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luna_manarHas anyone else listened to the recently released Secret of Mana: Genesis album?
I only acquired it today, and it...did things to me. It made something that, for me, is very old, very solid, and very much a part of me, feel like it was new all over again. I can count on my fingers the number of times this has happened.
It's strange to listen to songs that I have listened to thousands of times (sometimes the same one over and over for hours!), memorized note for note and track for track, and although there's no change in content or in spirit, they're new to me again. I'm listening so closely, but I know it will take just as long for me to process all the nuances of the new versions as it did for me to do the same with the originals, and that's really exciting for me. It's literally a part of my childhood I get to live over again without actually screwing with it or changing it in any way. It's a strange and amazing feeling, like a part of me that's been humming along just fine for years suddenly and unexpectedly hiccuped and rebooted. And it's not damaged, all the parts are still there, they're just suddenly a lot shinier than they have been, more like they used to be when they weren't so standard.
It's worth noting that that is more or less the effect Kikuta was going for when "remastering" the tracks; they aren't remixes. They are, note for note, exactly the same as the original .spc files from the game, but their instruments have been (carefully) updated, and the mastering redone. Even the reinstrumentation was done carefully to remain as true as possible to the original, while making those sounds richer and, for lack of a better word, closer. They sound like they rose up out of that little grey and purple box to hover right there in front of my face, where the limited space on a cartridge can't hinder them. No changes were made to the composition at all (even the thunderclaps in Prophecy have been gorgeously preserved).
Part of what's amazing is realizing how very complex some of the songs are, even though they sound sparse. The SNES had a tendency to muddle custom instrument sets (even the default set was pretty mellow, SoM's clear as a bell by comparison). Prophecy is a good example of this. On the SNES, as far as I could tell by ear, it only used four instruments at a time at any given moment. Genesis reveals this clearly not to be true, where a distinct difference can be heard between the voice sounds and flute, as well as the bell and steel synth during the bridge (I already knew this from playing with the sound channels in ZSNES and .spc to MIDI conversion, but most remixes I hear of this song completely fail to acknowledge it, I think largely because it's difficult to hear in the .spc and most people aren't so neurotic that they've ever played with sound channels in ZSNES and/or dumped the .spc to separate MIDI channels just to figure the individual instruments out). A lot of little details go into giving that song in particular the urgent, crossing-a-wide-open-empty-sky feel it has, and in Genesis, it feels like that sky has gotten even bigger. The echo doesn't drop off just because another sound got in its way, the flutter of each instrument is clear and you can hear all the little parts frantically dance around each other (there's a lot of masterful fluttering and rapid dancing in Kikuta's music and he's a fucking genius at weaving in the percussion at the same time; trying to mentally keep up with all the instruments in any fast-paced song is like chasing five or six butterflies at once, which is to say good luck). The new version, the crisper sounds, if possible, make me feel even smaller than I did when I first got to that point in the game. Even more like the fact I'm riding a dragon is irrelevant. I may as well be a butterfly.
By contrast, other tracks explode with the added clarity. Flight Into the Unknown and Meridian Dance benefit both from making it easier to hear all the instruments and from packing a lot more punch than the SNES originals. Instead of making the world sound bigger, they make it sound closer, more like it's spinning all around you. There's way too much in Meridian Dance for me to give it its analytic due without writing a 10-page paper on it, but maybe the greatest thing about it is that it no longer suffers from "sudden echo death syndrome." At no point do any waveforms just up and cut out (it really bothered me in the SNES version, to the point I don't like listening to it on earphones because I can't ignore it, and that's a shame and not Kikuta's fault; it was just a limitation of the SNES, which could only maintain 6 audio tracks at the same time, so if there was an echo effect on one of the instuments, and a 6th instrument tried to play at the same time as the other five, the echo effect would be dropped. This problem plagues a lot of really beautiful SNES soundtracks and it drives me nuts).
The crown jewel of the whole album has got to be Danger. To be fair, you really have to make sure you have some decent speakers that deliver clear (not just deep) bass as well as crisp highs. There are a lot of highs and lows and if you have a mediocre sound system you won't feel the full effect. The SNES had a very limited range of frequencies it could hit, so most of its instruments were muddied and sounded fine even on terrible speakers. This isn't true of this album, so if you listen to Danger on your tinny laptop speakers, be prepared for a disappointingly raucous experience. But assuming you're not doing that (you'd better not be), the delivery is excellent, which makes me insanely happy because I don't think I've ever met a single OCRemix of this song that I liked. Apparently only the artist understands how the song actually works. It's really easy to screw up, but that didn't happen here. Nothing was sacrificed. It maintains all the big bad character and chaos of the original, right down to the crazy slap bass and distorted xylophone and the end segment's angry grinding growl. At the same time, you can really hear just how insane the composition is. There are a million and one pieces to Danger, which is actually a pretty long song by boss music standards (which is a good thing, because how much old boss music was mind-numbingly short and simple?). I never get bored fighting to this music because it keeps changing and it's so very layered with so many different, but completely harmonious patterns and sounds I never stop noticing new things in it. In my opinion its Genesis incarnation was extremely well-realized.
People looking to Secret of Mana Genesis for a remix or homage album will be disappointed. Genesis is not a re-imagining of or tribute to the original music. Its one and only aim was to bring the original sound into clearer, bolder focus so it could be experienced all over again by an older audience who still remembers how it made them feel as a kid, and I think it accomplishes that. If I had one complaint about the whole thing, it would be that not enough songs were redone. Only 16 tracks out of the original 45 (yes dammit the load/save screen music is a track!) were redone. I would've liked to see Oracle, Star of Darkness, Dancing Beasts, Wish, Eternal Recurrence, Legend, A Prayer and a Whisper, and Eight Ringing Bells in addition to the (really good) tracks already on there. None of these are in Genesis, though. Maybe if this one is successful enough, Kikuta will do another one? One can hope.
If you played/loved Secret of Mana and haven't gotten Secret of Mana Genesis, well dammit go get it, or if you don't have iTunes go make someone else get it for you and turn it into mp3 or ogg (that's what I had to do). It's one of the rare occasions you're ever going to see an artist actually revisit and update his old material with a mind specifically to keep it true to its original character, and in my opinion, he did a fantastic job of it.
Interview with Hiroki Kikuta on Destructoid
I only acquired it today, and it...did things to me. It made something that, for me, is very old, very solid, and very much a part of me, feel like it was new all over again. I can count on my fingers the number of times this has happened.
It's strange to listen to songs that I have listened to thousands of times (sometimes the same one over and over for hours!), memorized note for note and track for track, and although there's no change in content or in spirit, they're new to me again. I'm listening so closely, but I know it will take just as long for me to process all the nuances of the new versions as it did for me to do the same with the originals, and that's really exciting for me. It's literally a part of my childhood I get to live over again without actually screwing with it or changing it in any way. It's a strange and amazing feeling, like a part of me that's been humming along just fine for years suddenly and unexpectedly hiccuped and rebooted. And it's not damaged, all the parts are still there, they're just suddenly a lot shinier than they have been, more like they used to be when they weren't so standard.
It's worth noting that that is more or less the effect Kikuta was going for when "remastering" the tracks; they aren't remixes. They are, note for note, exactly the same as the original .spc files from the game, but their instruments have been (carefully) updated, and the mastering redone. Even the reinstrumentation was done carefully to remain as true as possible to the original, while making those sounds richer and, for lack of a better word, closer. They sound like they rose up out of that little grey and purple box to hover right there in front of my face, where the limited space on a cartridge can't hinder them. No changes were made to the composition at all (even the thunderclaps in Prophecy have been gorgeously preserved).
Part of what's amazing is realizing how very complex some of the songs are, even though they sound sparse. The SNES had a tendency to muddle custom instrument sets (even the default set was pretty mellow, SoM's clear as a bell by comparison). Prophecy is a good example of this. On the SNES, as far as I could tell by ear, it only used four instruments at a time at any given moment. Genesis reveals this clearly not to be true, where a distinct difference can be heard between the voice sounds and flute, as well as the bell and steel synth during the bridge (I already knew this from playing with the sound channels in ZSNES and .spc to MIDI conversion, but most remixes I hear of this song completely fail to acknowledge it, I think largely because it's difficult to hear in the .spc and most people aren't so neurotic that they've ever played with sound channels in ZSNES and/or dumped the .spc to separate MIDI channels just to figure the individual instruments out). A lot of little details go into giving that song in particular the urgent, crossing-a-wide-open-empty-sky feel it has, and in Genesis, it feels like that sky has gotten even bigger. The echo doesn't drop off just because another sound got in its way, the flutter of each instrument is clear and you can hear all the little parts frantically dance around each other (there's a lot of masterful fluttering and rapid dancing in Kikuta's music and he's a fucking genius at weaving in the percussion at the same time; trying to mentally keep up with all the instruments in any fast-paced song is like chasing five or six butterflies at once, which is to say good luck). The new version, the crisper sounds, if possible, make me feel even smaller than I did when I first got to that point in the game. Even more like the fact I'm riding a dragon is irrelevant. I may as well be a butterfly.
By contrast, other tracks explode with the added clarity. Flight Into the Unknown and Meridian Dance benefit both from making it easier to hear all the instruments and from packing a lot more punch than the SNES originals. Instead of making the world sound bigger, they make it sound closer, more like it's spinning all around you. There's way too much in Meridian Dance for me to give it its analytic due without writing a 10-page paper on it, but maybe the greatest thing about it is that it no longer suffers from "sudden echo death syndrome." At no point do any waveforms just up and cut out (it really bothered me in the SNES version, to the point I don't like listening to it on earphones because I can't ignore it, and that's a shame and not Kikuta's fault; it was just a limitation of the SNES, which could only maintain 6 audio tracks at the same time, so if there was an echo effect on one of the instuments, and a 6th instrument tried to play at the same time as the other five, the echo effect would be dropped. This problem plagues a lot of really beautiful SNES soundtracks and it drives me nuts).
The crown jewel of the whole album has got to be Danger. To be fair, you really have to make sure you have some decent speakers that deliver clear (not just deep) bass as well as crisp highs. There are a lot of highs and lows and if you have a mediocre sound system you won't feel the full effect. The SNES had a very limited range of frequencies it could hit, so most of its instruments were muddied and sounded fine even on terrible speakers. This isn't true of this album, so if you listen to Danger on your tinny laptop speakers, be prepared for a disappointingly raucous experience. But assuming you're not doing that (you'd better not be), the delivery is excellent, which makes me insanely happy because I don't think I've ever met a single OCRemix of this song that I liked. Apparently only the artist understands how the song actually works. It's really easy to screw up, but that didn't happen here. Nothing was sacrificed. It maintains all the big bad character and chaos of the original, right down to the crazy slap bass and distorted xylophone and the end segment's angry grinding growl. At the same time, you can really hear just how insane the composition is. There are a million and one pieces to Danger, which is actually a pretty long song by boss music standards (which is a good thing, because how much old boss music was mind-numbingly short and simple?). I never get bored fighting to this music because it keeps changing and it's so very layered with so many different, but completely harmonious patterns and sounds I never stop noticing new things in it. In my opinion its Genesis incarnation was extremely well-realized.
People looking to Secret of Mana Genesis for a remix or homage album will be disappointed. Genesis is not a re-imagining of or tribute to the original music. Its one and only aim was to bring the original sound into clearer, bolder focus so it could be experienced all over again by an older audience who still remembers how it made them feel as a kid, and I think it accomplishes that. If I had one complaint about the whole thing, it would be that not enough songs were redone. Only 16 tracks out of the original 45 (yes dammit the load/save screen music is a track!) were redone. I would've liked to see Oracle, Star of Darkness, Dancing Beasts, Wish, Eternal Recurrence, Legend, A Prayer and a Whisper, and Eight Ringing Bells in addition to the (really good) tracks already on there. None of these are in Genesis, though. Maybe if this one is successful enough, Kikuta will do another one? One can hope.
If you played/loved Secret of Mana and haven't gotten Secret of Mana Genesis, well dammit go get it, or if you don't have iTunes go make someone else get it for you and turn it into mp3 or ogg (that's what I had to do). It's one of the rare occasions you're ever going to see an artist actually revisit and update his old material with a mind specifically to keep it true to its original character, and in my opinion, he did a fantastic job of it.
Interview with Hiroki Kikuta on Destructoid
(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-22 01:05 am (UTC)