ReMix: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 'Lost Dark World'

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VERY impressive debut ReMix from Long Dao; he's been around awhile, but this is the first submission that's rock solid. Actually, it's beyond rock solid, venturing into territory that I personally wouldn't hesitate to label "pretty damn awesome." The ReMixer writes:

"This remix was inspired by not only the Dark World theme of Zelda but also the Lost World theme from Jurassic Park. I always found some sort of similarity between the two themes, and eventually decided to embark on the wild journey to remix the two themes into one. I had some help from my friend Jeremy Robson during the process. I eventually finished around April 2006, but got too lazy to upload it until now."

Before I talk about the mix, I wanted to point out a couple changes we've made to the site recently. You'll notice we've added composer icons to our master list, filtered lists, and individual detail pages. My hope is that this will help familiarize everyone - myself included - more with specific composers by putting a face with a name. I definitely learn visually, so I know it'll help me out. This is just one of a number of changes we've been making lately - exciting times! Now, onto the music... Long Dao's put together an original, compelling arrangement of a well-known theme - a challenge in and of itself - and done so with some pretty slick production values. From the outset, the dramatic percussion definitely gives you the Jurassic vibe he mentions, and the overall style is very cinematic. I overuse this adjective, I know, but it's the most appropriate word, so while I could peruse my thesaurus or try to concoct elaborate metaphors, it's better to call a spade a spade. And what a spade it is - LD's arrangement is substantive, at six and a half minutes long, and uses its time well, developing nicely and covering vast territory with broad strokes. There's subtlety here, at times, but the dominant motif is more aggressive, action-packed composition; Link's clearly having trouble with some hungry velociraptors, and Mr. Dao is happy to score it. Basically, this could have bypassed the panel, but we needed to check for similarity to the cited JP OST. Shariq writes:

"There's Zelda all over this, but we had to make sure. Good thing my sister is such a John Williams fan. Jimmy, I'm also in a state of WTF @ JP4. Anyway excellent work capturing the style of the score and developing the themes. I really enjoyed this a lot; this is how Zelda orchestral should be done. ;)"

Awesome stuff; a fresh take on a classic theme from a new face is always a good thing, and I'm psyched to see what Long comes up with next.

― djpretzel