ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask "Machine Wash" 3:46

Michael Hudak debuted back in November with our first vaporwave mix, and follows it up with a very different, but still experimental & unorthodox glitch/electronic take on "Majora's Mask," filled with clicks, pops, whirrs, & all manner of synthetic noisedom:

"Inspired by the music of the Raster-Noton label, especially that of composer/sound designers Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai. It's a little far-out, so maybe a reference track might make sense of what I was trying to do with "Machine Wash." Also, about 60% of the sounds here are from the absolutely awesome Glitchedtones library. They had a big holiday sale, which led to what was in my head for well over 2 years finally getting made.

I went through several iterations of this, each one less extreme than the last in terms of high-frequency dBs. I mixed this primarily with Sony MDR-7506s, but the average OCR listening might be using earbuds, and I don't want to, uhh, kill them. I'm hoping this current version is acceptable!

It was a fun experiment to contrast the bone-dry and ultra-wet sounds here. Hopefully, they juxtapose in all the right ways. This piece is based much more on (poly)rhythm and "riffs" and less on melody than what I usually do, so that was fun to dig into as well. I'm humming the Astral Observatory theme (from earlier in the game) at the end, because why not get whisked away through a dungeon of waterways, alarms, and frayed wires, only to pop out of a fountain thing and see some random guy walk by?"

This is the type of sound design-heavy work I'm used to hearing in modern TV openings, and reminds me most notably on OCR of Redg's work. It's sinister/suspenseful, and focuses on patterns-within-patterns to orient the listener in the overall structure, in lieu of a more explicit melodic backbone... which is a fancy way of saying it's not for everyone, I suppose ;) prophetik music writes:

"what a great track this is. i don't think it'll ever be anyone's favorite remix, but it's absolutely solid in that it accomplishes what it set out to do in a really interesting and unique way.

one of the things that musique concrete like this can struggle with is connecting with the listener. it's easy to just be totally noise and not truly make something that's listenable and able to be related to. this does a great job of using a motif (the opening rhythmic pattern) to give the listener something to hold onto throughout the track while still going a bunch of different places and exploring a bunch of different ideas.

really creative work here. i love it!"

If you didn't A/B it with the source, you might assume the arrangement to be quite liberal... however, it's pretty easily identifiable, and it's more a question of the original being relatively percussive and incidental itself. Michael's taken that skeleton and turned its charming lofi sample-based drums into a futuristic, pointed, & pronounced arsenal of bits, blips, clicks, and other coordinated symbols, like morse code with a larger & robotic timbral vocabulary. It's not a genre/sound I'd consume in large doses, but it's something different I can still get into & behind, and it strikes me as another unique sonic foray for the artist, representing sounds & styles we don't see as often. Unusual, creative, & enveloping stuff!