Update: (4:58 pm) Okay, this is getting crazy. Earlier today, Team Teamwork was forced to pull track 3, “Ante Up”, from the Bandcamp site after receiving a cease-and-desist from M.O.P., the hip-hop group featured on the track. In the past hour, though, the Team Teamwork Bandcamp page vanished entirely, with Jacques saying that it’s only down “for now”. In the meantime, you can get Vinyl Fantasy VII from the following download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zymn2nz3lyj


About a year ago, Team Teamwork’s Ocarina of Rhyme set the internet on fire. There was a pretty easy explanation for this: it was really, really damn good. The album was more than just rose-tinted glasses and clever matches (And they were clever – Aesop Rock vs. Goron Village? Yes please); the whole thing dripped with careful, incredible production. When so many video game mashups skate by on thrown-together nostalgia alone, Ocarina of Rhyme felt like an actual album. With, like, effort and stuff.

This week, Tim Jacques, the man behind the music, dropped the fantastically-titledVinyl Fantasy 7 – and he’s done it again. Once more, we have a Team Teamwork release that is more than just a nostalgia trip, it’s a carefully produced mash-up that not only hits all the requisite marks (yes, “One-Winged Angel” and “Prelude” are both covered), but sounds great even to a Final Fantasy neophyte like myself. That says just as just as much about Nobuo Uematsu’s original compositions as it does about Jacques’ production, which he says took about 3 months longer on this album than on Ocarina of Rhyme.

Vinyl Fantasy 7 is being distributed the same way as the previous albums via Team Teamwork’s Bandcamp page (see top of article). While he can’t accept money for his work for legal reasons, Bandcamp uses a donate-what-you-want system which works perfectly for what Team Teamwork’s purposes. Check out both albums here:

Readers! What do you think of Vinyl Fantasy 7? Does it meet your expectations after Ocarina of Rhyme? Let us know in the comments!