ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "Awakening of the Forest Sage" 4:05

For today we've got a DOUBLE DOSE of Zelda from two artists each returning with a sophomore/follow-up mix. We start with Furorezu (Daniel Florez), who brings us a stripped-down post-rock take on "Lost Woods" that oscillates between clean simplicity & wall-of-sound lament:

"A few years ago, I started finding songs like Lashmush's "Breaking Point" from 2014's Harmony of Heroes and So many tears' "Searching Friends" from Final Fantasy Tribute ~Thanks~. I loved the clean guitar style from "Searching Friends" and the dramatic slow build-up of "Breaking Point," but I wasn't able to find more songs like them for a while because I wasn't quite aware what genre they fell in or if they even fell into the same genre.

Last year, I discovered through Spotify that they could be classified as post-rock and begun listening to bands like God Is An Astronaut and If These Trees Could Talk and I became inspired to create something in their styling of slow-tempo, clean, bright guitar tone leading to slow, distorted guitar.

I found myself leaning to adapting "Saria's Song" to post-rock because I found that it had a melody that could be very fitting to adapt to such a style since it could either sound somber or happy depending on the way it was played. I finally got around to playing around and recording my ideas once I found the RAT2 distortion pedal from my local library, which allowed me to give my song the oomph required of the build-up I had been humming for months, but also had a warm tone and long sustain, since my other distortion options would have felt too inadequate due to their more gritty sound more apt for something like thrash metal or lacking the oomph I wanted for the rhythm and lead parts. Once I had the distortion all settled, it was just a matter of recording my idea, which I was able to get sorted sorted fairly quickly since this had been floating around in my head for months, but I ended up very pleased with the results.

I worked on this based on the feedback and made changes to the structure of the song in order to make it less stale and, at the same time, make it build up over time. Most instruments were re-recorded and I completely reworked the mix to address the production problems mentioned in feedback. I'd like to give a huge shoutout to Juan Medrano (Sixto Sounds) and John Stacy (Corno Porno DiGiorno) for helping me out with learning how to actually produce something."

Good, fine gentlemen to get advice from, no doubt! This starts simple and I was worried that it might remain a little TOO simple, but the soft/hard contrast becomes apparent and works rather well, stripping the core melody down to something raw... I agree with Daniel, it's a good choice for a post-rock treatment. This was also revised & resubmitted based on panel feedback, and given how interesting & fitting the genre adaptation is, I'm glad the second version cut the panel's mustard; Gario writes:

"Ooooh, I remember this one - it's the track with that weird detuned guitar in the beginning. Comparing against the old version this is so much better in terms of mixing and production: the bass is nice and healthy, the drums are mixed great, and nothing gets washed out. I give Sixto & John Stacy 100% props for giving you some solid advice, since this really rose to the challenge we presented some time ago.

The performances are a little on the loose side of things, with the lead guitar sometimes not landing on the beat when it's supposed to, but it's not something that'll prevent this from being posted, either - just be aware of the issue and improve your performance technique for next time around. :) Yeah, I liked the idea before, and I think the execution is great this time around. Thanks for giving it another go - here's hoping to see you on the front page soon!"

Even the loose timing could be considered an affect of the genre, going for a punk/non-chalant attitude; I dug the increased FX & intensity with metal-style kick repetitions towards the end, and found the overall mix to be surprising - starts off with a very basic, intuitive meat & potatoes take on a familiar theme, but by the time it's over, feels like a very expressive & essential vision which needed to happen. Kudos to Furo for stickin' widdit & incorporating feedback - good stuff!