Listening: iTunes/Apple Music, Amazon
Music info: VGMdb
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From November 2020 to November 2021, Bandai Namco posted a few Ace Combat series remixes on their YouTube channel by in-house composers and series mainstay Keiki Kobayashi in a series called… ACE COMBAT REMIX. They finally decided to release them all[1] as an album you can purchase with money!
This is your standard themeless arrange album where the arrangers all just did whatever they wanted: Rio Hamamoto’s tracks both feature electric guitar and vocals, Shogo Nomura wrote some glitchy DnB with piano, Keiki Kobayashi dropped some EDM and jazz and rock, etc. I’m not super duper into a lot of the arrangements, but it’s not bad and it’s also not often at all that Ace Combat music gets officially arranged, especially not in a style that’s not orchestral.
Recommended tracks:
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“The Liberation of Gracemeria – Dance With The Moonlight Remix” (Keiki Kobayashi, arr. Mitsuhiro Kitadani) has a nice layered section at 2:12 and some gentle string writing at 4:20
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“ZERO -‘Dedicated to Mr. C’ remix-” (comp./arr. Keiki Kobayashi) was dedicated to Chick Corea, who inspired the original composition, a connection which I think is made clearest by the way the Spanish guitar lines in the original were recontextualized as electric piano noodling throughout the piece
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“Farbanti -Drunk Remix-” (Tetsukazu Nakanishi, arr. Sho Okada) is some extremely funky electronic lo-fi stuff
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“The Dead Sea -Unknown Sea Remix-” (Hiroshi Okubo, arr. Shogo Nomura) drags the original, atmospheric source tune kicking and screaming into the Glitchy Neurofunk Zone
Oh, and they decided to post a new remix in the series for the first time in two years, on the same day they released the album. Naturally, the new track does not appear on the album. Thanks, Bamco. The new remix is from Ace Combat 7 and is by Rio Hamamoto, so therefore also features electric guitar and vocals. ↩︎
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