ReMix:Final Fantasy VI "Following Forgotten" 3:33

Patrick Burns' "Rare Respite" from Donkey Kong Country 2: Serious Monkey Business was a highlight of the album for me, and is a track I revisit often. There's a comfort and warmth to that arrangement that just make it a very welcoming, pleasing piece of music for almost any occasion. His take on 'Narshe' from Balance and Ruin is a fundamentally different beast; displaying substantial versatility, this ambient ReMix has a far more textural emphasis, and creates an unsettling, tentative atmosphere. He writes:

""The Mines of Narshe" always struck me as an incredibly moody tune. It's got a jazzy swing, Locrian elements, mysterious mine sounds - it's just weird and nice. When I started creating this remix, I had been listening to a lot of Machinarium's soundtrack, which is also a somewhat left-field kind of beautiful. So, I tried transporting the spaced-out, ambient nature of that soundtrack on to "Mines of Narshe." "Following Forgotten" is the result! It's made mostly with stock Logic Pro, some EWQLSO strings, a few FX samples, and lots of reverb/delay. My only regret is that I didn't make it longer. Serving suggestion: listen to this at a lonely, patient, low-lit time of your day."

Good advice, and it's also interesting to hear that this approach was directly influenced by another game soundtrack. Wondrous, exploratory, and filled with shimmering, resonating, and reverberating textures, listening to this mix is the aural equivalent of walking into a giant cavern filled with all manner of rare, bioluminescent flora & fauna, each revealing a discrete, alien beauty upon inspection. If they did a gritty reboot of The Goonies, it's the type of music that would perfectly capture a more serious sense of spelunking wonderment & awe. zircon writes:

"I have a soft spot for any sort of atmospheric or ambient music: anything with airy pads, guitars swirling in reverb, jazzy harmonies, and shimmering textures. I've also been a huge fan of Patrick's work since I heard his Donkey Kong Land mix in 2006. As a result, this is one of my favorite arrangements on all of Balance and Ruin - it does an amazing job of immersing the listener in the misty, melancholic feeling prevalent at the beginning of the game. The sound design is fantastic, incorporating not just generic "warm" synth timbres, but also acoustic elements, bell tones, and twinkling effects to fill up the entire spectrum. On the other hand, the instrumentation is never too dense, and Patrick always manages to evoke a desolate mood throughout."

Agreed; there's a great blend of plucked, scraped, hammered, & blown attack transients that dot the evolving soundscape, and again I'd make the biological comparison to a safari, sighting different species along the way. Fascinating, enveloping stuff.