Things By Mike

Ever have one of those moments where you create something and you step back and say, “Wow, did I just do that?”. Five years ago I had one of those moments while working on a piece of music for a remix contest on ACIDPlanet.com. They were offering up a song from the soundtrack of the Xbox game called Toxic Grind to remix. The song was written by a guy named Peter Reardon (aka Mesmer) who had worked in the past with people like Trent Reznor. So as you can imagine just the thought of getting the opportunity to remix a track by someone like that was a pretty nice opportunity.

I don’t even remember what the winner was awarded but the song had some really catchy rhythm guitar riffs and as soon as I heard them the wheels in my head started spinning. Immediately I began plunking away at some original melody and beat ideas, digging through sample CDs and even rehearsing vocal harmonies. 48 hours later I emerged from the depths of my creativity with my “Wow, did I just do that?” moment. I don’t even remember if I slept. I was in the zone, so to speak and refused to quit until I was finished. Proudly I uploaded the song to my artist account on ACIDPlanet.

Back in those days I used the handle nitecrawl3r. Silly, I know but I was just as much an insomniac then as I am now, so the name seemed fitting. It wasn’t long and the reviews from fellow artists started to come in. It was a hit! People really enjoyed what I had created. The ultimate moment came when Peter Reardon himself commented on my track with the words, “Amazing. Great energy, very professional. great harmony, great fidelity” and scored it a 10/10. In the end I was eventually one of the finalists but ultimately did not win the contest. I’ll never forget that feeling though of accomplishment after those very long 48 hours.

This is that song. There were very few elements from the original song that I kept for the remix. The main thing was the rhythm guitars. I piled on a ton of original percussion and melodies, various ACID loops and just about everything else I could throw at it. The end result was something very unique and completely different from the original track. I guess the best way to describe it would be Atmospheric Hard Rock/Industrial.

[audio:http://thingsbymike.com/audio/remix/toxic.mp3]