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OCR03276 - *YES* Donkey Kong Country 2 'Madcap Magma'


djpretzel
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VERY interesting take on the source; not something I would have thought would work, but it does, & fairly well I'd say... I dig it, personally.

- djp

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Contact Information (Collaboration)

Submission Information

  • Name of game arranged - Donkey Kong Country 2
  • Name of arrangement - Madcap Magma
  • Name of individual song(s) arranged - Hot-Head Bop

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The opening beats weren't my style, but I dig the arrangement's creativity throughout. It's cramped in places (e.g. 2:54-3:11), but that wasn't a huge deal, and the parts usually had room to breathe. Structurally, it's pretty melodically straightforward, with very nice variance of leads and supporting instruments to keep things fresh while constantly keeping the theme in play. Nice work as a tag team!

YES

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Nice arrangement.  I like the grungy bass timbres but I feel like they are mixed on the loud side, they obscure the leads.  The lead timbres are on the vanilla side but I like some of the filter, delay and glitch effects used starting in the breakdown.  Not sure why the saw that enters at 1:12 and again at 2:55 needed to be hard-panned to the right.  Bass gets boomy at 1:53.  I feel like the track ends abruptly, even with the laugh at the end, the melodic portion has no resolution, one final note would have been great, imo.

 

A few mixing nitpicks, but this is cool and works overall.

 

YES

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This one is a little divisive for me. On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of effort that went into keeping this arrangement fresh and interesting... the drums are energetic and there's so much chopping and filtering and processing going on, there's really a lot going on to keep my attention. There's a lot to love here and I can totally understand why this got 2 YES votes already.

 

The downside for me, and I think it's a bigger deal than the other judges made it out to be, is the extremely vanilla synth design. Although the writing and effects are interesting, and there is a good variety of synth patches used, none of them are very interesting to me. The texture of the track just sounds plain.

 

On another note, the ending does feel like it's lacking resolution - I don't understand the choice to cut the track off where you did.

 

The saw basses are very loud and overpower a lot of other instrumentation, making things feel very cramped during the choruses. I would suggest bringing those down just a touch.

 

I don't know... on repeat listens I'm really finding myself enjoying a lot of elements of this, but the vanilla sound design makes it hard for me to really get excited about this. Couple that with some of the other nitpicks, and I unfortunately feel like this is just under my own personal bar. Depending on how the rest of the vote goes, I may re-consider, because it's a very close call, but I'm on the other side of the fence right now.

 

Good luck with the rest of the vote!

 

NO (resubmit)

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The sounds are fine, I don't see anyone complaining about another metal remix that features distorted guitars.  :roll:

 

The mixing of the leads is a bit more problematic to me, where they feel really buried under the rest of the track, but I think beyond that this is creative and generally well executed. The percussion is solid, the care to the backing track has been well thought out and it feels like a fully realized vision. I enjoyed this. :-)

 

Yes

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Not a whole lot to add to the yes camp here.  Solid track put together here.  Nice progression throughout to keep things fresh.  Pretty unique style here - I'm not even sure how to classify it TBH.

 

The breakdown at 2:00 felt a bit underwhelming compared to the strength of the first half.  Very cool sequenced synth lead in at 2:30 to redeem it, though :).

 

Great stuff here.  Digging it.

 

YES

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