ReMix:Yoshi Touch & Go "Baby Blue Sky" 3:34

We're proud to announce the release of our 59th FREE community arrangement album, Esther's Dreams!

This one is very personal to me, as artists from the community came together & celebrated the birth of my first daughter, Esther Fiona Lloyd (2013-12-19), with a wonderful collection of mellower/lighter VGM arrangements for kids of ALL ages!

You can grab the whole four-disc album in MP3 (zip) or lossless FLAC (torrent) & learn more @ http://esther.ocremix.org - please help us spread the word and share, especially to gamer parents & parents-to-be! Liontamer & Chimpazilla co-directed this album, but my sister Emily Lloyd actually suggested the concept; Larry Oji writes:

"Before djpretzel's daughter Esther was born, Dave's sister Emily emailed me wondering if I could coordinate a baby-themed album as a celebratory surprise for the baby shower. I loved the idea and the lullaby focus was an obvious choice. That said, I'm a relaxed kind of guy and took my time; being completely honest, I also didn't want to jinx anything before the little bundle arrived, but envisioning this being released after Esther's successful first year of life really resonated with me and gave the community ample time to come up with some fun and relaxed pieces. We privately shared the community's work with djp for Esther's first birthday, and now that Esther's two AND joined by bouncing baby Sarah, we're finally ready (and possessing enough free cycles - barely, I've got my own daughter now too!) to release this joyous musical effort to the community at large."

Larry & Paige have their beautiful daighter Robin now, and my wife & I celebrated the birth of our SECOND daughter, Sarah Jean Lloyd, on February 4th of THIS year, so everybody's just having babies left and right, basically, and the release of this album is long overdue :) I'd like to personally thank Larry, Kris, my lovely sister Emily, and all the artists who came together to make this happen... it's really something special, we've been listening to it for a while now, and it's one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for me & mine... I try to make OCR about the community and not myself and stay out of the limelight, more or less, but it's nice to get this type of attention and it means a lot to my family, so... thanks :) Chimpazilla (Kristina Scheps) adds:

"I became a judge on December 13, 2013, and six days later on December 19th, djpretzel became a first-time father to beautiful Esther. During a flurry of new-judge chatting, Larry casually asked if a few of us could throw together some baby-friendly tracks for Dave, to celebrate Esther's birth. Larry was looking for about five tracks, to be completed within two weeks or so. Haha! This was just a few days before Christmas and MAGFest, so the response was lukewarm at best. Busy people, busy time of year.

At MAGFest, halc and I hatched a plan to collab on a track from Yoshi Touch & Go that totally fit the bill for the baby concept. We got the track ("Baby Blue Sky") finished by February, but ours was still the only one. Fast forward: one enormous mass-email written by Larry, much bugging of Larry by me, and one full year later, and we had 32 lovely baby-friendly tracks we presented to Dave for Esther's first birthday! The response to the call for tracks was tremendous, everyone was super-enthusiastic, and we received enough varied tracks to create three separate discs: Playtime, Downtime, and Sleepytime, with a mini-bonus disc of Sillytime. We've got music for every baby mood!

Congratulations, Dave and Anna, on Esther. She really is the most beautiful kid I've ever seen (besides my own kid, OF COURSE). We hope you enjoy these tracks, and we really hope both Esther and Sarah enjoy these tracks."

We certainly have, and will continue to :) We start the mixflood off with the mix Kris mentions above - she writes:

"This track came about in such an interesting way. I had already remixed a source from Yoshi Touch & Go ("Cloudhopping" with timaeus222), but I have always loved the "Sky Area" source. Larry suggested writing a baby track to celebrate Esther's birth (such an awesome idea, Larry!) and he mentioned doing another Yoshi tune featuring Baby Mario. "Sky Area" was the obvious choice. Then I met Drew at MAGFest, and he and I spent some time with Wes and Will listening to some remixes, including "Cloudhopping." Drew liked "Cloudhopping" and mentioned that he had always wanted to remix the "Sky Area" source. Coincidence? I think not! So I asked him to join me and "Baby Blue Sky" was born.

I was originally concerned about how our two distinct styles would combine. Drew's first pass on the WIP I had started kinda freaked me out! My soft babyish track was suddenly chippy/glitchy! But we managed to meld the two styles together perfectly. It is much more interesting and unique now, and Drew and I both love how it turned out. We shared arrangement and mixing tasks extremely well and fairly (since we were able to share the file and plugins), and we finished the track off with some SFX so that it would have an "African savanna meets outer space" feel. I sure hope to do more collabs with Drew in the near future! Drew and I hope you enjoy "Baby Blue Sky." And welcome to parenthood, David and Anna, you're in for quite the wild ride, the best one ever."

This is the type of collaboration where you can still hear the artists' individual identities clearly, but they're also blended effectively... in other words, not the type of mix Kris or Drew would have put together individually, only possible through the meeting of minds, and thus a unique & unexpected experience! The intro briefly reminds me of American Beauty, breezing before getting chippier & more melodic... love all the sequencing flourishes and the very active, playful basssline. This is the first of two mixes we're posting from the first disc of Esther's Dreams, "Playtime," so it's less about the sleepy-drowsies and more about the happy-sillies... Yes, this is how parents end up talking. Larry writes:

"I'm honored Kris helped this effort become what it is, not just through keeping the momentum going, but also collabing with Drew to develop this bumpin', bubbly 9-bit ReMix from a game where you're - wouldn't you know it - tasked with safeguarding a baby. The music-box style instrumentation takes this a long way into lil' kid-friendly territory, and I love how halc's 8- and 16-bit sampling works so effectively in combination with that, keeping things sounding playful and nostalgic. She says she got it from Freesound, but it sounded like Kris worked in what I THINK is the Vincent Price "Thriller" laugh at 2:22; you get a pat on the back for somehow (quietly) sneaking the king of horror onto a baby-themed album without creating cognitive dissonance. :-D"

Whenever I see the phrase "touch & go" I think of the song by The Cars, but the NDS platform-puzzler had some worthy tunes that Kris has paid and now repaid homage to with different collaborators, both times with great results. Enjoy the mix, check out the entire album, and remember that you're never too old... or too young... for amazing music!