Tim Forsyth - TASK III
82%
UPDATE:
Task III ++ is up on the site, I think it is a much improved mix.
I had a blast arranging this and I put a lot of effort into the drum programming, which is something I'm not usually very good at. The original has so many intricate little touches buried away across the voices and it was fascinating to pull this all apart to see what was going on.
I was aiming for the style of an 80s TV theme, which I hope comes across but I do think I rushed this out.
Every night over the past few weeks, I'd spend a couple of hours on the sofa picking apart the SID, trying ideas out, but, I put all my efforts into the arrangement and not enough time into the mix.
When you listen to the same thing 50+ times, loudly on headphones you truely believe you've got something awesome so this is lessons learned for me, go listen to something else for a while, maybe a few days and come back with a fresh perspective.
That said, even if the end result is a bit uneven and flat, I learnt a lot, and it was so much fun piecing this puzzle together.
Technique
Artistic skill
Nostalgia factor
Overall rating
This is a hard SID to crack because it's so intricate and so complex, and it's also high-paced. If you listen carefully, this remix is a really good effort, with lots of the subtleties of the original present in this remix. The somewhat chaotic nature of the original also comes through very well.
I find it hard not to compare it to Ocean's excellent version from 2002, which I think absolutely nailed the instrumentation and the arrangement, too. Listening to Tim's version and Ocean's version back-to-back also reveals that Tim's version lacks a lot of punch, which I think can be fixed in the mixing department. All in all, my hats off to Tim for taking a crack at this SID and because he obviously poured a lot of effort into his remix, and the result is a pretty darn good piece.