Downloads

First off, I want to make something abundantly clear: This is not a conventional remix album – I categorise it as an arrangement album. Anyone expecting these songs to preserve the originals’ mood and atmosphere is in for a severe disappointment, though I do have a much older set of remixes¹ that might be more to your taste. I also strongly recommend against using this album for your first playthrough; it’ll substantially alter the game’s atmosphere, which is one of its most memorable qualities. It would (hopefully) still be enjoyable, but it wouldn’t really be Marathon.

That said, these intricate, dense, yet dynamic mixes are brimming with retro synths, arpeggiation, musical cross-references, reverb, and entirely new instrument parts and melodies: where the OST runs for forty minutes, these run for seventy-eight. They’re Marathon’s OST by way of ’70s progressive rock songwriting and arrangement, ’80s pop production, and ’90s Japanese games’ atmosphere, with secondary influences from genres as disparate as jazz, blues, disco, ambient, post-rock, classical, electronic music, Krautrock, and metal.

I’ve included both a lossless FLAC version of this album and an Ogg Vorbis version suitable for in-game use. The Vorbis versions are mostly based on the FLAC files. The sole exception is “Flowers in Heaven”, which loops infinitely² in-game. Thus, the FLAC version in the album simply fades out after completing a loop.

The album also comes with a 16-page PDF featuring additional album artwork and my commentary on each individual song and the album as a whole.

My complete discography, including some works in progress, is available here: https://aaronfreed.github.io/discography.html

I also have these on YouTube, although I strongly encourage use of an adblocker, since YouTube has decided to take the liberty of running ads that I do not want on my videos and do not make a single cent from. There’s no copyright claim on the video, so this is just Google violating its erstwhile mantra of “don’t be evil”. https://youtu.be/bRiDh3PziWU

Plus, I’ve posted videos of “Cool Fusion” and “Bob-B-Q” showing how, respectively, “Flowers in Heaven” and “What About Bob?” play in-game.

“Cool Fusion”: https://youtu.be/QfF01WLolgM

“Bob-B-Q”: https://youtu.be/mj_Jy5HMxRc

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¹You can get my older remixes at https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuD0MykSsmaRpiobXz51kqObAIqH?e=WogGPt

²Explanation of how looping works pre-Aleph One 1.7: https://aaronfreed.github.io/marathonlooper.html