Preliminary Match #10

Listen to all five songs and select the one you like best.

Command & Conquer - C&C Thang
Final Fantasy VIII - Silence and Motion
Drag-on Dragoon 2 - Sadness
Unreal Tournament - Organic
Aquaria - Bright Waters

C&C Thang: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Silence and Motion: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Sadness: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Organic: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
Bright Waters: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:

Let's pretend this matchup never happened.

Originally Posted by Mo0

Let's pretend this matchup never happened.

QTF. A random point of the finger and "Organic" it is.

A surprisingly tough match-up for me. I definitely favor the melody in Aquaria, but I like C&C Thang as well for being so delightfully odd. Unreal is good too, but I don't see it aging too well. So the coin clip is between Aquaria and CC...

CC.

Out of all the great songs in FFVIII, how in the hell did this one get in? Either way, easy vote for my Organic. It's one of the only in your face, adrenaline pumping tracks that I ever liked. That's why I nominated it.

Let's see why someone says this matchup should never happen:

Command & Conquer - C&C Thang
It's an insult for me to have to hear this.

Final Fantasy VIII - Silence and Motion
I recall the melody. But the special effects are getting on my nerves. Really, hearing this while I'm driving the car would distract me too much.

Drag-on Dragoon 2 - Sadness
This is a better song to listen to. I see a huge world by listening to it. It gets repetitive though.

Unreal Tournament - Organic
I give you that, the percussion is nice. But the melody is mindless.

Aquaria - Bright Waters
This is a very uninteresting song.

This matchup is pretty bad. I'll just vote for Drag on Dragoon 2.

Organic is pretty solid stuff, even if it's not aged too well and it's far from Andrew Sega's best. Gotta give it to that since the other tracks are kinda mediocre (except for the C&C track which I hated so much in the game that I turned off the music entirely).

Command & Conquer - C&C Thang
The long awaited song that combines the worst of C&C with the worst of Michael Jackson. I'm not a fan of either, but combined their dark powers threaten to overwhelm us all. Let this instrument of evil be cast back into the Casio forge from whence it came.

Final Fantasy VIII - Silence and Motion
Given my dislike of SFX in songs, you'd think this tune would plummet right to the bottom of my FFVIII playlist. Actually, though, I love it--and judging by others' reactions, I might be the only one! But that's okay. The beeps and squeaks are musical and quirky enough not to matter much, and the long, developed melody (it goes through three distinct phases!) has always made me smile. Quirky and unappreciated; good to see someone thinking outside the box when it comes to FF noms.

Drag-on Dragoon 2 - Sadness
The real sadness is that I just can't get into these draggin' dragoon OST's while they seem to pump people I like and respect full of white-hot joy. But I'm sorry, random harp arpeggios and drum hits just can't cut it.

Unreal Tournament - Organic
UT won the very first SotW waay back when, which always makes me want to give it a hug or something. This tune's got some serviceable techno beats, for sure, though there's nothing even remotely organic about it.

Aquaria - Bright Waters
Pleasant, but underdeveloped and thoroughly unmemorable.

A bizarre lot, to say the least.

1: Final Fantasy VIII
2: Unreal Tournament
3: Aquaria
4: Drag-on Dragoon 2
[...]
∞: C&C

Wow I only played Command and Conquer for a little bit, but this does not seem to fit at all, and I don't know where it is from within the game. Horrible.

Shit, I don't even remember Silence and Motion from FF8 either. Probably for good reason.


Frankly, Aquaria was the best of the worst.

Wow, "C&C Thang" sucks. Worst song so far.

Ah, I couldn't ask for a better song to lift my musical spirits than "Silence and Motion". It's one of my very favourite FFVIII Uematsu tunes, actually. I love the bleeps and bloops, I love the futuristic harmonies and I love the entire atmosphere encapsulated. Really makes me think of a futuristic metropolis. Ultimately, an absolute joy to listen to, anytime, anywhere. (I hate voting for an Uematsu tune but I think I'll have to here >_>)

I've heard a lot of good things about Drag-on Dragoon music, so I was excited to hear "Sadness". It was quite pretty on a musical level, but kind of boring on a compositional level (lol doesn't make sense). The instrumentation is awfully crisp and lush, but the tune itself doesn't really go anywhere, or at least doesn't go there far enough. Despite the name, I consider this somewhat fluffy.

"Organic" is insane levels of awesome. It really gets me motivated to do...I'unno, something. It sounds technological in a way, which just boosts the upbeat-ness to lofty heights. A great piece; I'd love it if it advanced.

"Bright Waters" is awful puuuuurty, ne? It's so pretty I think I might fall asleep due to the ineffable prettiness. ZzZzZ ('K, it's nice and pleasant, but it didn't hook me whatsoever..maybe sleep-incuding is a good thing in terms of effect, anyway?)

"C&C Thang" - 0.5/10"
"Silence and Motion" - 9/10
"Sadness" - 6.5/10
"Organic" - 8.5/10
"Bright Waters" - 6.5/10

Originally Posted by katchum

Final Fantasy VIII - Silence and Motion
I recall the melody. But the special effects are getting on my nerves. Really, hearing this while I'm driving the car would distract me too much.

Yeah, that's a fair criteria to judge a song on.

Y'know, I came into this thread thinking there's no way I'm going to vote for the FF8 song, given its squeaks and squawks. Uematsu doth tried too hard on giving out a technological vibe for Esthar, methinks.

But after listening to the other four pieces, heh.

Originally Posted by katchum

Final Fantasy VIII - Silence and Motion
I recall the melody. But the special effects are getting on my nerves. Really, hearing this while I'm driving the car would distract me too much.

But songs that distract you while driving are generally the BEST songs. If I listened to "Yet... Oh See Mind" from God Hand while I was driving, I'd probably fly off the road, plow through 15 pedestrians and punch another 7 into orbit before I even realized anything was amiss.

That said, none of these songs are awesome enough to make me do that while driving. The only distraction they may serve to my driving would be putting me to sleep at the wheel, and that goes for all five songs. You'd think with this being the first group of 5 songs, the chance of coming across good stuff would be higher, not severely lower.

C & C Thang... no comment; Silence and Motion is one of the most effective location tracks I've ever heard, from ominous opening to futuristic bleeps and the wonderful melody it is Uematsu at an unusual level of inspiration... for once; I love the Drag-on Dragoon soundtracks but this track seems a bit soul-less and fairly uninspired in comparison to other tracks in the series; Organic is quite interesting with some great rhythmic electronica bits, it veers away from the generic electronica which is a good thing, a very good one in fact; Bright Waters was spectacularly soporific.

Gotta go with S&M.

Some people love Silence and Motion, some people hate it; I feel general indifference to it. That piano version is totally unrecognizable, though, in a good way.

Anyway, it's a two-horse race here. Aquaria is pretty but lacking the extra little something that makes it special. Sadness is a slightly aimless as a composition, but it's purtier and crisp.

1) C.C Thang - quirky weirdness gone wrong. nothing attracting in the song at all for me.

2) Silence and Motion - boring and dumb sfx. I can guess what kind of place this track was used in, nobuo's done better.

3) Sadness is alright. More on the ambiance side.

4) Organic is cool. The guitar(?) used during that main melody part just screams MOD music at me for some reason (so does that background synth stuff around the middle of the song, but not necessarily during the intro).

5) Bright Waters has a nice melody.. at one point, I thought I heard a bad attempt at Concerning Hobbits though..


Since the FF track is close to winning, I'll have to go with Organic. Bright Waters would have had my vote under different circumstances.

Since it has been catching a lot of flack, I think I am obligated to say that "Silence in Motion" is musically one of Uematsu's best. It saddens my heart to see this sophisticated and wonderful piece of music lambasted time and again, and I think people should give it a couple of serious listens before rejecting it outright.

I find it resoundingly less than surprising that a zero-poster has suddenly appeared from the ether, only to dedicate his first post to defending the virtues of a Final Fantasy song.