Candy Corn III: Direct to Video / Candy Corn III: Direct to Video / Candy Corn III: Direct to Video

Candy Corn III: Direct to Video
Comments from album director D L (YoshiBlade)
Album freely available at http://ocremix.org

So, it's come to this... So it goes with all horror movie franchises, the first one with its low-budget underground novelty, garnering a morsel of legitimacy, leading to the wide-release theatrical sequel, complete with the blessing of the director and studio execs, only to be panned by the critics, mocked by the fans, and dismal box office returns... then it happens, perusing the local video store, you find it... placed auspiciously next to its cinematic siblings. Did you know its release date? Nope. Was there a plot? Maybe. Didn't that background character die a few scenes ago? Probably. Is the boom mic visible in the film's emotional speech? Almost certainly. But here we are ready to beat the fossilized remains of a horse species long since extinct, may I present... Candy Corn III: Direct to Video.

- D L (YoshiBlade)

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1. Stephen Kelly, YoshiBlade, Bryan Kelly, Abigail Endsley - "Scene 1: Mars Bars and Mysteries"

2. YoshiBlade - "Street Lamps & Palm Trees"
Source: Kingdom Hearts - "Traverse Town"
Original Composer: Yoko Shimomura

I will confabulate nearly all elements of Kingdom Hearts: the worlds, the mechanics, the music, the plot, the plot... oh and the plot, but the feeling of familiarity and respite is a one-to-one with Traverse Town, a place you can count on to be your home base. I feel it everytime I hear Traverse Town's theme, I feel like I'm back, I feel relaxed, I feel good. Even to this day, when I walk down a town square that has those antique lamp posts, glowing in the streets, I hum this tune to myself.

3. Stephen Kelly, Bryan Kelly, Abigail Endsley - "Scene 2: Caramel and Costumes"

4. YoshiBlade - "Python Man"
Source: Mega Man 6 - "Knight Man Stage"
Original Composer: Yuko Takehara

I would be taken to my dad's friend's house and I remember with advantages playing their NES, and one of my go-to Mega Man games, while over playing alone in the basement, was 6. Centaur Man, Blizzard Man, there were some fairly outlandish characters, and in all honesty, Knight Man doesn't stand out... but you *must* start with Knight Man, he's the stepping stone to the others (side note: Knight Man was a fan creation from a contest), so I became quite familiar this theme. When I think of knights, there's really only 2, The Mega Man & The Black Knight, so I combined my two most familiar incarnations into something new!

5. Stephen Kelly, Bryan Kelly, Abigail Endsley - "Scene 3: Snickers and Scares"

6. YoshiBlade - "Envenomation"
Source: Mega Man 3 - "Snake Man Stage"
Original Composer: Yasuaki Fujita

Snakes... snakes... I love that word. It's few words that could double down as hieroglyphs for their meaning, it begins and ends with the serpentine figure of SnakeS. Boas, cobras, vipers, thin as needles or weighing more than a human, they can rear up and look you in the eyes, twist around squeezing the life out of you or deliver a potent cocktail of chemicals that can dissolve you from within... One of the bigger mysteries for me was why snakes needed a robot master, but, the more I think about it, if I had to pick any suborder of vertebrates, snakes would be it... the bass is a thick anaconda, the stinging lead a venomous black mamba, the snare strikes like a coiled diamondback.

7. Stephen Kelly, Bryan Kelly, Abigail Endsley - "Scene 4: Pop Rocks and Pranks"

8. YoshiBlade - "Tilt & Drift"
Source: Mario Kart DS - "Waluigi Pinball/Wario Stadium"
Original Composer: Shinobu Nagata

So I like funk, I like pinball... Both were a little before my time, but they always seem to stay relevant, they're still making pinball machines for popular movies and legitimate funk songs that feel like vintage 1970s still pop up on charts.

9. Stephen Kelly, Bryan Kelly, Abigail Endsley - "Scene 5: Nutter Butters and Neighbors"

10. YoshiBlade - "05:01pm"
Source: Animal Crossing - "05:00pm"
Original Composer: Kazumi Totaka, Kenta Nagata, Toru Minegishi, Shinobu Nagata

It's that feeling right after you get home after a day that was too busy and a car ride that was too long and you fall back into a couch chair, or bed, or even right into the floor and tell yourself I'm free to do what I want now, but all you can do is just look at the clock and say the hard part's over. I think, if anything, I try and make music that brings about a feeling connected to the raw emotional connection to the topic I'm trying to interpret. Here, it's just that end-of-the-day haze that fogs the mind and scuttles any creativity you had for how you *thought* you were going to spend the rest of the day.

11. YoshiBlade, Stephen Kelly, Bryan Kelly, Abigail Endsley - "Scene 6: Candy Corn and Conclusions"
Source: Final Fantasy VI - "Fanfare"
Original Composer: Nobuo Uematsu