ReMix:Delta "Wings of Glass" 3:17

We went all of 2017 without a C64 ReMix, but 2018 is preventing a repeat of such shenanigans early, with Platonist (Jonas Loman) giving us an old-school chip/EDM psy-trancey take on Rob Hubbard's Delta soundtrack, which itself includes references to Philip Glass's soundtrack to Koyaanisqatsi:

"Another one that's been in the works for a while, but only for about a year. I've been looking through my work folders lately to find songs and/or remixes that are almost finished. I think mainly because I've reached some kind of crossroads now, after having finished mixing the band's debut album. I want to get things done and move on, I suppose.

Anyway, I never played Delta myself, since I never owned a C64, but growing up in/around the demoscene/tracker scene in the late 90's and early 00's, I found a .xm version of this song by wire that I listened to a lot. Once I found the originals, I was even further impressed by Hubbard's take on this famous Glass work. I've always wanted to remix it, and now it's finally done.

Cheers!

P.S. I actually made a monophonic cover of the arpeggio part of this track on my first Nokia phone back in the day and used it as a ringtone. :)"

It should be noted that if the Delta piece in question were solely an arrangement of a film soundtrack, it wouldn't meet our submission requirements, but Hubbard used Glass's theme in one small bit, and the melody & guts of the piece are original, though they gel quite nicely. Judges struggled with production vs. arrangement, as some felt the highs needed EQing & the general sound palette a bit staple; Sir_NutS summarizes the prevailining sentiment of approval, with some reservations:

"A bit weird for me to hear the psytrance-styled beat and bass carrying this song, as the other elements don't sound much like what you would find in a psytrance song. It even sounds more like something from Eisenfunk and other EBM groups to me. But in the end I think it works in a weird way. A lot of the sounds are vanilla, but the arrangement and crazy cuts and melody lines make up for it in my opinion. This is a case of a solid and fun arrangement vs non-ideal production values... and I think I'm leaning towards the arrangement and techniques adding more value than what the production is taking away."

I agree, though I see why this was a tougher call; it takes a good bit to get going, but once it does, Jonas's creativity shines through. For my money, the cheeky mid-air hang at 2'47" & the crazy preceding run alone make it worth your time. Good, fun stuff with some playful accompaniment work as the mix progresses; great to hear more from Jonas, and always a pleasure to see the Commodore era represented on OCR!