ReMix:Final Fantasy VI "Day of Ruin" 6:56

Newcomer Dj ThirdEye (Thomas Shepperd) brings us nearly seven minutes of EDM/psytrance that's just as crazy as Kefka himself with this FF6 arrangement:

"I've been a fan of this track since I was a kid playing FF6 on the SNES. There is so much good music in FF6. This was one of my favorites. I wanted to do a fast-paced electronic remix of this song to mirror the chaos that is Kefka. Infected Mushroom was the inspiration for the style, and Nobuo Uematsu was the inspiration for doing the song. I used Ableton to mix the track. All synths were made with NI Massive, Ni Kontakt for the string instruments, and mastered with Izotope Ozone."

A couple things strike me as unique on first listen... it's longer than most mixes of this persuasion, for one, but there's also some dissonances employed throughout that ADD to the crazy factor & make things sound doubly sinister and a bit more interesting, compositionally. Staccato repeating synths at high speeds and an undulating, mind-bending soundscape are part & parcel with psytrance and the stated influence, but are nonetheless handled well, with some nice grit & edge on the synths. Nutritious writes:

"There are some off-key parts with the patterned synth sequences throughout the track (the synth in question first plays @ 1:18 ), which throws me a bit. It may very well a stylistic choice, so I can understand it from that perspective. I can hear the inspiration you've taken from some of the older Infected Mushroom tracks.

The arrangement is one of the stronger aspects of this track. The Kefka theme is adapted nicely to a 4 on the floor. I liked the transition into strings and gradual transition into the electronic section at 4:57. One could argue that this track is a bit empty-sounding in the soundfield at times, but to me it brings me back to the techno style music we used to hear in the late 90's... Good stuff, and an interesting take on the iconic Kefka theme."

It's sometimes helpful when an artist explicitly tells us that their use of dissonance was indeed intentional, because in some situations it CAN be unclear, but it works quite well in this case, at least in my opinion, and that's what counts. Chimpazilla had mixed feelings on some aspects of the arrangement, but was ultimately persuaded:

"I love that. Lots of nice details in this track, all mixed well. I happen to like the dissonant sections, they sound purposeful and I think that adds moodiness. I do agree it almost sounds too empty texture-wise sometimes, which seems an odd comment to make given the glitchy/sequency nature of some of these timbres. I don't care for the speedup at all. Regardless, so many unique ideas, nicely done."

Seven minutes is a long time to sustain a single-source arrangement at this pace, in this genre, and I think most judges felt things could have been trimmed down a bit without substantive loss and with the gain of perhaps a bit more focus, but it wasn't a showstopper in any sense of the word. It kinda adds a bit to the "madness" of it all, too ;) At any rate, the aesthetic here is unique, the arrangement is creative in repurposing "Kefka" into something at once recognizable from a melodic perspective AND lack of sanity, etc. but also completely different, and I hope to see more from Dj ThirdEye in the future!