Rabid's Video of the Week #12 - Requiescat by SPL4SHZ0N3

Welcome to video of the week, where I pick a random video from my exceptional playlist and talk about it in depth

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THIS WEEK'S VIDEO: #142

Requiescat by SPL4SHZ0N3


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHVZBwo1O7c

This is a pretty recent track, at least in comparison to my past VOTWs (there are 167 videos on the playlist, and this is #142).

SPL4SHZ0N3 wrote:This track is dedicated to one of my favorite artist, Micheal "Eyedea" Larsen, who just recently passed away on October 16, when he was only 28. It hurts me a lot because I've grown up listening to his music.

I'm sure we all remember Vita, Spl4sh's first big track, and I think this track was rather overshadowed by it. For a while I remember wondering if Vita was going to be Spl4sh's only really major track - one hit wonders are not uncommon in the Line Rider world. He got two corruptions, entered a contest, and made a short sequel to one of his older tracks, and I was wondering if/when his next major track would come out.

Then, 4 months after Vita, this came out, with the disclaimer "Not really sure anyone will like this." My first thought when watching it was how different it was from Vita. It was not relaxing and flowy, but rather jarring, dramatic, and intense, and the music, which I found to be a little much at first, really went with the track once I immersed myself. I tried to describe it as "extremely intense stop'n'go" but that didn't quite fit it. This was really something I had never seen before, and I remember watching in several times, trying to figure out what was different about it. I've even tried listening to different music with it, but the track doesn't make any sense with other songs. Bosh seems to be jerked suddenly and then intentionally slowed, and then jerked again, in such a random way that you never know when the next jerk is coming. It was also long - almost 2 minutes in an age where over one minute is considered full length, and covered a huge variety of styles and genres, but it always had this intense jerky feel about it. Maybe it's just the strong well, maybe it's the intentional slowdowns, but I'm sure that this is a truly unique track. PainLobster says it better than I can:

PainLobster wrote:You have some crazy, uncanny ability to mix high and low power and speed together in a way that comes together amazingly.

Or Spl4sh himself:

SPL4SHZ0N3 wrote:I actually wanted the XY to be slow, to be a contrast to the quirk, and to buildup suspense for the quirk. (And the song changes as it shifts from XY to quirk, but i messed up a little on the syncing; song's like 2 seconds early lol.)
And i guess you're interpreting the parts where I changed the flow purposefully (slow - faster) as being horrible flow. I kind of expected people to not like that. But I did it anyway because I personally liked it and thought it was interesting. Also, what you said about the "fun track" stuff is true, barring Me thinking the flow was horrible (maybe horrible to you, which i can respect that opinion), but it was more of a "I'll-do-whatever-I-want-in-this-track-even-though-I-know-some-people-won't-like-it Track". lol

He also had these words to say about his inspiration:

SPL4SHZ0N3 wrote:I just wanted to say that this track was pretty heavily influenced by The River by Hedge. That track showed his courage for experimentation in a different style from tracks like Lilac Wine and Vision. I kind of wanted to branch out and try out new styles than Vita, because let's be honest, most people didn't know about me before that lol, unless you knew me from ELR or something. So yeah, kind of expected some people to not like it based on the reception that The River received. Another comparison would be if Anomaly made a highspeed manual track, or TCR made a Leomur-style stop and go track. They might get extremely good reception, or bad reception because its out of their normal style of track making.

It's not really very similar to The River, but it has elements that are very similar to it, like the sudden strong flings.

There was a certain amount of negative reception, but it did get featured by a landslide vote two days after it was posted, and it received high praise from others. It really never became anything close to as famous as Vita, but it's very easy to see the influence this track had if you compare a track of Spl4sh's today to Vita.

In any case, I encourage you not to look at it from a perspective of flow analysis or trick recognition, but just let yourself be immersed in the track and the music. It's really rather epic, and is probably my favorite track by Spl4sh so far.

I love this one too. The music is just so dramatic and intense and I think it fits the track perfectly. It makes me wanna jump and scream stuff, thát's how intense it is =o

This track grows on you, I love it <3