http://www.powergoat.com

Anyone familiar with Goat? Usually, everyone thinks Ailsean when talking about US rock arrangers, but I took a listen to some of this guy's stuff and...well, it rocks! Kind of hard to pick favorites, but his style is the kind of VGM rock arrange I lean towards...Extremely faithful to the original, but adds just enough to keep it from being considered merely an upgrade. Both the "Unchosen Paths" tracks (his Castlevania 3 Rock Arrange Project) and his individual tracks are all noteworthy.

Definitely give a listen...There's a lot there and pretty much everything is worth checking out.

The Scourge of 1691 is amazing.  Alas, the remix community is not as strong these days.

Ooh yeah, goat rocks my socks off.

I've been following Unchosen Paths for a while; such a massive undertaking for one guy to do, but he's done an excellent job with the project so far. Emerald Ruins is my favorite, but of course you have to give props to the two megamixes. For his non-CV work, Purple Heart is good; lots of people like that one. Sudden Loss is one of his older works and it shows compared with his newer stuff, but it always tugs at my heartstrings a little bit.

GoldfishX, if you haven't already heard of it, you might find Dwelling of Duels up your alley. It's technically a monthly remix competition in which the lead instrument is performed live, but in most cases, that lead instrument is a guitar. Lots of the bigger Western rock fan arrangers enter: virt, housethegrate and ashane, Ailsean, Ryan8bit, Darangen, goat (he's made a bunch of the Unchosen Paths tracks for DoD), ... I could go on for a while. Since they only have a month to work, the tracks are usually a bit unpolished compared to what they'd release on OCR, VGMix, or elsewhere, but the quality is still solid. And sometimes they do touch the songs up later for release.

I used to check that Dwelling stuff too. Kind of forgot about it. I dig a few remixes of Virt, especially that insane Contra medley. I believe he did a MGS2 remix last year too for Dwelling of Rock, that was the last I heard of Dwelling really (I believe Dais mentioned the track here). But that track was great, totally the opposite of the dull ingame version...

Pretty nice. I'd like to be pumping up Chromelodeon/Sprite Slowdown for their Ninja Gaiden 2 album, but it's hard considering they're such an amateurish operation.  I bought 2 of their CDs to support the cause and besides taking a month to get them, the came as CDs-only (not even a slim, 2-cent jewel case) put between a piece of paper and wrapped in a piece of felt (haha). And due to it taking so long to receive them, they said they sent me a poster for free which was actually just a letter-size piece of paper with their website intro page printed on it (lol, yeah I threw it in the trash if you're wondering). Anyways, the actual music isn't half-bad, heck it's Ninja Gaiden folks, but it wasn't quite on-mark. "The Paraspinter" and "Going Gets Tough" are the strongest, but most of the other tracks lack necessary oomph.

Yeah, I'm familiar with DoD...Like you said, I must've grabbed a couple of songs I didn't like, because I didn't pay it a great deal of attention at the time.

I actually wasn't aware there were a large number of dedicated US rock arrangers. Seems like it takes forever to find one on OCR (which I rarely go to to begin with) and like I alluded to, Ailsean's the most noted one by basically everyone. I was searching for doujin music on VGMCentral and Goat's album came up and one of the mp3's had a link to his site, so that was the only way I really "discovered" him. I knew of a couple others (The Advantage and the Minibosses), but I was never a huge fan of either. If you have any more names do tell (I'm checking out housethegrate now: http://www.housethegrate.com/?id=news&cat=5 Awesome stuff...TMNT and Gauntlet FTW).

I guess I can add one to the list though: Protricity had a fine medley mix of several MMX1 songs up (Opening, Storm Eagle and...Boomer Kuwanger I think). That was one I found on OCR.

You're behind the times man! (boo to your description of "doujin" though ) If you're new to House, you have to pick up his Clockwork arrangement. Also check out BrainCells, Ashane, and since you didn't mention him, I'll assume you haven't given an ear to Prozax. I don't understand why Proz never seems to get much love, but you'll have to look around for his stuff since I don't think it's on any website right now. Do keep up with virt as well - most of his recent stuff (the Shadowgate medley and nearly everything since) features a lot of guitar. Guy makes me sick how he'll just pick up an instrument and surpass me in no time at all.

Tongue-in-cheek reference to the doujin threads that are active here. Heh...Guess I could have come up with something better, but originally, I just meant it to be about the Goat album. It's outgrown my original intention (for the better).

Thanks...More for me to check out. If I didn't mention them, I don't know them, since these guys never come up in any kind of discussion on the boards I frequent (and I know I'm not the only one).

Yeah, there are quite a few of them around. You'd be more likely to find their stuff on VGMix if it were up for a number of reasons than on OCR. Here're some songs and remixers to check out (at least ones I like, anyway):

BrainCells
BrainCells is sick. Make sure to get both of his remixes from OCR. He had a bunch of stuff on VGMix too, but that's not going to be up again for a while. He has a collab with CarboHydroM called Dual Storm that you can snag from CHM's site. And speaking of which...

CarboHydroM
His cover of the Space Harrier theme, Limitless Skies, is nifty. I also really like his Ikaruga covers, Antimatter and Saber Bird.

Darangen
From Within is my favorite track from him; it's a rather liberal cover of the mines theme from DKC2. His remix for the Kirby's Adventure project, Free Breezin', is neat stuff too. <3 Butter Building.

housethegrate
Definitely La Hora es Tarde, the Clockwork arrange Smeg mentioned. I'm a fan of Light In the Fortress as well. Check out his videos too.

Prozax
Prozax doesn't come out with new songs very often, but they're killer when he does. He and Midee put up excellent collabs in Kick My Axe, Tactile Freefall, and The Twelfth Commandment.

Ryan8bit
Ryan did two killer covers of Follin tracks for DoD, Catacombs Beneath the Twilight and The Fuzz Scuffle.

That's probably good for now.

I've been following goat, virt, ocremix, dwelling of duels, vgmix, etc. for years. The 2 big Castlevania medleys by goat are stunning; I wish more stuff like that would come out. I love it when the soundtrack for a game is arranged in one big medley.

My 2 favorite medleys are:

1. Creeping Dusk by goat; covers all sorts of CV music, especially many of the short tracks from Castlevania III which have never been arranged before and probably never will be again.

2. Contra Megamix by virt; I will never tire of this one.

Yeah Goat rocks. He was also the only one to answer me when I asked all those western rock arrangers if they'd be keen on working on a tribute album to Rudra no Hihou along with Japanese doujin artists. That was back when I still had great expectations. xD

Didnt know about that Unchosen Paths project though. Getting it now ~

Old topic, but these guys deserve some love:

Vurez (www.vurez.com) - His rendition of "Ryu's Determination" blew me away.  The Mega Man 6 tracks are slick too.

Darangen (www.darangen.com) - Simply sensational material here. 

Deim0s (Overclock) - Unfortunately only has 4 tracks at overclock, but they are amazing.  "Matoya's Grave" is a must.