For years OverClocked Remix, perhaps the most widely recognized fan-based community of game music remixers, has been releasing special collections (albums as they refer to them) that pay homage to a specific game. For the most part, the choice of subject matter has been on a bit of a safe side: Sonic, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, and the like. Hence why their most recent release, which is centered around Armored Core, is particularly noteworthy.

The album, which made it’s official debut yesterday but had a preview release at Comiket78, is the brainchild of Swedish composer and arranger Mattias Häggström Gerdt; in the creator’s comments that accompanies the release, he explains how his first taste of the series was Armored Core 4. From there Mattias explored the rest of series and subsequently become a huge fan of the varied musical styles that are contained within. The end result are 11 tracks, that draws upon 15 different songs from numerous instalments; track one for example starts out with a piece from Silent Line and transitions to another from part 4.

The album seems decent enough, though I’m not super familiar with every entry of the franchise and therefore cannot accurately assess how good (or bad) a tribute it truly is. Ollie should perhaps have the final word on this one. But I will say, as much of a fan I’ve been of the OCRemix community over the years, the albums have never resonated with me, at least on the same level that assorted random songs the same game has also inspired. Reasons are hard to pin down, though one always gets the sensation that things feel a bit too constrained and conservative, the opposite of which I would gather is hard to maintain over the entire length of an album in their defense.

At any rate, like all their releases, it’s a free download, so judge for yourself. Here’s a trailer to wet your appetite…

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVaKWBDPFEw]

Ollie Update: This is an utterly excellent remix and is really refreshing to see Western fans pull something like this off so professionally. For those curious as to which tracks are used in the remixes and from which games they are from, I’ve taken the following information from the site. For those curious about the series’ main composer, Kota Hoshino, then there are two interesting interviews here and here:

Originally composed by:
Kota Hoshino (1-11)
Keiichiro Segawa (3 7 8 )
Tsukasa Saitoh (3)
Yuji Kanda, Ikuya Ichinohe (7 8 )
Ayako Minami (9)