The frost and ice of recent days here is now gone and we're back to the usual English Midlands winter weather of being only slightly chilly with lots of cloud. At the moment I'm okay with that as I just wanted it to warm up, but before long I'll doubtless start really yearning for some sunshing. In the meantime, I'll have to content myself with some Pony music. My inclusion criteria follow as usual. At least one of these is needed:
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'm very happy to say that, as with last week's selection, this time I can also feature all five songs. Admittedly two of them were also in the 2014 chart, but I doubt many of you will mind when you see what they are. Talking of which, here's the list:
75: TAPS – Battle
74: Sayonara Maxwell – Light of Your Cutie Mark (remix)
73: Starlight & IMShadow007 – Lonely Road
72: Vylet Pony ft. Lily Cloud – Starcrossed
71: ponyphonic – Harmony Ascendant
All right, that's quite enough of the introductory waffle. Let's get to the actual tunes!
We've had both TAPS and "Battle of the Bands" remixery in this year's selection already, but here we go again! This song was featured by Cider Party, which was quite a big deal back in the day. A little bit of a shame that account hasn't uploaded anything at all since 2021, but time marches on I suppose. The genre of this particular track is described by Cider Party as "Electro House/Bounce" and it's hard to argue. Bouncy it most certainly is, and at only 2:30 it hardly outstays its welcome. Even though this isn't really my favourite genre and I can't say the remix especially sticks in my mind, it's still at a level where I'm happy to have it playing in the background while typing or something. You can grab a high quality version for $1 on TAPS' Bandcamp.
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 24 Oct 2015
The absolute fandom juggernaut that resulted from "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" in autumn 2015 rolled on with this track from Russian musician Sayonara Maxwell, these days known as SayMaxWell. A nicely produced and fast-paced remix with some interesting Japanese-flavoured glitchy chops as well as the main vocals, this one has aged pretty well, I think. It doesn't hurt that "Light of Your Cutie Mark" is a song I particularly like from that era of the show. Sadly it's not available on the artist's Bandcamp, but it is available on their Soundcloud.
Time now for some chillstep. We've already met Starlight in "Sounds of 2015" under the current name Proctra, and now they're joined by voice actress IMShadow007, who sings pleasantly. This song makes heavy use of the melody of "Art of the Dress", although with entirely original lyrics. With a couple of minor exceptions, these flow quite well. The song is a little darker in tone than the show song, giving an insight into just how much of a toll Rarity's job can take on her. You can grab this track for nothing but your email address on Starlight's Gumroad, but it's also available on PegasYs' Soundcloud, PegasYs also being associated with this creative team.
This song by VyletPony and LilyCloud has been featured here already, reaching no. 77 on the 2014 chart. It went just a few better in 2015, but I don't think my views on it have changed since I listened to it last year. As the thumbnail makes plain it's a Vinyl/Octavia track with a couple of notable touches: a nice synth solo late on and a very sudden and non-standard outro. Vylet doing something unusual? Well, we'd never see that again, now, would we? ;) Vylet was pleased with how this track came out, and it's easily available in HQ for $1.29 on Vylet's Bandcamp.
We end this time with another repeat from the 2014 chart. As I said last year, this ponyphonic song was described by the artist as a "hymn of praise" from Equestria's ponies for balance, harmony and the fall of Discord. There's a long (nearly two minutes) spoken intro which I'm still not sure about even after all this time, but it does provide context to what follows. And what follows is a fantastic hymnic (yes, it's a word) track full of great harmonies that fits its subject wonderfully well. Come on, this is ponyphonic, what did you expect? If you want this in higher quality sound, for $1 apiece on ponyphonic's Bandcamp you can acquire the song both with the intro and without it.
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