VG Frequency

On January 19, 2008, Joshua Morse, along with fellow video game arrangers Anthony Lofton and Posu “po!” Yan, released a free album called Ragnarok Online : Hybridism, arranging nine tracks from the Korean MMORPG Ragnarok Online. The game, composed by the Korean sound team SoundTeMP, has its share of fan arrangements by Japanese artists, but has thus far not had many arrangements on the Western side.

Morse did the most work, being personally involved in each of the nine tracks, and each of the arrangements has the same groove flava as his OCR material. My biggest problem with the album is that some of the tracks feel listless, just kind of coming and going perfunctorily. Part of that comes from the sound side, through the use of weak sounds (the guitar in “Nano East” is the most prominent example) and relatively flat production, leaving most of the dynamic changes to come only from instruments coming in and dropping out, which doesn’t always happen that often. Oddly, I did enjoy the extremely low-key “Watery Grave,” which uses its slow lack of energy to create a more ambient groove, with some nice EP and guitar licks. It felt intentional in that case, whereas tracks like “Ancient Groover” felt like they meant to do more than they actually did.

However, the groove bias is strong in this one, and when everything clicks, the result is pure sex of the musical kind. The track that sticks out the most is “Out of Curiosity,” the one track which all three arrangers tackled. It’s also the only track that features the saxophone stylings of Lofton in a soul blazing solo, and backs it up with rapid pan flute action and some nice lo-fi synths. “Samurai Discotheque” is another winner, rocking the bass and keyboards with a nice Oriental flow.

Check out this new tribute to some undermixed material and groove along yourself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under Arrangement Albums, Arrangers, Free Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.