ReMix:Paper Mario "3,770 m Later" 3:46

New experimental/EDM Paper Mario mix from Michael Hudak:

"My favorite PM64 song. I wanted to have the beat be at least as interesting as the source tune. I more or less lifted it from an incredible track called "37 Years Later" by Lena Andersson, which I'm sure they lifted from something else, and on and on it goes. 3,770 m also happens to be the height of Mt. Fuji, so there's your esoteric title explanation.

I tried to not overthink the panning in this one. Usually, I'll manually pan every little detail, but the lion's share of it here is done with delays with various L/R settings that I could just set and forget. The toughest decision I had to make in mixing was deciding on the reverb for the low pulse wave arp runs, and I ultimately concluded that they sounded better dry in most places, existing in the same space as the kicks. The first version of this ReMix was all reverb-drenched aside from the middle section. Eventually, I did a complete reversal of that, mainly because the arps got too smeared at this tempo.

• "Over Shiver Mountain" arp runs and the xylo section are obvious in the ReMix. Strings copy the xylos eventually. Maybe less obvious is that from 0:53-1:00 in the original is featured in my mix from 1:32-1:47.
• 0:07-0:14 of "Freeze!" is used in my mix from 0:57-1:15 & 3:05-3:22.
• Towards the end of my mix, there are a couple of short breaks with homages to something else, too. Do you know who it is?

Thanks, as always. Long live the judges. Long live rock."

Hudak always brings it in the sound design department, and this is no exception - I specifically like the decision to invert the reverb application, as this works better with a clean/clinical presentation that descends into a capacious cavern around 1'30" & reemerges at 2'32", after a barrage of reverberant percussion that reminded me of STOMP. You've got chromatic percussion, clickety-click sample slices, water FX, crazy-crunchy distortion at 2'39", whole buncha drum thwacks, and... strings? Flute? Plus some synth tones that open & close things out and sound not unlike standard DTMF. At times instruments will appear, fire off a single riff, and then disappear, lending a passing Warner Bros./animation-scoring type of vibe, but the overall jam is eclectic, engaging, at times disorienting, but never dull. Liontamer evaluated:

"What can I say? Hudak goes brrr, we get fun mix. :-)"

Fun indeed; playful, from both a production & arrangement perspective, and the two are really inseparably intertwined in this case. From the recurring computer glitch motif (e.g. 2'58") to the satisfyingly modulated distortion/saturation sprinkled throughout, this does an excellent job walking the line between accessible & unorthodox, and I loved every second. Enjoy!