#eg_9371

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 06/02/2024

He is Back.

Season 6 No Album Release (Read More)

Ripped by eg_9371

Requested by Alex Worm and an anonymous reader!

Hey, so, SiIva Team - what the fuck is the deal with the goat?

Like, SiIvaGunner hasn't exactly been a stranger to creepy rips, particularly during its early years. On *** EVERYTHING IS FINE ***, for instance, I talked about the legendary horror that rips of the game "Barbie Horse Adventures: Blue Ribbon Race" have instilled into the audience thanks to just one rip back in Season 1, and we of course have Netyasha Roozi's excellent annual PlayStation Console BIOS rips of every Halloween, such as Play In MissingNo's Station. Yet, for as ominous and spooky as these rips are, I at least feel like I sort of GET them. Even four years on from its debut on the channel, I still don't know what the hell to make of "the standing goat".

Beginning with a rip of Cave Story's Mimiga Town theme back in Season 4 Episode 2, the confusion was immediately apparent - the 10 second video featured in the rip is from a moderately-popular Instagram post describing the goat statue's creepiness factor, and the song used is an arrangement of Pissy Pamper by Young Nudy and Playboi Carti - to my knowledge, with zero actual relation to one another. And sure, Mimigas in Cave Story are fuzzy little guys in an ominous world, that kind of befits the standing goat video - but the thing was, after this video's explosion in confusing reception, the goat just KEPT showing up. He would be recreated in different per-game artstyles like Deltarune and Ace Attorney, yet never properly...explained?

Yet, most bizarre of all, it seems as if for a small while the channel was playing at some sort of culmination to all of its buildup. During DJ Professor K's one-day takeover, an otherwise inconspicuous rip had the message "He is coming." hidden in its description - only for said rip to be followed up by Game Over/Password - Altered Beast, an arrangement of Pissy Pamper that effectively jumpscares you with the goat's presence by the end of it. The message hidden in its description? "He is here. Run.". And this Altered Beast rip was also part of an already-existing pattern with rips featuring the goat: "Memory", "Mysterious Crash", "Good Night", "Game Over" - several rips utilizing the creature seemed to explicitly be hinting at something far more ominous than what the video alone lets on.

Which brings us to the first true descent into this madness, one that stood out like nothing else quite did during Season 6's Halloween event: He is Back. In an event otherwise characterized by its lighthearted use of David S. Pumpkins, in-universe contextualized as little more than a fun halloween party, there's something yet more unsettling about the goat we've all been wondering about, reappearing in a rip that feels flat-out dangerous in atmosphere. The messages from the video description continue, this time saying - "Look behind you. I said, look behind you." - as if there's someone we aren't aware of attempting to save us from whatever this...creature is trying to achieve on the channel. Althewhile, the Pissy Pamper audio instrumental added on top makes what's otherwise primarily garbled noise from P.T.'s radio stations turn into a...surprisingly listenable, sort of glitch-hop-like banger?

The video end by leaving us with more questions than answers, as the video abruptly cuts to an error screen with the words "HE IS HERE" repeating over and over in many languages. And since He is Back's upload, we've...barely seen the goat anywhere. There's been yet one more possible development to his story, during Season 7's "The Cult of Proto" event, yet his fate and relevance to the channel remains as mysterious as it did many years ago.

For all that has and hasn't happened in the later Seasons of SiIvaGunner, I truly do love that mysteries like this still linger within the channel's mythos. And yeah, deep down I do know that these goat videos aren't meant to be amounting to anything bigger - they're just a silly, bizarre in-joke that's gradually taken on more and more creepy undertones. But there is something genuinely fun about that progression even having happened in the first place, isn't there? The goat could've easily just been left as one of many wacky out-of-nowhere jokes that Season 4s episodes debuted, yet he's been quietly sticking around, used by a small handful of rippers who seemingly have more in stock for the little guy than one would first think.

I, for one, welcome our good friend Billy with open arms.

[wokeupwiththissong]

Shop Fusion Collab - SiIvagunner (toonlink, berg8793, PsychLantern, Father Sheep, Blookerstein, athenamite, Sarvéproductions, literallyn01imp0rtant, Ahmaykmewsik, xIncisions, Heboyi, Netyasha Roozi, MtH, The Green Spy, eg_9371, Grambam36, Iollo, Mitchell, Moola Mixtape, ThisGreenDingo, KoltJolt, Nozobot, BluLuigi7, Madinstance, RHMan)

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 14/01/2024

Jesus of the Underground

Season 6 Featured on: siivagunner's highest quality rips: volume

Ripped by eg_9371

Alright, look, at this point I do try to avoid posting too many Undertale/Deltarune rips on this blog. With this post I think we're getting close to...20 or so rips of the game, or rips featuring its music prominently, covered on this blog. Yet Jesus of the Underground is the kind of rip that truly cannot be ignored - one of the most extensive rips ever made for the game, uploaded on its seventh birthday, after eight years straight of being featured on SiIvaGunner. Jesus of the Underground is the most perfect tribute to a game like Undertale that one could ever ask for.

It's easy to say that Undertale's popularity in being ripped on SiIvaGunner was purely a timing thing - SiIvaGunner started in January 2016, just a few months after Undertale's release in late 2015, still riding high on the sheer hype of tracks like Megalovania and Hopes and Dreams. And yeah, it may have started out that way, but I don't think launch hype would carry the game past six hundred rips made for it. In truth, I feel like Undertale's music spawned a sort of community of its own, for just how unique yet immediately appealing it is - its easily identifiable as video game music, yet with just enough parts in its percussion and backing played with real instruments, to remind those not wholly invested in the world of VGM that its music is more than just a series of bleeps and bloops. Pair that sound with Toby Fox's love for leitmotifs, distinct samples, and excellent sound design on the whole, and you've got a soundscape that almost defines the game's legacy more than the game itself. A lot of this is just me speculating, but its undeniable that the game's music has remained just as relevant to Undertale discussion as the game itself - it's not an aspect that ever feels like its taking a back seat, even despite just how globally popular the game itself has become.

And that feeling of, music remaining wholly appreciated despite its explosion in quality, was always the impression I got from the band that Jesus of the Underground is also paying tribute to - Green Day. I am, to reiterate a talking point I've made many times before, not in any way in touch with the music world, yet I've always admired Green Day in particular from a distance, in how their album American Idiot managed to become an absolute smash hit despite never feeling like they surrendered to pandering. On top of that, the album wasn't just "popular", but critically acclaimed, and even as time passed its popularity never felt like it drew the band any real negative or spiteful ire. Jesus of Suburbia, in particular, does not feel like it was made to tally up as many plays on a radio station as possible - it's akin to a whole storyline playing out over nine minutes of rock music, with peaks and valleys althroughout, yet it remains loved by music enthusiasts and everyday listeners alike. Much like Toby Fox with Undertale, Green Day filled American Idiot with their raw, almost-unfiltered feelings, and were able to strike a cord with so many people the world over despite evidently being made for a particularly niche audience: because the soul of their craft simply shone through.

Jesus of the Underground, in all its nine-minute glory, almost feels like as much of a labor of love as the two sources its pulling from - an expression of passion toward the art of ripping Undertale itself. Despite being such a long rip, it shows no signs of cut corners, no signs that eg_9371 was ever *not* making this out of love for the game. Or at the very least, no signs that he wasn't making it out of a love of ripping - it's clearly inspired by prior made and equally excellent Jesus Of Tazmily, a rip arranging Jesus of Suburbia within the soundscape of MOTHER 3 instead. Undertale itself wears its influences from the MOTHER series proudly on its sleeve, which makes it all the more fitting to think that it was an ambitious MOTHER 3 rip that inspired eg_9371 to roll his sleeves up and attempt doing the same for Undertale.

It remains hauntingly authentic in arrangement style to the original Hopes and Dreams and its instruments throughout, althewhile seamlessly changing in BPM and time signature just the same as Jesus of Suburbia does, without ever missing a beat. Meanwhile, small touches of quality ripping remain present throughout - Flowey's theme echoing throughout parts of the track's second act is such a great touch that I never would've thought would add so much to the arrangement alone. And setting aside all of the meta analysis and speculation on Undertale's popularity, American Idiot's merits, and just how much effort eg_9371 keeps putting into his rips, the instrumentation simply fits Green Day like a glove - Hopes and Dreams' guitar samples and the bright, hopeful sparkle of the main melody synth simply wraps everything together more seamlessly than one could've ever imagined.

That, or it's simply eg_9371 being magic again - which, given his title as SiIvaGunner's busiest ripper, is not a possibility I'm going to rule out. Jesus of the Underground is a fitting celebration in so, so many ways, honoring the legacy of Undertale, the appeal of its music, the success and influence Green Day has had on music, and just how much Jesus of Suburbia was able to connect with people despite its seemingly narrow appeal. Undertale, Green Day, and indeed the SiIvaGunner channel itself, and so many more projects out there, show that love and heart can push through any perceived boundaries of market appeal with enough of a push.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 15/10/2023

Funny Senator

Season 7 Featured on: Os Bar​õ​es da Qualidade

Ripped by eg_9371

Its hard for me to overstate just how funny of a way Season 7 opened, and how perfectly it distilled the essence of SiIvaGunner down to just two weeks time. The Season premiered on the first day of February after a month's break of uploads for the duration of January, and it was with this premiere - Super Sonic Racing - Sonic R - that the season was labeled as "the year of Grand Dad". We'd finally reached the Season celebrating the funny number! The year was declared a celebration of SiIva's legacy, of its most stories memes and jokes from every season, and throughout the years they would definitely deliver on that promise.

Yet barely two weeks after the premiere, we suddenly had the rug pulled from under our feet. From February 13th to February 16th, the celebration was no longer of SiIvaGunner, or of Grand Dad. Now, the celebration was of hit electro-Forró band Os Barões da Pisadinha, and their immediately recognizable style of music.

I've talked about the takeover before in Rainbow Baroad, but these guys are BIGLY popular in Brazil, despite or perhaps even because so much of their music all sounds so similar. There's an infectiously fun sound to their electro-Forró style, and the SiIva team already began messing around with it midway through Season 6. Much like rips of Slider such as yesterday's WA-HOO DISCO, a key part of the fun with these rips is just how unified the style of music becomes when arranged in this distinct instrumentation. With Rainbow Baroad, the song already had a sort of laid-back, chill vibe to it that fit Os Barões' tropical sound like a glove. Funny Senator sits on the complete opposite end: Forró music is perhaps as far removed from Metal Gear Rising's style of music as you could possibly get, and yet that total disconnect ends up creating a super fun tune!

The rearranging already sells the joke perfectly, but the original vocals being added on top of this far sillier instrumental, trying so hard to remain epic whilst still being overruled by the pure vibes of those steel drums...The visual it creates as a joke is just far too good for me to ignore. Its like a final battle taking place on a sunny-day public beach, or like an intense game of beachside volleyball between Raiden and Armstrong finally reaching its conclusion.

One day I'll relisten to the whole album and probably pick out a third favorite Os Barões rip, but until then I'm comfortable in calling these two my absolute favorites.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 21/10/2023

Bramble Blast Collab

Season 6 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume FF

Organized by Myeauxyoozi Ripped by Myeauxyoozi, eg_9371, l4ureleye, IzzyKart57, Heboyi, Memmy, Sarvéproductions, Pan, RHMan, Grambam36, C-Man, minindo

Hot off the heels of yesterday's celebration, I felt it only right to follow it up with yet more celebration. Wheras SING A SONG ABOUT HOPES AND DREAMS was part of a celebration of SiIvaGunner as a whole, today we're looking at a somewhat different celebration: the premiere of Season 6, Bramble Blast Collab, is an enchantingly unique collab even amidst the channel's long history of doing them.

Kickstarted by our good friend tunedlink back in Season 1, collabs like the File Select Fusion Collab were initially labelled as just that - "fusion" collabs, a carryover from the Kirbtunes remix project they were imitating. These proved to be immensely popular and loved by the community, and so the "fusion collab" branding stuck around, eventually morphing into a whole new, more clearly-segmented form of collaborative projects. I'm yet to cover any of these on the blog, but Season 7's Shop Fusion Collab is an excellent example of these collabs - each segment lovingly crafted by teams of rippers with visuals to match. In comparison, the old style of fusion collab may seem a bit messy, a bit unfocused and noisy. But amidst that noise, these have always been able to serve as incredible celebrations of so many parts of SiIvaGunner all at once.

While File Select Fusion Collab served to celebrate the good times had across Season 1, looking back upon all of its events and memes in a sentimental way, Bramble Blast Collab has always felt more...mixed, in its messaging. It has old memes, of course, be it Space Jam, Soulja Boy, or the introductory clip of Chad Warden's holy ghost, but...its filled to the brim with so much more, sources from the channel's recent history like Big Time Rush, Yankin' and Astronaut in the Ocean, amidst sources that are basically never seen on the channel such as Baldi's Basics and Smiling Friends. Its all delivered at a pace that's insanely fast even for the standard of these kinds of collabs - the result is a noise collage not just of SiIvaGunner's history, but of its possible future - the jokes we're yet to hear the full potential of, mixed in with small snippets of our old memories.

Althesame, it carries a slight sense of melancholy to it buried underneath all those funny memes: The track its built on *is* Bramble Blast, after all, one of the most emotionally poignant pieces of retro VGM out there. After rummaging around a zillion sources for most of the rip, the four-minute mark feels as if the song is breaking free of itself with the core melody re-emerging at full force, gradually built up by the increased prominence of the backing melody from the three-minute mark. Season 6, even as early as this, had the feeling of sorrow sort of engrained in it from the announcement of GilvaSunner - the original channel SiIvaGunner is made in tribute of - officially shutting down later that year. The fallout of which wouldn't quite be understood until I've won, but at what cost, but even as far back as the Season's premiere it was as if we were all gearing up for the inevitable.

Bramble Blast Collab, with its noise, its barrage of memes and its enchanting core throughline, remains one of my favorite season premieres the channel has ever done, and I feel it's not appreciated nearly enough for just how incredible of a collaboration it is. My hat goes off to the dozen rippers involved in its creation, for setting the stage perfectly for the ride Season 6 would end up being - althewhile keeping the spirit of the old Fusion Collabs alive and kicking.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 27/10/2023

Maroon 5 more like Maroon 8 hehehehehehe

Season 4 Episode 2 Featured on: The SiIvaGunner Spooktacular Halloween Horror Special: Curse of the Fallen Angel

Ripped by eg_9371

Part of Spooktacular Week! ● Requested by Memmy

I'll admit, even as far back as Halloween 2016, that I was never really a huge fan of The 8-Bit Beast's Haunted House meme. It has interesting history, certainly, it's part of an in-joke in the chiptune community that I'll never truly know the full extent of due to not being part of it...but as an actual song used in rips, it's entire point is basically to just be a non-Sonic. And so, I'm often left unimpressed by all the spins taken on this particular melody, even though it keeps showing up halloween after halloween, and is intricately tied to Wood Man in the lore.

All that is to say, that Maroon 5 more like Maroon 8 hehehehehehe really caught me off guard with how funny I found it when it was submitted to me just last week. It's yet another one of eg_9371's crazy ventures of just running with an idea no matter how bizarre or difficult it sounds, and doing it in the most high-effort way possible (The Secret Forest of Bones sticks out as a notable example). It's a mix of Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger with the lead melody of Haunted House - and though the repetitive main melody remains, the progression that Moves Like Jagger would otherwise have in its backing and lead instruments still remain. It gives an otherwise really repetitive meme an actual sense of progression, althewhile still sounding so authentically like the original Maroon 5 song with all its instruments along for the ride. Adam Levine-posting has long been a staple of the channel thanks to channel creator Chaze the Chat's obsession with his band, and it's always fun to see rips like this that take two long-running jokes and attempts to combine them for the first time.

Though I don't think I'll ever fully accept and embrace the power of the beast, it is fun to see what can be done with such a simple recognizable melody when rippers really put their head in gear. And given that it's basically a halloween-exclusive meme, it at least doesn't wear out its welcome too easily.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 23/08/2023

kris gaming

Season 7 Featured on: The Year of Grand Dad Sound Selection [Side A]

Ripped by eg_9371

Tentative rip name: Don't Forget about the 2:23AM stream

Its always so interesting to me whenever I hear a joke on SiIva completely out of my circle - and even MORE interesting when its something I'm able to fully vibe with regardless.

Yeah, full disclaimer, I'm really not familiar with 2:23AM, the track used for the joke of todays rip, nor the context its oft used in. To my knowledge its a piece of royalty-free music used by some pretty big-name VTubers in their livestreams as pause or waiting music due to its laid-back vibe. Its not the kind of song that strikes you as being royalty-free in the same way Kevin MacLeod's library is, yet its sound is indistinct enough as to be easily associated with any of the streamers that currently use it.

Again, though, even without all of that background - kris gaming is just a damn good arrangement! It follows on the original song's first few notes sounding near the exact same as Deltarune's Don't Forget, and it gives the rip a kind of emotional warmth alongside its original lo-fi relaxing feel. Its kind of surprising just how many feelings come attached to UT/DR's various melodies and how well they carry through into all sorts of arrangements, especially given just how long the SiIva channel has been ripping the two games. Even seven years later we're finding new ways to arrange Toby Fox's music, in ways that are sounding so good they may as well be official.

eg_9371 is, as I described before in The Secret Forest of Bones, the kind of ripper who's been able to just throw himself at any challenge to see if he can do it, and he seems to be basically unstoppable at this point. Even at his massive rate of output, he doesn't forget to inbue his rips with additional touches of flavor - though this rip would have been great as-is simply arranging Don't Forget, it also quotes Hopes and Dreams and Dating Start! from Undertale in a surprisingly natural way and turns this into a heartwarming little road trip down Undertale's soundscape. Its damn cool to see what people like eg_9371 can do with jokes so seemingly out of nowhere for the channel, and how much those in the know are able to appreciate it.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 12/04/2024

Light! (Potentialseeker Colress)

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More)

Ripped by eg_9371

The Season 8 train keeps chugging!! Its honestly been a lot of fun keeping up with the channel in real-time and jotting down rips that I think would be fun to talk about on here. There was Shiny Smily TALE of course, with its connections to a rip made nearly four years prior, and there was Luna, mi Amor, which sold itself as worthy of discussing immediately and only became more interesting the further I dug into it - tons of Season 8's features on here have had some truly fascinating backgrounds to them. But as soon as I heard Light! (Potentialseeker Colress), I didn't need to know anything else - it was LOCKED in. eg_9371 has hit me with yet another terminal banger.

I say another, of course, because eg_9371 has introduced me to a lot of cool music through his absolute truckload of contributions to the channel. kris gaming comes to mind as the main example, but it was also through Jesus of the Underground that I first learned about Jesus of Suburbia to begin with! The guy has his fingers in a lot of pies, and it's as if no matter what part of his circle of interests that he chooses to arrange music from, the result will be a guaranteed banger. I was, of course, mainly drawn to Light! (Potentialseeker Colress) for the track it's using, Colress' battle theme from Pokémon Black & White 2. An incredible piece of music, in a game already defined by its crisp and distinct soundscape, heard in rips like Four Ardain ~Roaming the Route~ and Battle! The Trainer Inside Your Head!: in other words, get the reference or not, its hard for me NOT to love Gen 5 Pokémon melodyswaps. Light! (Potentialseeker Colress) indeed uses a song I've never heard before in Aegleseeker, originating from the mobile rhythm game Arcaea - but I didn't need to go stumbling down the wiki trenches to realize just how hard the rip, and song, both bang.

What surprised me about listening to the original Aegleseeker for this post, though, was how starkly different it sounds from Colress' battle theme and by extension Light! (Potentialseeker Colress) itself. Colress' theme is electronic yet not noisy, sounding like a perfectly-wound machine, a system working without flaw yet electronic in its very nature - by contrast, Aegleseeker's brand of electronic music sounds as if its racing toward the sun, as if its a cluster of information traveling at indescribably speeds through an online web breaking apart at the seams. An intense BPM, fervent percussion, heavy guitars and distorted vocal samples, all paired up with a lead instrument that sounds like a light breaking through the dark, desperate to not fade. The two songs share a thematic baseline yet veer in such harsh opposite directions, that I'm amazed eg_9371 made it work so effectively in the rip itself. It cleans up some of Aegleseeker's noise to have things still sound as if they're feasibly part of a Nintendo DS game, the BPM is obviously sped up from the original battle theme yet still sound just slightly behind in tempo from Aegleseeker, and the elegant synths from Colress' synths punctuate the rip at all of the perfect moments. I can't put my finger on if Battle! (Colress)'s vocal samples slowly counting down from four to zero replace any particular part of Aegleseeker's sound, but they really do help round the piece out, perhaps as a way to echo Aegleseeker's distorted vocal samples.

I could sit here and listen back and fourth and back and fourth to the two, but I think the important part has been conveyed well enough. Season 8 has only just begun, yet has brought me surprises at every turn, be it an entire day dedicated to Justin Bieber with BELIEBERDANSEN or the ongoing frequency with which Stuck Inside rips like Willievan Afton Polkka are still impressing me. But amidst all of those larger-scale hits, one mustn't forget the smaller things. Light! (Potentialseeker Colress) may just be one rip, and the combination of Aegleseeker's (relative) obscurity and sheer intensity likely means it won't be showing up much again on the channel going forward - and despite that, eg_9371 gave the song his absolute all and made an absolutely unforgettable rip in the process.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 08/07/2023

I've won, but at what cost

Season 6 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume FF

Ripped by eg_9371

Requested by @undertale-vs-fortnite-who-wins

Season 6 of SiIvaGunner is immensely interesting to look back on, as it sort of carries an air of melancholy throughout. Though it had its fair share of average SiIva events, it was a season that, perhaps as a sheer coincidence, both began and ended with very important farewells. The Season's ending is a story for another time. Today, we're here to mourn the loss of GilvaSunner, the channel that arguably laid the groundwork for VGM on YouTube as a whole.

As I'm sure many are aware, GilvaSunner - thats with an L, not an uppercase i - was one of the leading channels for accessing video game music on YouTube, particularly from Nintendo music, in the 2010s and late 2000s. The channel's branding, thumbnails, description and mission statement of providing quality above all else were all things adopted by SiIvaGunner, both to help sell the original idea of impersonation whilst also building on it as a form of parody. The two existed in harmony, with GilvaSunner mostly inactive and SiIvaGunner existing as a giant tribute to video game music on the site as a whole. Through an increasingly heated copyright battle between himself and Nintendo, the channel admin of GilvaSunner was eventually forced to close the channel down, officially commencing on the 4th of February 2022. With him, a giant archive of video game music was lost, alongside all the voices and comments that had once occupied each and every upload. It didn't matter that the content that was lost wasn't original: In a way, an entire community was lost that day.

On the day of GilvaSunner's deletion, the entire SiivaGunner channel paid its respects through an event. The event posted several dozen rips in just one day, with per-game batches uploaded simultaneously to mirror the upload schedule of the original channel. In the end, it was all capped off with rips from Tengami: the very game that GilvaSunner and SiIvaGunner's header image is sourced form.

As the event's final rip, I've won, but at what cost (known otherwise as Loneliness - Tengami on the YouTube channel) holds that melancholy feeling more than any other that day. The rip initially appears to be the typical SiIva melodyswap medley, only it doesn't swap to any of SiIva's own themes. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart 64's Rainbow Road, Super Mario Galaxy, Mother 3: The track throughout all its melodyswaps celebrates everything that the original GilvaSunner channel itself loved, what its most remembered uploads were, and gives them an exceptionally emotional touch through the source track. Its only at the very end that Snow Halation from Love Live is added to close the theme out, as the visuals and song both fade.

Divorced from its original context in Love Live, Snow Halation on SiIvaGunner has to me always held weight as a theme of hope and revival, as the theme that originally brought SiIvaGunner out of the Reboot in Season 1. Arguably, its the theme most emblematic of the passion found in SiIva audience, from its initial hatedom to the wave of people now woefully attached to it - myself included. In mourning Gilva's closure and moving on throughout the 6th season of SiIva, Snow Halation playing here feels like a passing of the torch - as a reminder that, though we've lost one, the passion and spark of the SiIvaGunner channel refuses to ever let it die.

A cherry blossom falls

Death's embrace

A new beginning

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 11/08/2023

Forest of Tears

Season 7 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume Ruby

Ripped by eg_9371

Tentative rip name: The Secret Forest of Bones

He's back again - the channel's most frequent contributor, eg_9371. Its still really nuts to me how one ripper not only sits above one thousand contributed works, but did so without cutting any corners - eg_9371 is not someone who throws shit at the wall and sees what sticks, but someone who tackles any possible challenge with his all just to see if its possible. A surprisingly high amount of the channel's best rips in recent memory have all been from him, and he deserves all the credit he can get.

Today's rip sits among his best ever rips, and a challenge I'm extremely grateful he chose to take on. Its a no-frills arrangement of one song in another song's instrumentation: Secret of the Forest from Chrono Trigger, in the style of City of Tears from Hollow Knight. Simple on paper, yet...both of these songs have a kind of untouchable magic to them, an emotional weight. They're the kind of songs that sound wrong if even tweaked just a small bit due just to how perfect the originals are. Yet the big man did it - Forest of Tears is as pitch-perfect of a combination of two legendary songs as you could get. There's no need for memes, no need for channel-specific leitmotifs, no need for an event - this is Chrono Trigger X Hollow Knight in its rawest, most perfect form.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 22/06/2023

Satinpanties Symphony

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume D

Ripped by eg_9371 Visuals by moralem (art), RHMan (chart), brubsby (recording)

There's a lot to be said about the frequently-ripped things on SiIvaGunner. I've already covered how rips like Wii Shop Bling paved way for the Wii Shop Channel theme becoming a permanent mainstay on the channel, and there are several other tracks like it that cemented their place on the channel in one way or another. Sometimes its out of popularity, like with the Super Mario 64 Slider rips, or out of a longstanding in-joke like with the Five Nights at Freddy's Circus rips (believe me, we'll get to those one day). But with a few exceptions, like Season 7s infestation of Raft Rides, a lot of these reoccurances stem from some sort of, long-running legacy so to speak.

Which is what makes the channel's direct ties to Friday Night Funkin' so interesting to me. The game effectively came out of nowhere at the tail end of Season 4, and without skipping a beat it started receiving regular rips as soon as Season 5 began. What set these rips apart was the effort that consistently went into them - visuals and charts were edited or made ground-up specifically to match the original game, like they were all-new songs to play in-game. On top of this, the rips were of course consistently bangers - it was a perfect storm that pushed FNF as an inseperable part of SiIva's identity in no time flat.

In the same way that FNF honors the legacy of Newgrounds, its always felt to me like the FNF rips on SiIva honor the channel's own legacy. Be it Gangster Mario, Among Us Drip, Astronaut in the Ocean - so many of the rips just feel tied to the channel's own foundation and community, especially in how it creates FNF character designs for these in-jokes. And to tie it back to these frequently ripped tracks I discussed earlier, todays rip highlights one of those in particular - Stickerbrush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2. A track less so heralded for its nostalgia or potential funnyness, but for its unbelievable quality despite the hardware its on. Its an important piece of music to a lot of VGM-invested people, and Satinpanties Symphony does it justice in spades. It stays authentic to the source track its building on and the game's general call-and-response structure between singers, even free-styling certain sections a bit to better fit FNF's pace, without ever losing the essence of the track its adapting. The serotonin that hits when both parties sing in harmony leading in to the chorus hits crazy hard, its honestly hard to listen to the track without a smile.

And that's really the thing - eg_9371s output on the channel is fucking HUGE in a way that I don't believe I could effectively summarize, yet almost all the rips I've heard from him just make me smile in the simplest of ways. His output is so varied it might as well be SiIvaGunner distilled into just one ripper - the consistent throughline being quality no matter what.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 25/06/2023

dong music

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume C

Ripped by eg_9371

One of the more novel things about having followed SiIva for as long as I have has been seeing the channel's library of jokes gradually grow and change overtime. Its almost impossible to picture now, but in the earliest days of the channel 7 Grand Dad was really the only joke that would appear regularly: Snow Halation, Loud Nigra, Nutshack, We Are Number One, and so on would all join later, of course, but for a time the selection was quite limited. And it might just be my imagination, but it felt like around ~2017-2018, sound-based shitposts akin to what SiIva was posting regularly started to become more of a mainstream meme-culture thing, where you'd find it in your average Twitter feed. Its become a kind of symbiosis I feel, wherin many of the channel's own in-jokes slowly creep their way into social media, and many social media-viral sound sources slowly get integrated into the channel itself, even if just momentarily. Penis Music, out of all sources, is what immediately comes to mind for me when I think of this phenomenon.

Maybe that's just because it feels like such a perfect fit for the channel? Maybe because the few appearances it had on the channel during Season 4:2 stuck out so much from their quality? Or maybe just because the source track is, even with or perhaps because of its instrumentation, a fucking banger.

Life in the Mines is already a top-tier DKC track to begin with and one that sounds good almost no matter what instrumentation you give it, and there's obviously something really funny about blasting the loudest, most obnoxious instrumentation possible over a track meant to convey ambience and quiet. But once the intro plays and the track begins, it quickly becomes clear that the joke was lead in to a genuinely fantastic EDM remix of the original track. Yet its not a bait-and-switch: The chorus is still using the same synth and same samples as the original Penis Music song, and the more iconic rubberband samples reappear as the track goes on, feeling part of this greater remix effort.

There's a good number of audio sources used on SiIva that are most often used in intentionally terrible ways, and I feel there's a real possibility Penis Music could've ended up like that. But a small band of rippers who saw the potential in the source back in 2021 really did do the most out of if, and it still brings a smile to my face even now.

...what do you MEAN this was also by eg_9371????

[7grandmel]

Todays Raft: 05:20 - 01/04/2024

WE’RE GONNA MAKE IT OUT THE RAPIDS WITH THIS ONE!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Season 7 Not Ridden by Link (Read More) Raft Ride (Mastered) - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Raft by eg_9371

Fire rip. I feel kind of out of the loop with the whole TunesToTube bit but I love stupid audio edits like this so much. Raft Ride type beat.

[7grandmel]

Todays Raft: 04:24 - 01/04/2024

FORTNITE RAFT!!!

Season 7 Not Ridden by Link (Read More) Raft Ride (ZASSI.isx Build) - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Raft by eg_9371

WOO!!! FORTNITE!!!! I LOVE FORTNITE!!!!!

Real talk what happened to Misha in the lore. he was huge in late Season 1 and was in the one CCC side story episode from Season 4 and then hes just been missing since. i miss the kid. i love fortnite song. very good rip but pls bring misha back hes so funny

[7grandmel]

Todays Raft: 06:40 PM - 01/04/2024

The Other Raft Ride of Terror

Season 7 Ridden on: PROTONOMICON ~ The Cult of Proto Collection

Raft by eg_9371

Neither the rip title or mix name were lying!! This is an original arrangement of Raft Ride in a very spooky vibe, and to my knowledge isn't pulling from any specific game at all as a reference? eg_9371 is just a damn good arranger I suppose, because yeah - this sounds great! Really set the mood to the Protonomicon event quite nicely, and I'm surprised at how much it still feels like Raft Ride even as the Harpsichord added doesn't connect to the original melody at all, and both the high note and chaotic backing track were removed. I suppose their silliness would take away from the song's actual intent of sounding ominous - and sure enough, it does that excellently, whilst still having a melody that is unmistakeable Raft Ride.

[7grandmel]

Todays Raft: 08:24 - 01/04/2024

Don't Forget This Ride

Season 7 Not Ridden by Link (Read More) Raft Ride (cgbzel_usa0820.com Build) - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Raft by eg_9371

I swear I keep hearing this song used in shitposts and rips but I never know its origin or even why it got popular? I mostly just remember it because there's a small part of it that sounds just like a part of the bridge in Scott the Woz's Closing In. Weird association to make. Hm.

Anyway - good rip!