We’re back with yet another Battle Theme from the end of the Final Fantasy series now officially definied as ‘retro.’ Sandwiched between the fourth and sixth entries in the series, Final Fantasy V is often majorly overlooked, but if anyone remembers one thing from FF5, it’s this – The Clash on the Big Bridge.

Literally taking place on an area of the map called “The Big Bridge”, this section sees you going through continuous battles with this track looping until you reach Gilgamesh in his first of many appearances in the FF series. This track is a classic, really, yet another piece of true genius from Nobuo Uematsu. Because of this, we don’t mess with what isn’t broken, and do a fairly straight cover of the original – two loops – a second pass so that Lloyd can solo a little, as he so loves to do.

I’m really pleased now as I’ve finally managed to perfect an organ sound I like, and one that mimics the Black Mages a little, great for use in those Final Fantasy battle tunes. Expect to hear the organ a lot more in the future! The organ is the sole synth part in this, though… we wanted to keep it simple. Or as simple as you can get with three guitars, two organs, bass and drums. Which isn’t very when you’re mixing it!

Remember to check out Our MySpace! We’ll gladly accept requests and suggestions from people who add us there, or via the contact page here on our website!

Did You Know?
Gilgamesh is now one of the most recurring characters in the Final Fantasy series, appearing as both an enemy and a summonable esper.

Clash on the Big Bridge (Final Fantasy V) - The Red Wings [ 2:29 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hey everyone! Hope all our visitors are having a good 2009 so far. We’ve been hard at work this January and have already begun work on around 8 new tracks that you’ll be seeing shortly. Our first album is now also 100% finished – we’re just deciding on some CD cover art you can all download and have as the ‘official’ cover for the first TRW album.

This post is mainly here to inform everyone we recently went back and rerecorded large sections of the track “A Premonition ~ Chrono Trigger”, which will be the first track on out second album. The version on this site has been updated to match, too, so check out the track page for the full download of the new version.

There’s going to be a new download winging it’s way to you next week. Keep your eyes peeled!

What with Square Enix announcing that Chrono Trigger will be rereleased on the DS, we figured it’s about time that we released this track that we’ve been sitting on for a little while now. Frog is one of my favorite RPG characters ever. He’s an awesome character – and he has an awesome, awesome theme.

Similarly, Chrono Trigger is one of the best games ever made, with one of the best soundtracks ever made. We originally entered this track into a competition on the Penny Arcade Debate & Discourse Forum in a Cover competition which we surprisingly won! Thanks to all the guys at PAForums, and this one goes out to all the great musicians on that board!

From a musical standpoint, this track has a lot of synthesised parts alongside the live instruments. There’s some strings, some brass, and a single piccolo flute, all played in via a MIDI keyboard. I felt we had to keep these, as if we didn’t we’d lose the slightly medieval, epic orchestral quality of the original. The live rock instruments were, as usual, recorded in a single session. Everything came out pretty well, and I love – love how the drums in particular came out on this track. Download and streaming player below.

Remember to check out Our MySpace! We’ll gladly accept requests and suggestions from people who add us there, or via the contact page here on our website!

Did You Know?
In the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger, Frog is called Kaeru – literally a Japanese word for a Frog.

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Frog's Theme (Chrono Trigger) - The Red Wings [ 2:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

At last. It has come to pass. What, you ask? Of course, I’m referring to Square Enix’s announncement that they are to re-release (or port in this case) the SNES classic Chrono Trigger to the DS. This is exciting for us in particular, as we are in Europe, that barren wasteland that in the days of the SNES never saw release of games such as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy, in part because of Square’s localization teams lacking the ability to do so, and in part because back in those days, this was Sega-land.

So at last, Chrono Trigger announced. This combined with the many requests from our friend Craig to cover another track from the game (his favourite ever) finally made us look at the game’s music once more and get off our asses and do it. As we’ve already done the best piece of music in the game, Frog’s Theme (download coming soon!) it was a toss-up between this and Wind Scene. This slightly won out. But Wind Scene will also be coming. In time

This track has a lot of synth parts in it. The entire “Premonition” track is synth, and then throughout “Chrono Trigger” there’s a lot of quieter synth parts to help keep it close to the original. One major difference is where the original piece ‘pulls back’ and gets quieter, ours just gets louder and louder, building up to an even bigger ending. We had to. We are a rock band, after all.

Did You Know?
The original character in Chrono Trigger was meant to be called Chrono, but the game engine couldn’t handle a name that long for the English language version. As such, the h was dropped, and he was renamed Crono. In the subsequent PS1 release despite longer names being allowed, Chrono was still a blacklisted name – the game wouldn’t let you have it even if you swapped o’s for 0′s and so on. Press at this year’s E3 confirmed that the DS version will be the same, true to the original.

A Premonition/Chrono Trigger (Chrono Trigger) [ 2:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It was quite recently that we noticed we’d produced nearly 20 tracks (we haven’t yet released them all!) and a grand total of none of them were Final Fantasy battle themes. Considering the scope these pieces have to be awesome on guitar, our love for the Final Fantasy series and simply how many there are, this was a shocking and unacceptable fact. So we decided to change this.

We started out with our intent as purely covering The Decisive Battle, but there was a feeling amongst the band that The Decisive Battle is a track that is covered an awful lot by rock groups, and we should try something different. A long version of decisive with many solos and original sections – tried and tested. A short mini-version? Also tried. We ended up merging Decisive with a more ignored track, “Battle Scene (VI)” and wound up with this, The Decisive Battle Scene. There are still some solo sections, of course.

Another favourite of many fans, Nobuo Uematsu‘s Final Fantasy VI score is argued to be one of his best. We love them all too much to judge, but we’re happy to say that The Decisive Battle is definitely, definitely one of our most loved Boss Battle themes. The rest of the OST rules, though, and expect to see more FF6 in the future…

-Alex

Did you know?
Final Fantasy VI hasn’t actually ever had a really successful release in our home country – the SNES original never made it over, the PS1 port was arguably painful to play, and the GBA version was released several years after the GBA had faded from stores, and never even ranked on the charts.

The Decisive Battle Scene (Final Fantasy VI) - The Red Wings [ 3:48 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ken’s Theme is yet another very important track to us as a band, as it represents several firsts. Ken’s Theme was the first time the band ventured outside of the comfort zone of the Final Fantasy series. Despite being inspired by The Black Mages, we couldn’t let ourselves be contained in one series. It was time to break out, and one of Lloyd’s favourite games of all time beckoned!

Suggested and persistantly suggested until my prototype midi was complete for the track, Lloyd wanted to do a heavy rock version of Ken’s Theme. This, too, was another first – all of our previous tracks were of a melodic rock style, while this piece took a distinctly heavy stance. I can say this midi was a pain in the ass to sequence, but it paid off in the end, giving The Red Wings their first heavy arrangement and their first outright guitar solo.

Taken from Alph Lyla and Yoko Shimomura‘s famous Street Fighter II soundtrack, after a significantly difficult arrangement period, recording came together rather easily, with the totally accidental addition of a saxophone to the background of the track adding the finishing touches. Sometimes accidents are a blessing!

-Alex

Did you know?
Nobody in our circle of friends can play Street Fighter II properly, and most just choose E-Honda and spam that fast punch move. Lloyd, however, can actually play properly. Give me Smash Bros any day.

Ken's Theme (Street Fighter II) - The Red Wings [ 2:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download