LogFAQs > #936947618

Final Destination
An Endless Desert
Chloe

-(Battle Tower is my 184th favorite in the contest! I do like toby fox, but i like most of gamefreak more than him, significantly, I wasn't too thrilled about his inclusion in their stuff because I like mainline pokemon's sound team so much how it is and felt his dissimilar style would get in the way. Also maybe in part because I think Toby excels most when writing to his own stuff, and his tracks without their ability to interact with each other in a larger work really makes them lose a lot of what makes his work special and detailed (and "detailed' is imo is decidedly what this track is the antithesis of). Though that said I actually like Little Town Hero's ost fairly well (likely heavily helped by that Hitomi Sato worked collaboratively with him and she is easily my favorite GameFreak composer, but still, the 'obviously toby' stuff i liked there too), but this. This is easily my least favorite song in Sword/Shield, by far. To be fair that's not saying all that much because like, I love the ost for the most part, but this song is ALSO in my 2 least favorite battle themes toby's ever made as far as i can remember (the other is also represented in this contest...twice). and I do not dislike toby fox as a whole! but if this was what was trying to sell me on toby fox i'd assume i hate his stuff. definitely would take like literally any deltarune song over this and most undertale or toby homestuck over this too. Just an extreme letdown on both the fronts of "what i look for in pokemon music" and "what i look for in tony fox music" simultaneously
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Right off the bat I can't take it seriously with how ICE CREAM TRUCK(fl81) that brass fanfare starting it off sounds, & the fakeness/undynamicness of the sound is incredibly gross to me, every note the same exact volume and expression level on a theme that simple. Once it gets in i like it more...sort of, but I also hate "stuff where the kick-snare-kick-snare drums are going TOO FAST" in songs that are trying to be epic intense songs SO much. It redefines the track as "goofy carnival song" in terms of how i perceive it and so then it registers as the same category in my head as like "epic metal cover of really happy chirstmas song" which is my least favorite thing i can think of. I might instinctively wince more at how stupid I find this song to be more than any other song in the bracket even if I like other songs in the contest significantly less. This is some of my least favorite instrumentation&mixing I've heard in any song in this contest also, it's impossible to pick out most of the elements because they all sound like someone throwing all of the objects in a kitchen onto the ground while the kitchen is on fire and burning all recognizability of any layer to melted gbisomdlvxlkcber j. Simultaneously unpleasant and unsatisfying in sound, i can often actively dig grating unpleasant sample choices and whatever (See: Final Destination) but this doesn't feel deliberate at all and is just a clash of disgusting painful mud to me with none of the jankiness even being interesting jankiness
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The reason I have it as high as 184th/192 though is...i can not deny that it IS successfully pretty EPIC and I like that : ) I like it melodically at some parts, has lots of DORIAN MODE which I have praised a bunch on a number of songs in the contest now I think. Dorian Mode is a very DESTINY scale that works well for "emotional intensity" and I appreciate the more melodic layers here for that. 1:41's cool...and I think the way this often brings back ideas from earlier in the track later and uses them in different ways is mildly cool. The build and flow is very cool. Just wish it were...bits of music I actually liked that it was 'using in cool ways' instead of bits of music that make me think of toddler playing two notes on a glockenspiel. I'm trying to be positive I promised myself I would not be too cruel with this writeup because I very deeply, vehemently despise this song, even if it does some things I like. Part of the frustration is that it's invading a series I love the music to and prefer every other song from this game & admire gamefreak's normal sound team. Part of it's frustration that of ALL things toby fox could've contributed, it was one of my least fav things I've heard from him. And toby fox has done stuff i LOVE and listen to regularly and enjoy every second of. So it's just a huge letdown. I might be placing this kind of high for how much i'm trashing this, since I do prefer it over the stuff below, but my visceral reaction of negativity toward this is more intense here than the songs I actually like listening to less. but I also do not deny that there's a lot of things I appreciate here so it is getting points for those things
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This is a very long writeup for a track I feel very negatively about, i don't like talking about what I dislike as much as talking about what I like, but I wanted to articulate my thoughts on it as carefully as possible, expressing that there ARE things to it that i like, and explaining that part of my visceral frustration with it is the context behind its existence, and how much of an exception this song is as far as opposite reaction to what I would hope from either "pokemon" or "toby fox". Very not for me & more than most music, because of what it is, I really, really wish it was)-

-[Final Destination is my 53rd favorite in the contest ! I'm a geniu .s haha, when I listen to this song all the marimbas go into the inside of my brain. Hirokazu "I like complex chords" Anto, he'sso smaart aand vcan control the world. This is pretty short but that doesn't stop it from being amazing and full of things i love. Chord progression is super interesting and involves the kinds of strange ambiguous modulations I like. Even if a lot of the chord changes are just literal full-on transposition, because of how much is going on and how funkily the actual tonality is presented through like 5 interacting layers it feels a lot less straightforward than it is. It's very hard to tell /what/ it's just modulated to for me, 2 semitones above? below? That ambiguity is the kind of stuff I live for. This is strangely "messy" and something about that's really cool. a lot of Hirokazu Ando music to me feels almost like "overly precise" but this is like the opposite while still retaining the same funky dense chord filled fusion funk fun. The instrumentation here's very much to my liking too.]-

-{Easy ..match...}-

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Wings of Terror Phase 2 is my 189th favorite in the contest! oh boy more of this type of song that is a kind of song i really dislike, except unlike battle tower it doesn't really have much redeeming for me at all. AZUSA CHIBA PLEASE SAVE THE GRANB