ReMix:Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars "Tricky Labyrinth" 3:50

This contribution to Super Mario RPG: Window to the Stars from DjjD (Jacob Diaz) puts a chill, chip/glitch vibe on "Welcome to Booster Tower" and also incorporates some live trumpet courtesy Jake's friend... Jake. Didn't they make a movie about this? Diaz writes:

"I can remember this remix being just... a fun project. Plain and simple. However, as time went by, it got more complex, enough to the point where I asked my good friend Jake Groft to help me out with a trumpet solo. The results were awesome and it made the mix stand out even more than I thought it would.

P.S. As a shoutout to everyone involved in the SMRPG album... holy hell, what an awesome remix album! Great work all around."

I think the album turned out REALLY well; it's a big, challenging soundtrack, and so many artists stepped up to the plate with arrangements that echo the source tunes' playful creativity. The intro and subsequent glitch sound design elements here remind me of Ivo Ivanov & the stuff he does with Glitchmachines; very cool. I prefer this type of usage, sprinkled throughout a more accessible/structured (okay, fine: melodic!) composition, to pure, unadulterated glitch as a genre, where I tend to get saturated pretty quickly. Things are high-calber, chill, percolating EDM, transforming the Latinesque ballad source into something more cavernous & angular, then we get the trumpet @ 2'09" - very cool. It integrates nicely, and while I think there was room to have played some sonic games with it - filter sweeps, modulated verb, and/or multi-tap delays come to mind - it also works just dandy as an organic, unaffected foil to its more tweaked accompaniment. Liontamer writes:

"From the weird SFX opening to the ambient padding to the synths to the 9-bit stuff, and even Jake's live trumpet, you have a strong, varied arrangement here, Jake... Good sound design choices overall."

DragonAvenger adds:

"This track is a really fun take on the original. I appreciate that you didn't immediately go for a tango track, which seems like the obvious choice. Also enjoying that you don't go straight for the obvious connections throughout the piece, but the source is still in there."

I concur with both comments - this piece has some very diverse, but coherent, sound design going on, with Jake throwing some glitch elements in AND collaborating with Other Jake to spice it up w/ solo brass. The result is something special, new for both the artist (at least on OCR) and to me from a texture/timbre perspective, and like DA I also dig that the artist eschewed more obvious arrangement decisions for something "off the beaten path" - great stuff, inventive & slick!