It's time we paid another visit to the Equestrian Trot 100 chart for 2016 – though, as I noted last time, it's not quite the full calendar year as its voting period ran from December 2015 to November 2016. Close enough, though! Certainly the closest you're going to get in these parts. Here's the usual reminder of my inclusion criteria:
Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.
I was able to feature all five songs last week, and this time around I can do that again! This is always the best-case scenario, all the more so when – as has happened this week – all the songs remain on their creators' YouTubes and discoverable without much effort. The five this time are:
90: WeimTime – Rainbow Factory (orchestral arrangement)
89: StrachAttack – The Spectacle (remix)
88: OhPonyBoy – Mox Super Jupiter
87: Synthis – Hold Me Close
86: PON3 – Secrets
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 9 Aug 2016
There was a time when one mark of a song's status in the fandom would be an orchestral version from WeimTime, those very often being piano renditions made with Synthesia.¹ This version of WoodenToaster's classic-even-then "Rainbow Factory" is one of his more complex orchestral arrangements, with a multi-instrument approach rather than being piano-centric, and I think it sounds pretty darn good. The use of both strings and brass is satisfying, and while it's a pretty straight rendition of the original I doubt too many people will mind that. Perhaps unsurprisngly, it's not on Bandcamp, but it is available from WeimTime's Soundcloud.
¹ Not the AI company of the same name, which didn't exist in 2016.
I must admit that I'm unfamiliar with the still-active-but-not-in-Pony StrachAttack, who brings us this dubstep remix of the first song from "The Mane Attraction". It's no secret that dubstep is not one of my favourite genres, but although this song doesn't change that I think the nature of the original show track makes me a little more receptive to a dubstep version than I would be to many songs. As far as I can tell it's a very nicely worked example of its type, with some interesting little additions such as short vocal chops and even a police siren! The HQ version is a name-your-price download on StrachAttack's Bandcamp.
I've mentioned before how French musician OhPonyBoy really hasn't maintained his popularity in the fandom in recent years. On the strength of songs like this one, that's a bit of a pity. A science-fiction themed song about a spaceship that can be controlled with music means a blend of synths and electronics that's really unacceptably catchy. It's in French, but the YouTube captions provide a pretty solid English translation. There's the usual fun accompanying animation (also created by OPB) which contains beer and cursed artifacts – oh, and just a tiny bit of English-language on-screen swearing, so best keep the video out of any strictly SFW places! The track is the opener to The Stellae Key album, but you can pick it up on its own for €1 on OhPonyBoy's Bandcamp.
Another fine slice of synthiness by the appropriately named Synthis now. His summary for what the song is about is simply "Sometimes you just want to be held." Synthis was a lot happier with the instrumental for this than he was with the vocals, and I kind of see what he meant, though I don't think the lyrics are nearly as bad as he implies. I will concede that they're not quite the smoothest in terms of flow, though. It does help the overall impression of the song that Synthis' singing has such a nice quality, of course. This song is available as a name-your-price download on Synthis' Bandcamp.
This artist has been known as Scraton for a long time now, but PON3 was the name this song appeared under, so that's how it's credited here. "Whatever the case can be, there is never a reason to fear, for what is not known cannot harm, only serve as an urge to discover what lies ahead," says the artist in the YouTube description. In all honesty I'm not sure what the specific MLP link is – that issue became more prominent in later years with many P@D songs barely seeming connected to the fandom at all until you dig quite deep into their motivations, but in 2016 it was still fairly rare. Another track from the Ark EP (as was "Proxy" in an earlier post), you can grab "Secrets" on its own for $1 from Scraton's Bandcamp.
wow, I've never before heard of WeimTime :O it's cool they were held in high regard, though
ReplyDeleteyou're right about that OhPonyBoy track, too, I know intuitively that he's done more than just the pony blob videos, but sometimes it's easy to forget
I expect it's just that they were popular in the same little bit of YouTube I was frequenting at the time. :)
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