LogFAQs > #962749326

70st
Game: Celeste
Title: Forsaken City (Sever the Skyline Mix)
Composer: Lena Raine, Maxo
Nominator: @AndywoodCubeGmr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LbXujfutWk

I've always liked maxo. And the first lena raine song I heard (confronting myself) was an instant favorite too. I've not played this game and I'm not sure I ever will get to it despite liking earlier games by the developer. But I've watched enough people play it to at least understand the context. This song honestly is fairly out of place but not in a bad way. More like a "this is a special version of this thing in this game" way.

Maxo turned into one of the densest and brightest arrangers to have come from the chiptune scene. Its really strange what a contrast this is from his earlier stuff. It compliments Lena's composition well though

Certain types of analog-inspired/aligned synths always sounded HOT PINK to me, and those are all over Celeste. But this takes a lot of those same colors and turns them into actual glowing neon

I find this song difficult to talk about and took a while to figure out why. I think its because my main reason for fondness for it is because it reminds me of other music I already like (other maxo music) . This is like "maxo zone act 2" I've already heard act 1 and know I love it, so what do I say about this one that's new to it!?

Well anyways why I even like his style in the first place I guess is a good place to start. Bright extended harmonies and relentlessly full and futuristic production. Maxo goes the whole spectrum from gritty raw punk-like approaches, to the most "overproduced" electronic landscape. I like both extremes for very different reasons, most people seem familiar with the maxo songs that are more like this, maybe unsurprisingly as they're essentially his version of pop. Unreasonably complex and dense pop ("unreasonably" used facetiously here: i think this element is good)

this song is very Pointy, almost every element is thin, sharp, only lasts a fraction of a fraction of a second. it kinda reminds me of the common artifact of midi sound replacements, where the samples instruments are replaced with are all too short for how long they were meant to be played (think Sonic Chronicles). except deliberately using that very tiny, microscopic sound for effect. and applying the cleanest and most colorful production to it to make it so you'd never guess that without all that processing it was actually just Sonic Chronicles The Dark Brotherhood - Nocturne

i was saying maxo's arrangement style compliments lena's composition style well, i think the above paragraph is exactly what i meant by that. lena's naturally full of long, stretchy, soupy sounds. maxo's the exact opposite and when you layer these together, they sorta fill the voids of each other, especially when within the same ost and switching between each other, but still clearly the same song being referenced

on a related note here's one of my favorite maxo songs to have ever been made and it is more recent than this topic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-EtVZditFM