ReMix:MiG-29: Soviet Fighter "Power Glove (It's So Bad)" 4:32

OCR Newcomer Dj CUTMAN (Chris Davidson) has been doing quite a few different things in the world of VGM - he runs the GameChops label, performs at a wide variety of events, and of course makes his own remix-centric arrangements. This collab w/ Ben Briggs is our first mix of MiG-29 and uses a combination of sampled material, glitching & FX, plenty of chiptune components, and some all-too-familiar dialogue from The Wizard. Did you know I saw that movie in the THEATER, when it originally came out? So old. But I digress; Chris writes:

"The inspiration for this remix came from a long discussion with fellow VGM fans on Facebook. A friend commented that the opening riff from MIG 29: Soviet Fighter was awesome, and after hearing a clip online, I couldn't get it out of my head. I ripped the opening song from the NSF file and made a quick beat from it. I was satisfied for the time being, until Ben Briggs showed me a demo he was working on. It has a french electro-house feel and bassline that totally hooked me, and I asked if he wanted to collaborate on MIG29. After a weekend of sending stems back and forth and tireless tweaks to the mix, we ended up with this track; A rowdy, noisy, gritty electro-house track worthy of shooting down enemy fighters. In attempt to troll, I pulled a sample from the film The Wizard in to the track, and just like that, Powerglove (It's So Bad) was born."

Palpable writes:

"Not sure this will be straight YESes, but I dug this and think the sampling of the original was fine because of how tweaked it was. There was a lot of crushing and re-triggering going on and it gave this a pretty different feel. Certainly this mix stands apart from the original while being recognizable. The Wizard sampling is pretty cheesy (gotta love an ad masquerading as a movie) but seems to fit and is used sparingly. Cool stuff, bros."

This is actually closer in nature to the traditional definition of a "remix," so it did warrant some extra scrutiny and standards reconciliation, which the indefatigable Larry Oji provides:

"There isn't anything in the standards that explicitly says you can't go a more sampling-heavy route that includes substantial other original contributions, modifications, and/or other enhancements. The standards really just say you can't do overly simplistic and minimal contributions, i.e. MIDI rips and basic drum additions. Most people who directly sample original audio just lean too heavy on using it with little-to-no creative original contributions alongside it. And most people that use a source tune integrated with other elements don't do much work on them, which is why so many old Bubble Bobble OC ReMixes now belong to OC Removed.

Well, I guess we have something here that works on a sampling-heavy level. There's lots of original writing used on top starting at :14 that adds a new dimension and integrates well with the original audio sampling. The retriggering of the source beat (starting right at :00) was structurally conservative but that and the production techniques used do alter the character of the rhythms and sound; pretty interesting stuff there. The source lead retriggering (first used at 1:01, basically original/super liberal writing using that sound) was interesting as well. It's an interesting approach mostly building original writing on top of an ever-present, evolving source beat, but the sum of it ends up working. Difficult formula to pull off. It's so bad. ;-P"

Certainly not our usual fare, but as Larry says, it's impressive that something more closely resembling a traditional remix was able to incorporate enough interpretation and arrangement to pass the panel. Grats to Chris & Ben, kudos on their many VGM-related endeavours, nice to see more obscure source material being reppped, and intriguing that anyone was able to walk the line between remix and arrangement successfully!