The Hidden Palace remix reminds me of something from a Zelda game. No idea why. It reminds me somewhat of the Ocarina of Time medley from SSBB. Nothing specific, it just sounds similar. Anyway, awesome track, as always.

<-- never played a Zelda game. You could say I spent a deprived childhood being a Genesis kid :D

But yeah, I totally dig the comparison. Zelda really had one of the most 'japanese'ish soundtracks of all the largely-westernized game franchises of the past two decades; and anything flute/whistle-like does get associated with Ocarina.

This may be the biggest departure from the original music in the entire revamped soundtrack. There are two things going on here: 

The first is that I wanted to score the 'Lost' part of 'Lost Levels'. It needed something mysterious and perhaps somewhat foreboding. Lost Levels are a tribute to all the stuff that never made it into official releases yet had assets leftover in one game or another. If the fan-canon here is anything to go by (including the zone name) it's something not many people have visited, abundance of badniks aside.

The second is that like I said in the Hilltop Heights music description, with this soundtrack I really wanted to obliterate the usual preconceptions of what a 'retro' and 'sonic' game should sound like musically. It's obviously not 16-bit/YM2612 and perhaps a little more 'modern' than the typical 'Redbook Audio' game of the early 90's.

While technology may have been half of the mold I wanted to break out of, the other half would be... 2D Sonic in general. Don't get me wrong, All of S1/S2/S3&K had awesome soundtracks for slightly different reasons, but there's also just so much more that can be done. Take Sonic Adventure's Mystic Ruins for example. Without the visual association the first thing that comes to mind might not be 'Sonic', at all!

There's also that little tidbit in the form of S2's Hidden Palace unused track. It... doesn't sound anything like a sidescroller Sonic composition, especially when you compare it to the extremely trippy/catchy rhythms and hooks of S3&K. In fact, if you chucked it into RPGMaker or some such it really wouldn't be all that of a stretch to expect a Final Fantasy style random encounter and then battle music out of the blue. That was something I really, -really- wanted to explore, and I think overall it works!

Or maybe that Hidden Palace track went unused for a reason. Or maybe I'm just scratching a JRPG itch. You decide. ;p

Invisible Realm - For Lost Levels Act 1

Falk is a home-grown musician with a skillset just about as diverse as his interests. Hailing from Malaysia, he jumped with both feet into audio for games right out of college and spent a few years as Audio Lead at a rhythm game publisher. After having travelled to Boston to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music, Falk has been involved in countless fan productions and remixes, original compositions, arrangements, and orchestrations.

Falk, through his affiliation with the Video Game Orchestra, has had the privilege to work in the presence of industry veterans such as Hitoshi Sakimoto of Basiscape, Masashi Hamauzu, and Go Shiina of Namco Bandai, amongst others, in the capacity of recording and mix engineer for their various projects in ensembles varying from simple instrumental overdubs to full orchestral/choir recordings.

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