IT’S OUT! Five years in the making, Worlds Apart has been released!
Like I did with OCR’s FFVI album, Balance and Ruin, I’m going to do a track-by-track review of this I’m-sure-will-be-amazing album. This pushes the Gaming Inspirations posts back a bit, but I’m going to continue to do at least 2 posts a week, so it won’t be long ’til I’m babbling about how inspiring and amazing FFIX is!
Pick an entry in the series to read your favorite character’s essay:
Gaming Inspirations I: Personal Party Composition
Gaming Inspirations II: Character Profile: Adelbert Steiner
Gaming Inspirations III: Character Profile: Vivi Orunitia
Gaming Inspirations IV: Character Profile: Amarant Coral
Gaming Inspirations V: Interview with Joe Zieja
Gaming Inspirations VI: Character Profile: Garnet til Alexandros XVII
Gaming Inspirations VII: Character Profile: Eiko Carol
Gaming Inspirations VIII: Character Profile: Quina Quen
Gaming Inspirations IX: Character Profile: Freya Crescent
Gaming Inspirations IX: Character Profile: Zidane Tribal
BONUS POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOST!
I had the great opportunity to interview one of my biggest inspirations, Joe Zieja, last week. He’s a professional voiceover artist, a fantastic musician, and just sold his first novel, Mechanical Failure, coming out June 7th, 2016 from Saga Press, the new speculative fiction imprint of Simon and Schuster! He also composed two remixes for the OverClocked ReMix FFIX album, Worlds Apart, coming out tomorrow, 9/9!
On to the interview:
Joe Zieja. A self-described “Renaissance man without all the lace and tights”. Ex-Military. Author. Composer. Voiceover Virtuoso. Is there anything you don’t do?
Absolutely. I don’t dance, and I can’t even draw a straight line. My handwriting is atrocious, and I tend to screw up house projects that involve anything complicated. I’ve also played Ticket to Ride exactly once and scored an 8. Really. An 8.
I’ll get to all these points, but let’s start with your military experience: you describe your new book, Mechanical Failure, as a “Space Opera Military Science Fiction” book. Reading back on some of your blog posts, it seems like your time in the military has heavily influenced your writing. Could you elaborate on how it’s done so?
I think it’s hard for anyone to say that the military doesn’t influence absolutely everything about your life experience. Not only has it altered my writing, it’s altered my worldview. More specifically, I guess you could say it’s enabled me to describe the military culture in a way that is accurate and relevant.
Could you explain what a “Space Opera” is, for those readers who may not know? (Not me, though. I definitely know what a “Space Opera” is. Definitely…)
Sure. There are two broad sub genres that fall under neat science fiction. One of them is hard science fiction and the other is space opera. Hard science fiction relies on existing science and extrapolates upon it to come to a fantastical or speculative conclusion. In many cases hard science fiction focuses on a lot of technical detail that is interesting to people who are interested in science in general. Space opera, on the other hand, really is just about having fun in space. I don’t say that to say that space opera can’t be serious, but that it doesn’t overly focus on the science, and you can get away with a little bit more. Star Wars, for example is a good example of space opera. Nobody is sitting there explaining to you that lightsabers are a result of positively charged ions reacting in a vacuum.
You’ve remixed a number of songs over at OverClocked ReMix under the alias XPRTNovice, including tracks on the Final Fantasy VI remix album, Balance and Ruin, and on the upcoming Final Fantasy IX album, Worlds Apart. Which tracks do you remix on Worlds Apart?
I have two tracks that I did on that album. One of them is Cid’s theme from Lindblum Castle, and the other is Esto Gaza.
Do you have a specific style?
Haha that’s funny. the only thing I can really say that’s consistent about my style is that I generally stick pretty closely to the source. Nostalgia is a big factor for me. Other than that, I’ve done everything from a Bon Jovi style thing to klezmer to bluegrass.
What can people expect when you’re remixing or composing?
Live instruments. I have a lot at my disposal, and I almost always make them the focus.
Before I say anything about your voice work, I gotta congratulate you – you’re the highest-ranked male voice on Voices.com over the past week, and 15th all-time.
Thanks!
How long have you been doing voice work?
It kind of depends. when I was a kid at the Air Force Academy I would be official Academy announcer for football games and parades and all sorts of other events, so I’ve been doing something like voice over for a while. If you really mean voice over work like I’m doing it today, I really only been doing it for the last two and a half years.
On your blog, you’ve mentioned that voice work is “the big moneymaker” for you, and that it’s basically your job at this point.
yep. After I got out of the military in 2012, I worked for the government for a little while. But by time the end of 2014 rolled around, I was ready to quit everything and be a full time voice over artist, which I am now.
What are the biggest pros and cons of being self-employed?
While the military has its exciting moments, it really is basically a desk job for most of the time. It was the same thing with the government. I absolutely love not having a boss, not having set hours, being able to work from home, and being responsible for my own success without having to cater to some arbitrarily organized corporate or military promotion ladder. I get to express myself creatively every day of my life, which is a privilege that not many people can say they enjoy. As far as the downsides, sometimes it’s a little hard to keep organized, and to keep boundaries on my work time versus my free time. and now of course I have to pay for my own health insurance and worry about my own retirement if there is such a thing.
It’s clear that you do a ton of creating in many different ways – how do you manage the time between writing, composing, voice work, and… y’know, everything else you do on a day-to-day basis?
I don’t have a very structured organization for how I split the time between all of that. Basically I know that being a voice over artist is what’s making most of my money at this point in time, so that’s what gets my priorities. After that comes writing, because I have a book contract and I have deadlines to worry about now. Lastly unfortunately comes music, because all the way to make money with it from time to time, sometimes I need to just put it aside and focus on the things that let me put food on the table.
What does a day in the life look like for Joe Zieja?
The timing changes every day, but I generally do about four to five hours of voice work. That can be anything from actual microphone time to managing my business to talking to agents and managers. I try to write for about an hour or two every day, but I don’t always get there. I hang out with my daughter and my wife and try to relax as well as get some physical activity in. The blank spots I fill in with reading or playing video games or playing an instrument.
This interview is a part of my “Gaming Inspirations” series – do you play many video games? I can’t see where you’d have the time!
I’d be a pretty poor excuse for a nerd if I didn’t play any video games! I get a couple of hours a week in nowadays, but when I was younger I could binge with the best of them.
Do you find games inspiring? If so, which ones, and how?
If there’s one common theme in my life, it’s that I love a good story. In order for a video game to inspire me, it has to be very story focused. I generally don’t like to play games that don’t have stories, or don’t focus on them, or don’t have an end like MMOs. I really loved watching video games develop into a fantastic storytelling mechanism from its roots. I just finished playing The Last of Us a few weeks ago, & I haven’t played a game in a long time like that that made me put down the controller and stare at the screen in disbelief at what I had just experienced.
What inspires you to create?
What inspires you to breathe? after a while, if I don’t create, I start to feel hypoxic.
What do you do when you don’t feel like creating? You must feel uninspired, or just feel like being lazy and vegging out, at times – do you have any techniques to help you stay motivated?
My real trick to staying motivated and active is having so many things to cycle through. If I’m feeling particularly uninspired by the novel and writing, I go write some music for a couple of hours. Or I’ll go do some character work for voice acting. Or I’ll go employ creative movement as a parkour practitioner.
What’s one specific action that people could take, right now, to get closer to:
Selling their first book?
Write it. you’d be surprised how many people I talk to who have been writing chapter one of their novel for the past 10 years. Finish the damn thing.
Contributing to their first album?
This may sound redundant, but start writing music. If you don’t write music, you’re never going to get on an album. If you’ve never written music before, start getting educated. Do something ridiculously basic and celebrate because to you it’s something new. Then keep doing new things.
Becoming a kickass voice actor?
People think there’s some kind of magic that has to happen with the voice that God gave you, but I’m not so sure about that. I have well over 15,000 auditions behind me. Yes that’s 15,000. In between that, I’ve managed my business so that clients come back to me so I don’t have to audition anymore. And when I’m not doing that, I’m taking classes and workshops from the most experienced people I can find. They always say that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
Since this is FinalFantasyIX.com, after all, a few FFIX-specific questions:
Who’s your favorite character?
Freya, maybe. Aside from Final Fantasy X-2, when girls got different powers by changing into different skimpy outfits, I always thought Final Fantasy had a great edge on the strong female character front. Freya has a great backstory and a great attitude. More importantly, she’s not Steiner, who I hate.
What do you enjoy most about the game?
I think I’d have to choose Vivi’s story. The whole idea of artificial beings and their humanity or lack thereof may be kind of an overused theme, but there’s a reason for it. We haven’t really figured it out yet, primarily because we haven’t gotten technology far enough to force us to do so.
Do you find FFIX inspiring? If so, how?
If I’m being completely honest, Final Fantasy IX wasn’t my favorite FF by any stretch. While FF8 was a little teenage-angsty, FF9 was on the childish side in multiple ways for me. There are definitely gems in there, though – I love Vivi’s arc, particularly, like I just said.
Thanks so much to Joe for allowing me to interview him – it was a great experience to be able to talk with one of my biggest creative inspirations! Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeZieja, his musical alias XPRTNovice @XPRTNovice, and give him a like on Facebook. Keep an eye out for his new book, Mechanical Failure, published by Saga Press!
Howdy y’all, and welcome to the review of the LAST DISC of “Balance and Ruin”. I’m super excited; this is a bonus disc, so it’s basically just other remixes of some of the songs that have already been done. Since I think we went through the entire soundtrack. Which is effin’ boss.
Anyway, on to the music! We’ll be using a rating scale of 1-5 Sabins.
Track 1 – Omen: I. Black Dawn (Opening Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard
Have you ever heard of the word “lugubrious”? It’s one of my favorite words. “Lugubrious”, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online, means “exaggeratedly or affectively mournful”. That’s basically how I feel about this first track, and not in a very good way.
The song takes its sweet time getting started, and I feel like it’s playing up its own importance. This is the first time these guys have done a track since Disc 1, and I feel much the same way towards this one that I did their first effort – it just seems like they’re trying way too hard to make something a dark, glorious epic. Like, it was okay, pretty badass, I guess, but it was just way too slow-moving for me.
Track 2 – Omen: II. Terror March (Opening Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard
Impressive! It’s like they heard me and took my advice or something! :p
But seriously, this song has a different energy from the start. It kicks right off and rocks on out throughout. The song goes through many different movements throughout the 8 minutes, getting increasingly intense and double-bass-y as it progresses.
Towards the end (about 7:30), I started to lose it – it didn’t sound too terribly much besides anything but a jam-session, which was kind of annoying, but it worked out overall. The last 10 seconds were great, transitioning into the next track.
Track 3 – Omen: III. Daydream (Opening Theme, Battle Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard
Oh God, we’re right back to the lugubriousness again. Look, I’m sorry, I understand what they’re trying to do, and yes, the original music is epic as fuck. HOWEVER, you don’t make something MORE epic by simply slowing it down an absurd amount and using a guitar and double bass. That’s just not how epic works. I think the opening theme just ended, almost 6 minutes into this track. Which means I’ve been listening to the opening theme for about 26, 27 minutes. NO.
To make things worse, I’m almost a full minute into the “Battle Theme”, and literally the sound has changed once. Is this supposed to build anticipation or bore me to death?
I’m sick of it. One and one-half Sabins, just because I am, amazingly, still listening.
Track 4 – Omen: IV. Polemos (Battle Theme) by SnappleMan, norg, Captain Finbeard
Great. I’ve got a 10-and-a-half minute battle theme to listen to. I’ll try to be objective. Taking a deep breath… Okay. Here we go.
Okay. Two minutes in, and it still sounds pretty badass. It’s the “Battle Theme” we all know and love, with, of course, a bit of a metal twist.
Four minutes in, aaaaand I’m kind of losing it. Oops, they brought it back at around 4:30, doing a little keyboard-y breakdown that isn’t bad, I guess. I am wondering if all of this is necessary, however. Especially after looking at the track list for the rest of the album (the next-longest song after these four is less than six minutes long… Maybe they should take note of that?).
At around six minutes, it gets all right again. I can tell where we are in the “Battle Theme”, at least. Not much to comment on.
It sounded like it was about to stop abruptly around 8 minutes. Excitedly, I look over, thinking that somehow, the full 10.5 minutes had passed. I was wrong, and they just started “breakin’ it down” again. Which I did not appreciate.
Long story short, if all of the songs above were less than five minutes, maybe I wouldn’t have a problem. But they were all super long and pretty boring. Ick. This one was… better than the last one, but not my much.
Track 4 Rating:
Rating as a cohesive piece, Tracks 1-4:
Track 5 – Following Forgotten (The Mines of Narshe) by Patrick Burns
(NOTE: I didn’t find this in my FLAC folder… Is anyone else missing this track? Anyway, it was in the MP3 folder, so I played that instead :D)
Sounds nice. Peaceful and foreboding… Yeah, I dunno, I think this one’s pretty weird. I also think my speakers suck.
Anyway, I like the piano work. However, I’m not sure if it was a super appropriate choice of style. I know it’s “The Mines of Narshe”, but… Again, too slow-moving for me.
Track 6 – Royal Blood, Fraternal Love (Edgar & Sabin) by pu_freak
As a piece of music, I think this remix is great. I mean, I think that about most of the tracks on this album, but anyway.
Even though I called the previous song “too slow”, I really like the pacing of this remix. I don’t think it captured the same regal essence as the original, but overall it was pretty legit. I also always love beautiful piano.
Track 7 – Bass of the Returners (The Returners) by bLiNd
Worrrrrrrd. I actually knew which song this was a remix of, as opposed to the previous “Returners” remix on Disc 1. It sounds way different from anything else on this album so far, which really is a godsend.
It sounds like bLiNd had some fun creating this remix; it shows in his music. Wonderfully done.
Track 8 – Dark Blue Substance (Cyan) by Mattias Häggström Gerdt
Ooooh… Once you get halfway through the song, it starts getting very peaceful, techno-y, and awesome. I love what he did with the original theme at that point. However, for much of the rest of the song, I’m left wondering what’s going on. The little breakdown in the middle is easily the best part, and that part is great. Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of what it’s sandwiched by.
Track 9 – Savage Dance (Wild West) by McVaffe
Word, this one is pretty sweet – not deviating too much from the original, giving it just enough so that it has its own voice. About halfway through it stops being quite so flat, a heavier beat giving needed texture to a pretty good song overall.
AND HEY, GUESS WHAT!?! IT’S LESS THAN 8 MINUTES LONG. Take note, SnappleMan.
Track 10 – The 6th Kingdom (Terra) by Jovette Rivera
ROCK THE BASS BASS ROCK THE BASS BASS
bass
bass
BASS
Yeah, this song was pretty fun. It was very ridiculous. Very, very insane. But you know what? I enjoyed it. It was about two and a half minutes too long, but eh, at this point, whatever.
ROCK THE BASS BASS ROCK ROCK THE BASS BASS
Track 11 – Slam Shufflin’ (Slam Shuffle) by bLiNd
Oooh, a super-danceable “Slam Shuffle” remix. Pretty ballllllerrrrr, yo.
Again, I think it could be shorter, it seems pretty repetitive, but it’s more fun to listen to than anything else so far, at least.
Track 12 – Jidoorian Rhapsody (The Wedding) by sphexic
Very impressive piano work, for sure. Not really sure what else to say… It was fun? I guess? There really wasn’t much to it, but the piano really was great. I think it would’ve been better if it were accompanied with something – then again, I kinda like the whole solo-piano thing. Better than average, regardless.
Track 13 – Strange World (Another World of Beasts) by WillRock
Ooh, I very much enjoyed this one. Nice pacing, nice buildup, nice ambience. Foreboding, dark, delicious.
Halfway through, it takes a turn for the SUPER intense. With almost no warning, the sound exploded out of my speakers into a crazy mess of awesome. Just as I was getting ready to yell at this song for being too long, too. Very well done, WillRock.
Track 14 – Umaro’s New Groove (Umaro) by Archangel
Overall, an enjoyable track. Umaro is a super fun character with a fun, bouncy theme, so I feel like it’s necessary to keep all that bounciness intact in any remixes. Archangel did a great job with that, and it wrapped this album up well.
Overall
Well, here we are. Five days and five discs later, I have to say that I’m extremely impressed by the quality of the songs that have come off this remix album. I think it’s great that OCRemix has such a diverse community, submitting all sorts of different music to these albums. This is their 40th album since their inception, and although I’ve only heard bits and pieces of others (their Donkey Kong Country 2 album is amazing, too), it seems like what they’ve got going is quite impressive indeed.
This disc picked up towards the end, which is good, since I was afraid it’d be a flop. It turned out okay, and the album itself turned out incredibly. Great job, OCRemixers!
Disc 5 Rating:
Overall Album Rating: