indigozeal

Here's an interesting remix case study: where an original composition and its remix are used in the same scenario in two successive installments in a franchise. Both score their title's curtain-raising escape: "Unary Game," a slowly flooding cabin within a ocean liner in 999; "Ambidexterity," a ready-to-plummet elevator in Virtue's Last Reward.

"Unary Game" opts to grab the listener by the lapels immediately, announcing itself with an explosion of frantic energy. The composition alternates between periods of relative stillness dominated by a fast beat and a techno crackle in the background to a melee of wailing horns and techno spaz. The instrumentation includes elements - the pseudo-horns; metallic clanking - that recall the ambient noise of a freighter, emphasizing the danger of the setting in which the hero has found himself. It accurately sets the stage for waking up in a dangerous environment and immediately having to think both calmly and logically and fight for your life.

Its VLR remix, "Ambidexterity," also accompanies a life-or-death scenario, but instead of its forebear's wake-up burst of techno energy, "Ambidexterity" is quiet and controlled - a slow burn. While "Unary Game" alternated frantically between two modes, "Ambidexterity" is dominated and unified by its beat, the lead-in to and a near-constant presence throughout the composition. The beat is far more deliberate and far more at the forefront than that of "Unary Game", pulsing instead of galloping; while various disruptive elements - quick scats; dizzying stretches of synth; a siren taken from "Unary Game" - may enter onto and leave the soundtrack, they're more spaced out, more transient: they provide momentum to the piece but are robbed of power in their relative isolation, and they never gain the upper hand. It's musical code for a setting that's slow to reveal itself - like in "Unary Game," there's a mystery in progress and a threat present, but this environment isn't going to give up its secrets so easily.

The contrasting use of their compositional elements contributes to the other big difference between "Unary Game" and "Ambidexterity": the latter never gives the listener catharsis. Like that elevator threatens to do, "Ambidexterity" just keeps going down and down, slowly building and building, without reaching a climax or outlet for its energy akin to the frenetic patches of the original "Unary Game." It's effective at setting the stage for something bigger, more dangerous and more profound and not as easily resolved. I'm in the minority that doesn't believe Virtue's Last Reward delivers on that promise, but you can't say that composer Shinji Hosoe didn't do his part.
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