LogFAQs > #936977739

Final Destination
An Endless Desert
Chloe

-toby fox takes on pokemon music-- by writing startlingly safe, kinda generic toby fox music. this kinda bugs me on principle in a couple of ways. maybe his direction was to write whatever battle music suited his fancy for a battle tower, but toby fox is definitely capable of working in different styles, arrangements, musical motifs. he's capable of subtlety. why a track that feels so oddly out of place, and that blares aggressively and somewhat obnoxiously from the get-go? but maybe that's sort of the point-- this doesn't really have to fit into the aesthetic of the rest of the game because it's a track you only hear in the postgame. so then my second objection-- why something so safe in composition? the part that really sticks out to me is the underlying drums and guitar patch-- they feel like well-worn territory for him, like he threw on a loop he made a year ago and riffed a simple melody on top of it. this fits in too little where it should, and fits in too much where it shouldn't. 'hear me! for I am such and such a composer. above all, do not mistake me for someone else.'
-I have to say I'm pretty unaccustomed to the original final destination track. and that's a good thing-- this feels pretty fresh. the marimba that kicks in at 0:32 is pretty awesome. there's no real central melody here, so it's all up to the groove to carry things, and it mixes things up just enough to keep me interested.

-wings of terror feels deliberately cheesy, which is fine with me (though not really my favourite thing). I'm less fine with the muddiness of this arrangement and mix-- the overdriven electric guitar feels like it muddies up the low end, and the vocals sit a bit too far back in the mix (for a track that seemingly wants to have them be a central feature). some noble brass section wants to express itself every once in a while but gets kinda flooded out by the guitar. really I think it's the guitar that's the biggest culprit. they could probably use a leg up in the sound design department. I mean, hey, Azusa Chiba's there now, right? I'm sure she could help. I think melodically this does what it wants to do, which is to say it's kinda cheesy like the aesthetic. I think that's why my objections with the mix are more prominent in this case-- a track like this really needs to nail its production, and I feel like it missed the mark.
-going into this I wasn't sure what I was going to write about endless desert. 'oh, it's that reich-y minimalist composition and style I like so much. 7/8 time. cool climactic moment at [timestamp here].' end writeup. but I went through this track again, a bit more thoughtfully. I love the almost playful ambiguity of the rhythm of the first part. my first gut feeling was to say the rhythm kinda divides itself into segments of 8 and 6, mostly driven by the heavier notes of the piano-- but it's still shifty, almost guileful. it starts off with minimal instrumentation but builds itself and before you know it (1:09) it goes into this delightful section that expresses itself-- both melodically and dynamically-- quite strongly. you then hit the first real touchstone of the track-- the rhythm firmly establishes itself as 7/8 for the first time, and the melody of the pan flute floats along inquiringly, asking a question that the track waits to answer. that's because almost everything except for the drums drop out, so that the track can slowly rebuild itself-- but with strings as the base this time, following a progression that fits perfectly with the track but is substantially different from the first time. and then it builds into the same mini-climactic moment! it feels almost like sleight of hand. then some slow cello leading into the true climax of the piece, the moment where everything snaps together and my favourite part of the track by far-- 3:43. this is the answer to 1:09 and the payoff of the piece, a sort of melodic resolution. I love the upward motion of the sustained notes over the next eight bars (and the way they start to shimmer as they move up), as though the whole track were moving heavenward. it's really beautiful. (ocremix once did an interview with christopher tin-- the composer of baba yetu, one of my all-time favourite vgm pieces-- where he remarked that by design, baba yetu is constantly modulating upward. I think that sort of upward motion, done well, is something I really like in music. [note that endless desert is not actually modulating in this instance]) the denouement of the track features the slow cello-- the instrument in this piece that actually most evokes a desert to me-- and a reiteration of the rebuilding of the layers via marcato/pizzicato strings, though even here there's a little wrinkle because the layer of clarinets has persisted, giving them more prominence before fading out with the same piano rhythm it started with. it seems strange to make this comparison here as opposed to with bolt & sword yesterday, but it's this track that I actually liken to imbrium-- not aesthetically, but in structure and emotion. repeating offset rhythms and layers that shift around, keeping the track uncertain, except for moments where things line up-- including a big payoff at the end-- that exist to drive the point of the track home.
-apparently I did have a lot to say about this piece, and it's wonderful to me that despite having heard this track dozens of times before today, I still find new things about it that I find wondrous.

-the GOLDEN SLAUGHTERER. this track is sinister like its name. I think that dark, almost warped feel of the intro is real cool and some of that carries over to the rest of the track. the sound effect at 0:47 randomly reminds me of ffvii mako reactor. (it's not really the same sound-- I checked) basically a lot of this is a slower version of one section of dreamenddischarger-- or, rather, ded incorporates a faster version of this motif-- and that probably has a lot to do with why I like it.
-in a complete reversal of the previous, this is lively, earthy, happy. solid work from dr. DJ Totoriott, m.d. by day (and rogue agent TOTTO by night), always ready to provide an injection of rhythmic world music. usual dosage of cool chord changes like 0:19 and 5/4 time. take two in the morning and two before dinner
-tough match