#crystalforce

Hey, I try not to be biased on here all too much - but fact of the matter is, that I do have a terminal case of Sonic fan disease. It was only earlier this week that I covered Rooftop Bop, I've been completely self-indulgent with rips like Imperial Touwer - and I'm about to do it again now with You Give Me Color Power. Amidst all the no-nonsense mashups on the SiIvaGunner channel, few continue to worm my way into my mind like it does, reaching the highest possible prestige of a mashup in being so good as to effectively replace the original in my mind.

To this very day, You Give Me Color Power remains the only rip yet made on the channel of Planet Wisp Act 3 in particular. In Sonic Colors, each of the three acts serve as different takes, remixes, of the same core melody - we're all familiar with Planet Wisp, as heard in Planet Wisp Mashup Medley, but the Act 3 remix gives the tune a more funky, bouncy feel - the piano and percussion playing in a far odder, repeating rhythm, as the song as a whole becomes far more of a funk tune in its pace than the original. And long before they became relevant to the world of internet shitposting through a damn Family Guy clip, Jamiroquai have been at the top of the funk foodchain - something CrystalForce was evidently well aware of. You Give Me Something isn't a song I can claim to have listened to all too extensively, but its ability to fit Planet Wisp's mood herein feels absolutely effortless. The added instrumentation compliments the Planet Wisp Act 3 bassline to absolute perfection, and Jay Kay's own vocal performance is able to carry the original track through its more piano-heavy segments with absolute grace and beauty.

The last post made me nostalgic for Season 1’s ending, so fuck it, here’s another rip from back then - the File Select Fusion Collab, a rip with close to 20 creators involved. What a “Fusion Collab” entails has changed quite a fair bit over the years, as the collaborations have grown larger in size with each year. Nowadays, they now tend to focus on individual artists rendering a specific track in their own style across a longer video, such as with Season 2’s Wood Man Fusion Collab. But with Season 1, the meaning was a lot more nebulous - they were almost all made under the direction of toonlink (otherwise goes by “tunedlink” and “toonlinkirl”), and were made more in the style of YTPMVs, having a base song to build off of with an everchanging barrage of styles and sources intermingling at once.

These were released every now and then over the course of Season 1 and were always appreciated, yet today’s choice in particular stands out among them. Being released during what was effectively presented as the ending of the channel, it has a unique kind of emotional baggage to it, it leans into celebrating the entire legacy of the channel and all of its inside jokes. The full-circle moment of getting Joel Vinesauce himself to narrate a section in the middle of the track was perfect - the person whose joke got the entire channel started, now gets invited to formally close it out, with a speech still very much rooted in that niche joke culture SiIva itself thrives in. And it just keeps going in that direction - the rip builds in a congratulatory, yet bittersweet way to truly signal that the channel is about to end, a giant thank-you letter to the entire community that had been fostered over the channel’s small 9-month lifespan.