Finally got to play Final Fantasy XIII yesterday. I played for almost 15 hours straight and ended at Palompolum at two o'clock in the morning a bit nauseated from the camera controls and excessive playing. The battle system and the music are awesome; Hope's endless moping and Snow's endless hero talk, not so much. And so, Lightning and her crew are partly responsible for the relative tardiness of this week's update.

And what an update it is. Today's column features the last track of Daryl Banner's VII. One-Winged Angel is, as most RPGamers know, the final boss theme and is played while battling a seven-winged Sephiroth. Well, I suppose One-Winged Angel sounds better than Seven-Winged Angel or Extra-Winged Seraph... Anyway, Daryl's take on this legendary theme is quite mesmerizing. It is raw and maniacal, but his description in the Author Comments doesn't fit exactly. When I read his notes, I thought that the structure would progressively fall apart further down the line, but this wasn't the case. True, the final few notes almost wobbled unsteadily like a person teetering at the edge of insanity, a laudable touch (or due to fortunate rendering errors), but the segments leading up to them weren't so... unstructured. Perhaps, the best word to describe the piece is "volatile." Clean fragments intersperse between frantic ones beautifully and artfully—truly an awesome track to cap a brilliant remix album.

VII has ended, but fear not, for Daryl has a couple more albums that he wishes to feature. Stay tuned for those! Anyway, gotta go. It's my mom's birthday and I cooked stuff for her and her friends... Have a great weekend, guys!

Fermat's Last Theorem, M.D.

Sound Test Curator