ReMix:Castlevania "Simon's Madness" 2:27

We now continue our spooky detour moseying down Belmont Way as we have the second ReMix of a trio of OCR debuts! After an initial attempt that just needed an extra nudge over the top, French newcomer Onirik Dreamer (Karim Ajroud) debuts with a bumpin', thumpin' burst of dance energy for Castlevania's boss theme, "Poison Mind"!

"I wanted to make a more energetic and electronic version of this theme while keeping the general atmosphere of the original track.

Thanks to Larry for his support, that's what motivated me to review the song. This is my resubmission. Thanks."

Happy to take a bow at being the encouragement needed for Onirik to resubmit this one. There are countless promising tracks that we'd love to get resubmissions of, and I'm hoping Karim does the same for several other strong initial submissions he's sent in. We may be blunt and critical, but the judging process is always meant to lift you up, not beat you down! :-)

After the first version was narrowly sent back due to the overly repetitive ostinato, Onirik easily scored an unamimous approval thank to original writing additions alongside stuttering and doubling the melody up with rhythmic variations, a double shot or even triple shot of improvements that resulted in a much more infectious, vampiric groove! As one of the Js whose previous NO vote was whipped into a YES by the revisions, prophetik music articulated how Onirik Dreamer obtained a magic crystal by successfully slaying the ears of the evil judges panel:

"my original vote was around the need for there to be more to the arrangement, as it was too simplistic.

0:36 is a lot better now. shifting the arp out of the forefront is a huge positive there. the track is still clearly based on that original, but it's not just the arp slamming away. the arp coming in at 1:16 feels like a nice return rather than "oh man, even more of this?". shifting it then right away to the more bell-like synth and stuttering it in and out is a great idea as well.

thank you for taking our (long-winded) criticisms to heart. this is objectively a better and more listenable track now."

The original version had a lot of strengths before, but Onirik's added techniques were like a rosary of protection against rejection the second time around. Karim did a commendable job varying up the presentation of the "Poison Mind" melody with different leads and textures, along with various SFX inclusions, and tweaking some rhythms, to keep things fresh. A short and sweet example of getting solid variations out of a limited source tune, all for a memorable debut by Onirik Dreamer. Get your groove on and sink your fangs into it!