“Free” – Theme of Sonic Free Riders: ‘Roughmix 0812’ WIP Track

Welcome to Free… but not. The following is a track we’ve talked about a few times and that even made its way onto Radio Redux on a couple of occasions. (Yes, that’s still going. Search on Apple, Spotify, our website or head over to @lmcpodcasts.) It never hit the Depository itself back in the day, but it has been in the collection, as it were, for a LONG, LONG time.

Anyway, this is a work in progress version of Free, the main theme of XBOX Kinect game Sonic Free Riders – or at least the Crush 40 version of that. Yes, the third riders game and Sonic project that deserves more love simply because hot damn was that thing turned around in a hurry!

It’s called the “the roughmix version” because that’s just what it’s labelled as: with the numbers being the date it was done presumably, since the file itself is dated August 2010. What we have here is Free, but at about maybe 75-85% the finished product musically. Ignoring the obvious fact that, you know, a minute and a half is missing from what we eventually got. It has music and vocals, but is missing a layer of guitar work. All those fiddles and twiddly bits are AWOL, as is a fair bit of mixing/producing on the track in comparison to the finished article.

And you know what? I honestly prefer it. It feels a bit like a more raw, stripped down version. The release of Free we got feels a bit… ‘too much’, in comparison.

Obviously, this is not super-duper different, it is not a demo version at its origin. Like we say, 75-85%. But it is noticeably different. I mean, imagine if we had an actual synthy demo version of when the idea for the track was being kicking around. But what would be the chances of that, eh?

In a completely unrelated point, if you’d be interested in us doing more videos about the finds from the old Depository days be sure to like the videos and subscribe. You never know, you might like our let’s plays and things while you’re waiting. There’s videos out almost every day and a humongous back catalogue, plus an embarrassing number of podcasts and other media too.

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