It's amazing what people are doing these days with Ico music, of all things.

I'm sure I've related this before, but I have one absolute mark of perfection when it comes to all things dork related: Andrew's approal.

Andrew is a sullen, dour fellow. He takes little please in anything but squeezing the hopes and dreams out of little children. In his hands, full of mammoth intentions, he possesses the power to decimate the joy contained within any living creature. I might mention, sort of offhandedly, that I enjoyed the most recent episode of Super Magnetic Robo-Fighter Zero-A-1 Platinum and he'd reply in a cancerous tone that would flay the enthusiam from my bones in a way that hasn't been practised outside of a Chinese prison camp. Andrew would rail on about how unrealistic it was, how metals such as "Robodunium" never existed and, even if they did, there's no way that they'd be immune to every sort of small or large arms fire in the entire universe.

To have Andrew express an interest in anything that's even remotely outre to the computer gaming/technology community is almost worth a genuine double-take. For some reason the young man, many years ago, expressed an interest in the Playstation 2 game Ico to me. I happened to own such a game, though never beat it. Much like his stalwart companionship in my Resident Evil days, Andrew stuck with me to (mostly) the very end.

Imagine my surprise when Ico once more reeled him in, this time courtesy of nascent remix artist Binster. That summer, one year ago, Andrew discovered this remix that I had so surreptitiously snuck onto one of my many mix CDs. Traveling along in the car, I belive it was, he was entranced. A few weeks later it aroused his attention again when it played on my stereo during the move to my new apartment. I don't believe you should need any more attention paid to the matter than that. Download the mix. Grabbing Andrew's attention once is hard enough, but thrice? That seems just about impossible.

But for those who are still sticking around this is what I would've said:

The mix is unbelievable. The things Binster does with the minimal score of Ico make me want to drop multiple loads in my pants, in quick succession. This is probably at the same time the saddest and most exciting song I've ever listened. It starts out as a rather simple, plucky guitar piece with a brief hit of voice samples from the game and gradually starts adding more synths and reverbs and crap like that. You know, the stuff I just make up words for because I'm not sure of the actual terms. The pressure built up from the beginning to 1'14 is so intense that you might feel like your heart was going to explode. Don't fear cardiac arrest, good reader, just a second more and the release will flow over you like a broken dam. At 1'57 there's a bit of a freak-out that leads the song back to its guitar roots. Not content to stop there, Binster proceeds to build the tension again to an even more intense freakout at 2'57. What sounds like strings carry the melody in the background until 4'11, where the sampling from the beginning of the song returns as the music just HALTS. For the next thirty seconds or so the song just... falls away.

But Could I Drive To This?: You could drive just about anywhere you wanted with a song of this caliber playing in the background. I once was going over the Ben Franklin bridge at a hundred and forty when I got stopped by a cop. He asked me what my problem was an I replied, "Shooot dawg, this is my main my BINSTER on the mic. Better give him his props." The officer nodded in a solemn manner and listened to the rest of the song with me, "raised the roof" a few times and let me drive off without another word. And I had been drinking.

True story.