ReMix:To the Moon "Everything's Alright (Short Steps Mix)" 3:08

To the Moon!! Larry & I got to experience this game as part of judging for the IGF audio jury, and it really has a lovely, emotional soundtrack that sells the atmosphere & narrative. Laura Shigihara's contribution, arranged here by Dale North, is a fantastic piece, and the rest of the soundtrack by Kan Gao is excellent as well. Anyone looking for a console RPG-style indie with a lot of heart & soul and some beautiful music should check it out. It's great seeing indie games getting attention from arrangers, and it was also fun listening to Dale speak at PAX Prime a couple weeks ago on the survival horror panel - big fan of Fatal Frame, he is ;) I'm glad that his role as Dtoid EIC hasn't prevented him from submitting to OCR, and ACTUALLY he's branched out into game scoring as well - Dragon Fantasy Book II was recently released on PSN, and it's got original music by Dale North! So basically... Laura has a (sweet) mix on OCR from the Z25 album, Dale has numerous mixes himself, and they're BOTH also game composers in their own right. I think the cosmos has finally reached equilibrium, the last Metroid is in captivity, and the galaxy is more or less at peace. It's pretty damn cool, in other words. The artist writes:

"I did an arrangement of Laura Shigihara's "Everything's Alright" from the indie game To the Moon. I was hooked from the first listen. Beautiful song, beautiful game. Please listen to the original song first! Equipment used: Korg Kronos (internal sounds only, no plugins!), done solely on a MacBook Air!, ME-1NV Great River preamp, Neumann TLM 49 mic

I did a quick cover, giving it a bit of an R&B ballad spin, complete with layers of background vocals. I took some liberties with the melody, changed the key, and did some chord substitution, but, outside of that, I stayed pretty true to the original. I also tried to keep it "pretty" in keeping with the original, though I don't know successful I was at that. The bass in the intro is so stupid that I can't help but giggle every time I hear it. Why did I do that?"

Rhetorical ;) I think he kept it quite pretty; Larry had some insightful comments that sum up my own sentiments:

"It's Dale, it's smoove per his usual awesomeness, anyone who hates it because "OMG vocals," I poo on them... Dale's had some really smooth, lady-melting R&B stuff on OCR before, and everyone will have their personal favorites, but I really think this one takes the cake. This goes really well with his Xenogears and EarthBound mixes.

As someone who's now editor-in-chief of a major gaming website like Destructoid, it's awesome that he still carves out time to make music. I know Laura Shigihara really enjoyed this rendition of her music, and it's easy to see why with Dale's very heartfelt delivery. When you do something like this, you've gotta go all the way."

And he DID; check the stylized vocal breaking @ 0'50" - and then those impeccable backing vocals make things legit supervelvet... Production is full & smooth; remember when Augustus Gloop fell into Wonka's chocolate river? I mean, obviously it didn't work out for him, but for a couple seconds he was probably livin' the dream. This is like the musical equivalent of swimming in a delicious river of rich, creamy chocolate, but without the gluttony & self-righteous midgets. That's a complement, in case it wasn't clear; congrats to the artist for another superb R&B vocal mix, huge kudos to Laura Shigihara for penning such a beautiful melody, and mad props to Dale for also making his debut as a game composer!