu.be/Oos6f0Z9888
https://youtu.be/1I02bR1tRxQ
More at: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLczvCKCuIWz6IsqV_RvAg7yFaV4nJDxwT

Yay! Now you don't have to commit a murder!

Cosmic Hero
Strange Sunset
Sunjammer Midnight Special

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Cosmic Hero
XaaaCi
Sunjammer Midnight Special

Cosmic Hero
Strange Sunset
Sunjammer Midnight Special

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Cosmic Hero
Strange Sunset
Connexion

I think this is the first time in the contest where I actually despise one of the songs

Cosmic Hero
XaaaCi.
Connexion

Title Theme is a strangely melancholy track-- it's a pretty short chord loop and heavily pentatonic melody in a style I don't particularly like, but something about the mood of it makes it a bit more compelling to me than such a track would normally.

Cosmic Hero's overall sound is pretty cool, though I'm not as interested in its melodic elements. The sound and the mood it sets seems to be the point, regardless. What does it evoke? Uh, synthwave, I guess. And robots. Retrofuturism. (Like Robocop!)

Parsing XaaaCi as a Yoshitaka Hirota track with hymmnos elements rather than as a straight hymmnos track helped my appreciation of this track; with that thought in mind I found I was focusing on different elements of the track in ways that made them more relatable. Even if it happens a quarter of the way into the track, dople feels clearly like its climax-- the entire previous minute and a half is spent building up to that moment, a blast of unthinking, merciless rage. It's there to override everything else, like it's a neurolinguistic virus from Snow Crash. Everything after that is just post-hoc exposition and context.

The harmonies used in this latter section are still really cool-- they often avoid implying any specifically major or minor key, focusing on seconds and fourths and fifths, shifting a tone up and down, chords as impassive slabs of music, only breaking at the end to express sort of a 'why did it have to be this way' sentiment-- though that's not the sentiment the track leaves with, instead returning to Hirota's harsh drumlines and a sustained dissonant note to close. There's no hope to be found in this ending. The rhythm is similarly relentless, shifting but with constant forward movement-- the way the drums come in at 3:58 to shift your perception is pretty great.

XaaaCi is awesome in the dictionary sense-- I think if I'm in the mood to click with or listen to this track it's probably a bad sign. I'd rather be listening to it from a respectful distance.

I think I'm in the mood for it.

Strange Sunset has this chill opening and I'm thinking 'well, this is pretty nice.' It's only when 0:58's synth chords hit when I really get into it, an irrepressible head-bobber or foot-tapper of a track. The piano solo that starts at 1:42 is also fantastic. I think it's one of the most fun tracks to listen to in this contest.

I have a strange history with Connexion-- when I first heard it (late 2019? when collecting music for the vgm in 2019 list, regardless) my thoughts were pretty much 'nice synth ostinato, pretty cheesy melody and lyrics, wow the way "connection" is lengthened is super corny, I wish this had more energy and hit harder in the chorus'. A couple months in, I realized the song was not going away-- every once in a while I'd fire it up, like 'why not', and eventually the criticisms-- they didn't go away so much as they stopped mattering to me. Eventually I stopped listening to it, so when it showed up in VGMC15 I was like 'well this is a good test-- what remains now, the old criticisms or the old fondness?' and the answer was pretty much overwhelmingly the old fondness.

I dunno. This really is kinda cheesy, in a way I might be disparaging about in other contexts! We're none of us strict rule-based music-evaluation automatons, in the end (and I think we'd be incredibly boring if we were). The synth ostinato (which kinda serves as a leitmotif for the Shattered Connexion event as a whole, showing up in the Main Enemy tracks in this event) is still really appealing. The melodrama of the melody and lyrics work together and kinda get to me (in a good way). The chorus has its own quiet energy; I can imagine belting out AND MADE A WALL, A HEDGE BETWEEN in appropriate or inappropriate contexts.

All of which puts me in a frustrating position with Sunjammer. This is a really cool composition. It's grown on me since nominations; one of the things I really love about Shnabubula's work is the ways different layers show up with their own little melodic phrases and just work perfectly with the things they overlap with. Listen to that bass go! Listen to how it interacts at 0:20-- it's just awesome. There's so much to enjoy and admire just by focusing on those interactions throughout the track, and makes me reminisce about when I first heard some of Shnabubula's remixes-- like Mucho Dollar Care a Junk CIA-- and was struck by the same sort of feeling.

if XaaaCi and Sunjammer met in round 3 it would be DOPLE vs OPL

Whoa... days when I'm the exact opposite of kaonashi are so weird...

Cosmic Hero
Strange Sunset
Sunjammer Midnight Special

Cosmic Hero
XaaaCi.
Connexion
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Nex Machina - Cosmic Hero
Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel - XaaaCi.
Girls' Frontline - Connexion

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Title Theme
XaaaCi.
Sunjammer Midnight Special

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Cosmic / X / Special

this feels wrong to associate with "robocop" it makes me think of pony island and how thats presented

this song js just like synthwave

LOL its pronounced like xaki... this song is just like the joker (to XaaaCi., it's just street fighter ex plus a - standard sunset)

this song has no saxophone solo. abd before you say like. well theres no saxophone in the rest of the song so id doesnt make sense, there's a GUITAR solo but there's no guitar in the rest of the song so like what everr

this is like if donna burke existed in 2015

this is like if shnabubula existed in 1987
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RoboCop (Game Boy) - Title Theme [8.0]
Street Fighter EX Plus - Strange Sunset [8.0]
Caravan Boomer - Sunjammer Midnight Special [8.0]

Nex Machina - Cosmic Hero [6.0]
Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel - XaaaCi. [7.5]
Girls' Frontline - Connexion [7.0]

Is XaaaCi. supposed to be this compressed? Not usually a problem for me but the noise section just sounds really muddy, in a way that's unbecoming of this soundtrack.

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Nex Machina - Cosmic Hero
Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel - XaaaCi.
Girls' Frontline - Connexion

MATCH 1

I really like how RoboCop's Title Theme has this wistful feeling to it. It makes me feel like this would actually be a great ending theme because it has this feeling of finality to it.

Cosmic Hero's really cool! I like some of Carpenter Brut's stuff and this song definitely has that same appeal to me, especially starting at 0:34. I also really like what's going on at 1:32 where you have this countermelody-esque thing. I feel like I tend to like that kind of stuff. Strong match!

MATCH 2

XaaaCi has become a bit of an acquired taste for me over time. I remember disliking it the first time I tried listening to it a while ago, but now that I've given it more listens for the contest, I find myself getting more used to it. Perhaps it's similar to my gradually increasing enjoyment of Exsphere that I felt in VGMC13, but there's no way I end up liking XaaaCi as much as that. 1:32's probably the one part that I'll never get used to though lol. Once that part's over and done with, the song starts to get better and better as it goes on until 3:59-6:02 where my enjoyment of this song peaks. That part is so cool! I wish the rest of the song was like this! This is very much in the vein of "prog rock I like." Great vocals and drumming during that part. This is one of those songs that's the hardest for me to rate because my enjoyment goes all over the place throughout different parts of the song, so it's hard to give it a single numeric score or even rank it relative to others, which makes it difficult to decide where to put this in my daily rankings, but at least I'm not doing a full bracket rank with numeric scores attached because as nice as that would be to try one year, this song alone would be incredibly difficult to settle on a particular rank and score.

Strange Sunset's also a song I'm a bit mixed on. Not as much variance as there is with XaaaCi though. 0:58-1:27 and to a lesser extent, 1:27-1:42, are pretty cool, but the softer parts, while good as well, aren't as good as those parts. That said though, my favorite parts do loop quite often, and that added guitar solo at 2:39 is a nice touch. I forget if I found this match tough or not when filling out my favorites bracket, but right now, I feel like this is a tough match. I'm really torn on this right now actually lol, but I feel like XaaaCi on average wins slightly, so I'm going with that. Like I said, the variance in my enjoyment of this song makes it hard for me to make a decision like this.

MATCH 3

Connexion is a really nice song! Great vocals with some strong, emotional melodies.

Sunjammer Midnight Special's fine, but I don't really have much to say about it.

Connexion > Cosmic Hero > XaaaCi. > Strange Sunset > Title Theme > Sunjammer Midnight Special

Close middle 3...I think.

Cosmic Hero
XaaaCi
Connexion

Whoops, almost forgot to put my vote in. Eh day overall.

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Cosmic Hero
Strange Sunset
Sunjammer

not much to say today because I am TIRED and also a bit pressed for time
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