Todays rip: 24/03/2024
Aphex Twin Snakes
Season 4 Episode 1 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume L [Side A]
Ripped by Snowva
I suppose we'll round off this streak covering rips with sources I'm far too unfamiliar with, with yet one more that I, like Poké Village, discovered on my own. Yes, I admit it: I am uncultured, I am weak, and I am not yet properly educated on the world of Aphex Twin. Now, that's not to say that the artist hasn't had an impact on me all the same - it wasn't that long ago that I wrote about just how much the Season 1 rip Aphex affected me way back in 2016. So I do have a tenuous attachment of sorts to their music, yet its an attachment I only get reminded of through rips and other remixes. Aphex Twin Snakes is one of those reminder-rips, one I found on a whim just browsing the archives of the Volume L album - and it's an absolute banger.
I may not have actual investment into the Metal Gear franchise yet either, but its at this point impossible not to know of the most legendary music of the Solid series. There's of course the beautiful credits theme to Metal Gear Solid 2, Can't Say Goodbye to Yesterday - as performed by Bob Dylan (yes, by the REAL Bob Dylan!), and the long-overdue-for-coverage main theme for the series' third game, Snake Eater - but the main theme of Metal Gear Solid 2 has always felt like THE Metal Gear theme in my head. You can immediately tell something is changed in Aphex Twin Snakes - before the elements of Aphex Twin are even implemented, sound effects from the Metal Gear Solid series are sampled to create a far more prominent "beat" for the track, sort of in the vein of Banjostruck or the various Hideki Naganuma-inspired rips a la September. It's a fantastic way to transition the rip into the more jungle-y style of the Aphex Twin track used, which is Carn Marth if I'm to trust the Wiki - but attachment or not, its novelty as a jungle remix of such a proudly-orchestral piece is appealing all on its own.
The rip sells you in just the first 15 seconds alone as a distinctly different-feeling take to the legendary theme, but continues to impress throughout. I'm always caught off guard by how hard the intentional stutter in the track at little over 30 seconds in hits, and not long therafter the sound of Snake's iconic death sound from the series is used to amazing effect to punctuate the rip's change in tone. Midway through, we're even treated to a little bit of a "dialogue" in a codec call seemingly between Snake and Aphex Twin itself, only communicating through a change in music to the track Windowlicker. This is obviously not really the same thing as something like the canon-to-the-channel dialogue in Haltmanna feat. Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, but it is a really fun surprise althesame - when Aphex Twin Snakes was uploaded, we already knew that Snake was to reappear as a character in the King for Another Day Tournament, and so this little moment of interaction from the character (or the Figment, if we're to be lore accurate) feels all too fitting, its as if he himself was shocked to encounter another source in "his" own track.
After this little interlude, Body & Blood by clipping. is added to the mix, giving the rip a vocal performance quite different in tone from the rip's first half. It was the first half that sold me, and though this shift in direction is certainly a form of escalation, it is maybe a bit too drastic for me - whenever I come back to Aphex Twin Snakes, it is the Aphex Twin part of the first half that I'm most drawn to. But I'm of course althesame thankful that we even get rips with such variety and risks taken in them (sort of like Metal Gear Solid 2 itself, hm?), and that the rip knows not to overstay its welcome. Each of these three sections of the rip get just enough time to land, and all three feel polished to a sheen. This is the first rip by Snowva I've covered on here, but if Aphex Twin Snakes is anything to go by they have an absolute knack for quality - and have helped remind me of yet another incredible artist that I need to start actually listening to.
