CEO 2015: Champion / CEO 2015: Champion / CEO 2015: Champion

Artists:

O_Super, Mag.Lo (1)
Jeff Matthews (2)
DarkeSword (3, 10, 12)
DjjD (4)
Richie Branson (5, 11)
Flexstyle (6)
zykO (7)
Benjamin Briggs (8)
Neblix (9)
Nutritious (13)
Ivan Hakštok, Sixto Sounds (14)

CEO 2015: Champion
Comments from album executive producer Alex Jebailey (CEOJebailey), director Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword), and ReMixers
Album freely available at http://ceo.ocremix.org

I'm extremely excited to have collaborated with OC ReMix on an album to represent one of my favorite genres: fighting games. Having local Florida artists and OC ReMix veterans create an album to represent this year's CEO is an awesome treat for attendees and fans.

- Alex Jebailey (CEOJebailey)

I'm very excited and pleased to present CEO 2015: Champion, the latest in our series of fighting game community-focused albums. The FGC is one of the most passionate gaming communities out there; probably as passionate as OC ReMix is about video game music. I love getting involved with these big events year after year, gathering talented artists and giving the talented players a soundtrack to fight to. CEO 2015 promises to be one of the biggest and best of those events yet, and I think that Champion is going to capture the drive and determination that everyone competing is going to bring to the table. I hope everyone out there enjoys it!

- Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword)

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01. O_Super x Mag.Lo - Main Theme of CEO 2015 "CEO Champion"

O_Super: Thank you to everyone for listening and keeping the fighting spirit of CEO alive!!

This song is a culmination of many exciting experiences that were developed over the years of being apart of the FGC. And especially to the competitors, this song is for you!

Mag.Lo: Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati Ducksauce Illuminati

Instagram: Mag.Lo

02. Jeff Matthews - Killer Instinct "The Last Kill"
Sources: "The Instinct" (Title), "Controlling Transmission" (Glacius), "K.I. Feeling" (Orchid), "Tooth & Claw" (Sabrewulf), "Trailblazer" (Cinder)
Original Composers: Robin Beanland, Graeme Norgate

Jeff Matthews: For this mix, I blended several songs from the original game. The intro is a 50/50 mix of Glacius's theme and the chords from the opening title screen. The bassline that comes in after the breakbeat is Orchid's music and the synths panned hard left n' right are the title screen's melody. This is followed by Sabrewulf's theme, then Cinder's. Blending all of this together wasn't actually all that difficult, as most of the themes were in minor keys already; the only significant change was playing Cinder's theme as 4/4 instead of 6/8.

The orchestration is meant to be a representation of each character. Sabrewulf is a count = strings, Cinder = fiery-sounding synths, Orchid is a spy = 007-ish bass synth, etc. The overall mood I was aiming for was simply to accompany any epic fight sequence. The fight on top of the truck in Matrix Reloaded comes to mind. Another way of looking at it is each character theme is like each fighter showing up to the tournament in a montage (ex. Anchorman fight scene with all the different news teams) and then they all battle each other at the 3:21 mark.

This is the first remix I ever made with a hard deadline. While it brought on limitations, a lot of them were actually helpful. Less time to make decisions = focusing on the big picture. I was less concerned with LFOs and reverb pre-delays and instead tried to focus on creating energy, dynamics, etc., all that stuff you need for a good fight.

Thanks for the opportunity.

03. DarkeSword - Persona 4 Arena "Kuro Yuki"
Source: ''Princess Amagi-ya"
Original Composer: Atsushi Kitajoh

DarkeSword: Yukiko is my favorite character in Persona 4 and my main in Persona 4 Arena. I really love her theme in P4A and figured, "Why not remix it?" I used some koto for that Japanese feel and then basically just did a straightforward dance remix. Old-school DarkeSword fans, however, will recognize the vamp that plays at the end during the fadeout. ;)

04. DjjD - Tekken Tag Tournament 2 "Prodigious Blitz"
Source: "Tekken Tag Tournament Piano Intro -Massive Mix-"
Original Composer: Akitaka Tohyama

DjjD: 80+ hrs, 3 days without sleep, a mess of stems, and 2 pots of coffee = this remix. I do believe up until this point I'd never worked on anything as much as I did this. Cinematic drums, melodic strings, a plethora of electronic synths... there is a ton in this mix. The hardest part was getting it all to fit, for which I still don't know if it does. Cheers.

05. Richie Branson - Tekken Theme of CEO 2015 "Iron Fist"

Richie Branson: I'm undefeated on the Tekken Tag Tournament machine at the movie theater down the street. I was that cheap opponent that would spam kick with Eddy Gordo, lol.

06. Flexstyle - Divekick "It's Okay, I Still Made Money"
Source: "JEO"
Original Composer: Harrison Pretat

DarkeSword: If we're doing a Divekick remix for CEO, it's gotta be a remix of the theme of Jefailey, the character inspired by CEO's real-life organizer, Alex Jebailey. Mike brings his classic club sound to the theme, with a bouncey four-on-the-floor track. Chorused piano is a great touch that keep things from getting too in-your-face, but there's still plenty of wubby sounds go around. Excellent.

Flexstyle: Fans of the source game will recognize the title of this song as the signature line of the character Jefailey, the parody parallel to CEO owner Alex Jebailey. Also, the source tune in question was, of course, the JEO stage in Divekick. Such a tie-in was too much to pass up. Past that, the song is a fairly standard dancefloor-fillin', head-noddin', foot-tappin' sort of dance tune -- get down and get funky, y'all!

07. zykO - Super Smash Bros. for Wii U "#unanimous #undisputed"
Sources: ''Minor Circuit" (from Punch-Out!!), "Tower of Lahja ~ Heart of the Fortress" (Ninja Gaiden II)
Original Composers: Kenji Yamamoto, Ryuichi Nitta

zykO: I knew fairly immediately what I wanted to do when I was first approached with the project. I had always been a fan of the original Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! theme and long desired to experiment with it; the modern SSBB and Punch-Out!! Wii mixes of it were surprisingly good as they were both surprisingly similar to what I had envisioned for a Punch-Out!! mix if I ever were to make one.

My memories of the original game are exclusively from the late 80s/early 90s and I wanted to convey that in the track. The first inclination was to go full-on upright, straightforward guitars/bass/drums hard rock, but that soon changed as I was becoming more and more enticed by taking a more Vince DiCola synth rock Rocky approach. That vision transformed yet again around the time I started recording, when I particularly noted Journey's "Separate Ways" ("love will find you") out at pizza one evening and set out to indirectly pay tribute to both. As a result, the track's identity shifted again as I softened it up a bit with a more heavy-handed melodic emphasis and prog rock approach.

Admittedly, I unabashedly went full-original in the second half of the track, slightly shifting tempo and rolling with it (though adhering, at points, to the original chord progression). I naturally did not stop myself from the inertia of where the composition was headed since it still felt like a rollicking good 80s boxer flick theme.

The track is performed live in its entirety and recorded in my studio in West Sacramento.

08. Benjamin Briggs - Super Smash Bros. Theme of CEO 2015 "FALCON PUNCH"

09. Neblix - Super Smash Bros. Melee "Together, We Fly"
Source: "Fire Emblem" (from Fire Emblem)
Original Composer: Yuka Tsujiyoko

Neblix: This one was a doozie! I was asked by Shariq to do a mix for CEO 2015, the fighting game tournament in June, down in Florida. My track record with Apex has been pretty great so far, so I stepped into the ring, because fighting games have fun music.

I went Smash Bros. Melee because I was getting a little exhausted from three consecutive Street Fighter IV remixes. I chose the Fire Emblem track "Together, We Ride!", the one everyone loves. It's so full of energy and the minor-key, energy-pumping, high-tempo melodic goodness that we've come to love about older game music. Whenever I played Melee, I tried to get this song to play in the Hyrule stage. It was my favorite track of the game, and it conjured such furious excitement when unlocking the Fire Emblem characters.

I went with a high-tempo hard rock approach with some elements of ska and slid into more acoustic rock blended with orchestra. The vision was to preserve the feelings from the source tune, which was initially high-energy fighting followed by a triumphant march of sorts, then back into the fray. Big shoutout to OA and zircon for helping examine my production! Everything in the mix is 100% artificial, and I take pride in my growing ability to use virtual instruments effectively.

I took my time with this mix, on and off, for about two weeks. It's a song people really love, done in a style I think people will appreciate as enhancing the original, so I really wanted to get it as tight as possible. Between the time of finishing it and doing this write-up, I can already spot production flaws here and there, but that's fine. I'll just come smashing with better mixes later on. :)

10. DarkeSword - Mortal Kombat "Fatalistic"
Source: "Techno Syndrome"
Original Composer: Oliver Adams

DarkeSword: I wrote this mix in like an hour! Due to a mixup, this was a last minute addition to the album. This was a totally different way of writing a remix for me. I ended up digging into a lot of my loop libraries to put this together, doing a combination of loops for textures and some from-scratch sequencing. Turned out pretty good, I think!

11. Richie Branson - Mortal Kombat Theme of CEO 2015 "Finish Him"

Richie Branson: At 7 years old, I performed my first-ever fatality as Scorpion.

12. DarkeSword - Guilty Gear X "U JELLY?!"
Source: "Blue Water Blue Sky <May's Theme>"
Original Composer: Daisuke Ishiwatari

DarkeSword: May's theme is really upbeat and saccharine, so I decided to just amp that up with a really sugary track. Not much to say here; aside from swapping the verse and chorus melodies, I took a pretty straightforward approach to this. Oh yeah, the title is a reference to May being part of the Jellyfish Pirates. :)

13. Nutritious - Ultra Street Fighter IV "Dash Cancel"
Source: "Theme of Decapre"
Original Composer: Hideyuki Fukasawa

DarkeSword: This remix of Decapre's theme is probably one of Justin's best pieces yet. High-energy with great, crunchy guitars (what up, Shreddage?), and a big aggressive synth sound. Really captures the soundscape of the Street Fighter IV soundtrack too! You could drop this right into the game and no one would be the wiser. Fantastic work!

Nutritious: Ever since first seeing DarkeSword's recruitment posts for the Apex album projects, I'd wanted to join up and do a mix. Unfortunately, real life tended to get in the way of that each time. However, when he posted to recruit for a similar album for the CEO tournament, I decided not to let this chance slip by as well.

As most producers/remixers can attest to, when beginning a new track, the end result very rarely ends up sounding like what you'd originally envisioned. I've been listening to a new artist named Fox Stevenson, and was attempting to emulate a style similar to one of his mixes called "Throwdown" (Rob Gasser remix, actually). The idea was for a half-time, heavy electronic take on the Decapre theme from USF4. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I wasn't quite able to get it sounding how I wanted it to. Eventually, it evolved into a sort-of rock D'n'B track, with the same heavy low-end presence I was trying for in the first place. I really wanted something high energy for the album and I feel I accomplished it here. In my opinion, I feel that it is one of my best tracks to date.

14. Ivan Hakštok, Sixto Sounds - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 "What's Your Poison?"
Source: "Character Select Screen for UMVC3"
Original Composer: Hideyuki Fukasawa

Ivan Hakštok: I signed up for the album after more than half of it was claimed. I listened to the remaining soundtracks and found UMVC3 to have a few songs that fit my style. I originally wanted to claim Vergil's theme, but since that one's originally from Devil May Cry 3, I didn't know if it would be a good choice for this album, so I went with the "Character Select" theme. Along the way, I picked up Sixto to do the lead guitars on the remix. I finished the arrangement in a day and then waited a month for him to record his stuff, but I think it was worth waiting. :)