#uun4

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 23/09/2023

From The Shad​-​slows (Plains of Des​-​passing​-​tú)

Season 4 Episode 2 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume for Wii U

Ripped by UUN4

Exactly one week ago, I covered what I believe to be one of the most legendary rips in the channel's life - Plains of Des-passing-to. In that post, I tried to explain just what makes Despacito such a fun source for SiIvaGunner to use - that its overexposure paired with its genuine good qualities as a catchy tune makes it something every SiIva viewer will immediately recognize and begrudgingly vibe to. Paired with the infectiously fun instrumentation and overall style of Shovel Knight, it resulted in a banger many still return to frequently.

Two years later, though, UUN4 would return to that very same concept for a rip and make what's effectively its direct sequel. In the same way that From the Shadows sought to reimagine the original Strike the Earth! into a more sombre, melancholic piece, From The Shad​-​slows (Plains of Des​-​passing​-​tú) takes a similar approach to the original Despacito arrangement. Its slower, moodier, almost atmospheric in a way, despite still using Famitracker and a lot of similar instruments as its base and despite still, yknow, being Despacito of all songs. Yet it follows through on its concept from start to finish and is, just like the original From the Shadows, in my opinion a much more interesting listen - even though the original in this case was already one of the most fun listens on SiIva. Every note placed is perfect, every cue from the original rerendition is translated in such a purely authentic way - its all so good and so natural, its as if it was produced right alongside the original rip back in Season 3.

My affection may also be in due part to how recently I discovered this arrangement: the original track sits at close to 200 thousand views, wheras this sits at barely over 25 thousand. Its not a rip I see shared around nearly enough given its quality, and I'm hoping this shoutout will do it at least a little bit of justice.

Quality of From The Shad​-​slows (Plains of Des​-​passing​-​tú) aside, it plays into a part of SiIvaGunner that I really do love - that these kinds of becks and calls even exist within the channel to begin with. It wasn't as if Plains of Des-passing-to was a momentous occasion in the channel's life that would therefor obviously be paid tribute to in the future - UUN4 simply realized on his own how fun it would be to expand upon a joke he told amidst hundreds of others during Season 3. The deeper you go into SiIvaGunner, and indeed the deeper you'll go on this blog, the more fascinating examples like this you'll find on the channel - rips paying tribute to one another despite releasing several years apart, and despite sometimes not even being as popular as Plains of Des-passing-to was.

Nothing on SiIvaGunner is ever forgotten. Not even if its a hit Latin pop song from 2017.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 16/09/2023

Plains of Des-passing-to

Season 3 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume A

Ripped by UUN4

I tried to really rack my brain this week over more recurring song sources that I hadn't yet featured in posts. Not that there's anything preventing me from featuring multiple rips with the same source for their joke, of course, but I find it really interesting to write about the history of jokes on here, and I only really get that opportunity when its a joke's first time. After only a small bit of searching I would land on the subject of today's video: the legendary Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee.

Its a song that I'm sure a lot of us still can't get out of our heads for, perhaps the wrong reasons - during its prime time in 2017, it was ridiculously overplayed on all sorts of radio stations and music events in general. It became the new "annoying trend", so to speak, akin to something like Justin Bieber's early work (how ironic) and...Ed Sheeran music, I guess? Keep in mind that me writing this is one of the most out-of-touch people with the world of music - I'm just speaking from what I've accumulated from talking to others, lol. Either way - for as popular as Despacito would end up being, it developed a sort of hatedom by the time 2018 rolled around. And ironically enough, I think that hatedom is part of what makes Plains of Des-passing-to so good.

Because lets face it - after a whole year of it playing EVERYWHERE on the radio, the last thing people wanted in 2018 was to hear *more* Despacito - it really didn't matter how good the song was, at that point. Yet for as hard as it was to admit, we'd all grown a collective familiarity to the tune by 2018, which Plains of Des-passing-to exploits so god damn well. It's an arrangement of the aforementioned song in the style of Strike the Earth! from Shovel Knight - but its a fucking incredible arrangement in a way I still find hard to believe is real. ALL pieces of the original two tracks used are replicated - Strike the Earth!'s more low-key opening, the lead-up to Despacito's main chorus, the percussion alternates between feeling taken from one or the other - its so much more than just an arrangement of one song in the sound of the other, its a full-on marriage of the two. And for as much as we all hated Despacito, this arrangement reveals the truth:

The song's a fucking bop!

With UUN4's talent and the Strike the Earth! instrumentation replacing the otherwise overplayed original, everyone in the comments section came together and effectively admitted defeat to the 2017 demon. It was absolutely incredible to witness first-hand back as Season 3 was happening, to see just about everyone accept this song that they'd previously loathed as mainstream-pop garbage. And though the meme hasn't exactly become a "mainstay" on SiIva, it makes me so happy to see rippers and fans alike acknowledge just how much potential the song has to sound good. That, or my 2017 brainwashing still hasn't been healed.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 26/01/2024

​THIS RIP WAS MADE BY TEETH GANG

Season 3 Featured on: The SiIvaGunner Spooktacular Halloween Horror Special Collection '17​-​'19

Ripped by UUN4 Visuals by KnightOfGames, "Teeth Gang"

Look, uh, feel free to skip the visuals on this one if you're sensitive. There's a lot of, teeth, in this one.

I really don't know how I was able to forget about ​THIS RIP WAS MADE BY TEETH GANG for so many years, when I specifically recall being there on the channel the day it went up. It might just've been due to Halloween 2018 being a rather understated and not very memorable event in general, mainly there to tease the next year's Halloween blowout of Spooktacular III - a by contrast amazing event that I covered briefly in Battle with Jeffinite. Yet the music to Gimmick! was on my mind for some unknown reason as of late, and one YouTube search later, I'd rejoined the Teeth Gang.

The SiIvaGunner channel is pretty inextricably tied to the Chiptune community, right down to where several members of the team almost exclusively make chiptune rips. As a result, the channel's rips have featured a good number of games that neither you or I may find particularly nostalgic or even good, but that are beloved by chiptune artists for their lovely sound - Viva La Robocop and Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston come to mind as two examples of this that I've covered on the blog. The NES game Gimmick! is somewhat of a special case, though, thanks to its develope Sunsoft. Despite not having all too many games under their belt that could be considered genuine classics, Sunsoft is still remembered by a lot of gaming enthusiasts specifically for how they made consoles like the NES/Famicom and Sega Genesis positively sing. Gimmick!, released late into the Famicom's life, is the perfect embodiment of that, celebrated in some ways as the de-facto game to showcase just what the NES is capable of doing (Follin soundtracks notwithstanding).

That's the backstory for why I was out looking for rips of the game, anyway - as for the reason why TEETH got involved to result in ​THIS RIP WAS MADE BY TEETH GANG, that's an area I was woefully undereducated on. It's likely that many of those reading this had the chance to grow up more closely attached to Nickelodeon's cartoon programming of the early 2000s, and by extension had some truly iconic bangers embedded into your minds. I'm again speaking as an outsider, but - good LORD, discovering that My Shiny Teeth And Me had over 20 million views on YouTube left me completely flabbergasted. Do you remember just two days ago in Guilty Eyes Creeper where I discussed just how many rabbitholes there are to fall into on SiIvaGunner? Yeah, this is a prime example of me doing just that, as recently as this week.

Because yeah - even though I first saw THIS RIP WAS MADE BY TEETH GANG, my lack of familiarity with the song made me not really care for the rip's audio (which was also because the visuals were, naturally, a lot more memorable for the wrong reasons). Five years later, I can officially confirm that My Shiny Teeth And Me is a fucking BANGER that I wish I'd given a chance sooner, partially carried by the vocalist being a member of 2000s boy band NSYNC, but also just the melody and progression being very catchy in general! And when arranged through the aforementioned beautiful Sunsoft-y sound of Gimmick, it's a perfect fit - the sugary pop cheer of My Shiny Teeth And Me fits the sound of Gimmick, and Happy Birthday in particular, like an absolute glove. The main melody, bassline, percussion - though its all playing within the limitations of the original Famicom track, it still manages to sound just as full of life as the song its arranging.

And look, I've been throwing shade toward the choice of giving the rip visuals, but I'll say it - I think even back then I found it pretty fucking funny. Learning in hindsight that "TEETH GANG" is actually just members of the SiIva team submitting their own teeth edits for the rip, ballooning the size of contributors to this otherwise simple rip, just makes things even funnier. THIS RIP WAS MADE BY TEETH GANG was indeed made by teeth gang, and through the simple combination of the three different rabbitholes its made up of that I chose to explore, its now become a rip I'll never be able to forget.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 09/10/2023

skrillex tribute 2023

Season 7 Featured on: siivagunner's highest quality rips: volume

Ripped by UUN4

Look, I'll say it a thousand times - I am the LAST person you should go to in terms of actually comprehending and understanding music history and current trends. Most of what I know about what's considered good music and bad music comes from osmosis, and most of *that* comes from SiIvaGunner! But one thing I've known ever since the good ol' days of 2016ish YouTube, and the age of Montage Parodies, is that dubstep is fucking hilarious.

And I don't say that to belittle or mock the genre - like a lot of SiIva's backlog, dubstep music to be has the perfect blend of being inherently funny whilst also being really enjoyable to listen to. SiIva has been poking fun of dubstep music, particularly Skrillex music like Bangarang, since early on in Season 1, but there's been so many instances over the channel's life actually showing how to utilize the music for actual bangers. skrillex tribute 2023, too, uses Bangarang as its source, and is practically a ground-up instrument swap of the original Plant Kingdom (Act 1) theme to great effect. The tropical sound of Sonic Rush Adventure's soundtrack may at first seem like an odd choice for getting the dubstep treatment, but Plant Kingdom in particular fits the choice so perfectly - its a track that's entirely built on a repeating ukulele riff, which the Bangarang intro is a shockingly good as a substitute for. That single choice kind of lets the rest of the rip just run wild - so many Bangarang elements and samples are sprinkled throughout the rip, with only hints of the original track remaining, but it all melds together as so unmistakably "skrillex" thanks purely to that repeating riff.

Its a bizarre rip and a recent favorite, as I only recently listened through the album it features on. It simultaneously feels completely at odds with what the original track wants to do, yet fits the original song's energy and overall progression perfectly - it fits and doesn't fit at the same time. As one wise commenter says:

"My inner ear hates this, but my outer ear loves this. The dub-step-duality of Skrill."