Home Again

This past week marked the final round of the World Warrior Remix Royale, which pitted contestants against each other in the name of Street Fighter remixes. Round 3 of the Shoryuken bracket brought in an entry by DusK, who gave the material the heavy rock treatment. The Sonic Zone Remix Competition was in the process of setting up its tournament, giving out the roster spreadsheet and encouraging future entrants to enjoy the Remix Royale in the meantime. In the realm of SolidComposer the “do what you do” compo promised a very relaxed approach to music making, and perhaps because of this the number of entries remained at zero.

LLCompo: Battle 14 elevated the participants to “The Sky” and provided a dictionary definition of the heavens above. Kay Faraday uploaded a “Captain’s Announcement” in which WVI mumbled through the speaker system about the plane’s imminent crash. The round featured its usual regulars: Tilde entered co-op mode with Underscore for a fusion of chips and strings; blink364 served up trance, hard drums and an assortment of blips; Saif presented his characteristic metals stylings. A number of tracks expectedly contained “sky” in the title such as Delphinus’ “Up in the Sky”, MKC’s “Skymall”, and intense intents’ rather imaginative “ssssskyyyyy”.

JHCompo on Tuesday unintentionally continued the Cast Away-like storyline of LLCompo by taking a raft on a “Moonlit Ocean”. Clunkst went so far as to call his composition “Wilson”, which he jotted down on paper during class beforehand. swordofdestiny made some magic using the applause sound from FL Studio amongst ear-catching chords. Tomapella’s provocative “Raft Porn” takes a gentle groove of synths and floats it over an ambient beat. Clockwerk made his way to Oahu in reverse and breakbeated along with an array of glitch effects, thus proving that the ukulele can in fact get the party moving.

ShinyBoom slung back on his “Electric Caustics” for a moody, eclectic mixture of electronics while liquid wind evoked a distant choir and bells for his “murmurs of the moon”. At the end of the night skyndileg sent up a stirring speech in tribute to a fallen vessel, which was particularly poignant given the recent re-release of the film Titanic. The ensuing voyage was such that it caused SonicThHedgog to experience the same “Night” thrice: his track that melded dance rhythms and rock guitars was short and fun enough to warrant being listed three times due to an upload error.

Thursday’s OHC tightened its wheels securely to the frame and prepared for a “Driving Competition”. LOLitslewis started things off with a “Genre Defining Intro” in the style of Randy Newman, whom coincidentally the organizer starla is not fond of. The round thus roared off into the late hours with JackShine’s return to OHC after several weeks joined by a pack of bees, and Zovi sending up an equally stinging wall of sound. After General Mumble unmentionably titled track and JackTHerbert specifically telling the audience “Don’t Listen to This”, CJthemusicdude turned the compo on its head by providing a game show quiz as his entry, running at 14 minutes.

The round featured its share of weathered veterans: Chickenwarlord had to suffer a fire alarm going off for most of the time allotted; Arcana turned on his Xbox 360 for a racing game backed by his own arpeggio-filled dance track; DDRKirby(ISQ) stunned the crowd once again by doing a dual homage to A-zu-ra and starla; and Bren produced his fabled brenchords that never fail to disappoint. Probably the most standout take on the theme came from sci, who broke the fifth wall by making an entry in which he hangs back to listen to the other entrants: in “The Drive to Compo” he simulated the music styles of Zovi, DDRKirby(ISQ) and dusthillguy.