My name Is Andrew Bowers and I compose, produce and remix music under the handle "DJ Dain". Many years ago I was considerably involved in the video-game remix community. At that time, two major websites dominated: OverClocked ReMix, and VGMix. I ended up contributing most of my time and effort to the latter community, which had a much more egalitarian reviewing system, and even offered free hosting for users' mixes. One of my earliest remixes entitled "That Long Train Ride" was an expansion on Kelly Bailey's "Triage at Dawn" - a short transitional song used in Half-Life 2:

At the time, I could not track down the official soundtrack for the game, so I was left to use a program called "GCF Scrape" (or something similar to the best of my memory). This allowed me to unpack the encrypted game files and extract virtually all of the audio within the game, including music, sound effects, and even some dialogue. As such, the song "Triage at Dawn" was actually labelled something more akin to "Track 17" or "suit_song23", so I ignored the filename when I released the remix or review and stuck with a more attractive, invented title "That Long Train Ride". After approximately ten revisions, the track was officially released and received decent reviews achieving a site-chart position level of bout second or third tier.

I went on to produce other remixes to post on VGMix until February of 2006 when the site was closed due to the exploitation of multiple vulnerabilities in the site's database code. "That Long Train Ride" and most of my others video-game remixes wouldn't see the light of day again until I started my own blog in 2008 to promote my mash-ups.

Then something I never expected began to happen during the in-between years prior to my blog's launch. "That Long Train Ride" became an underground hit with HL2 fans. I every couple of months I would receive the odd letter asking if I was the guy behind the remix and where they could download the track. One gentlemen even requested the piano parts so that he could learn and transcribe them to sheet music. I even stumbled upon several fan forums with whole threads dedicated to discussing and celebrating this remix. One of the most surprising developments came with a message from a fan who said I had been mentioned in the UK edition of PC Gamer Magazine. He even sent me a picture as proof:

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. The download link they provided may have been broken, but my name and work was published in a magazine! I had never anticipated this remix to generate this much interest.

Apparently, there has been a considerable amount of confusion throughout the fan community about the origins of the track. Many have argued that it was part of the original beta of HL2, while others thought the track name was entitled "Path of/to (the) Borealis". I have yet to upload and release my own video to attempt to clarify the issue.

I'm no longer able to host the song online, but plenty of other people have posted it on YouTube:

***UPDATE 01/09/2017***

Apparently the legend of this song just won't die and has spawned it's own life under it's various titles. I have recently stumbled across multiple musicians providing covers of my remix, which is awe inspiring and humbling. Here are a few that have caught my attention:

And of course, it's reached peak meme status with this mashup:

I hope you've enjoyed the story behind this little remix, and that you'll enjoy the track itself even more.