Mario Kart 64 - Alien Koopa Castle

[MartinH]

https://youtu.be/Z7GlCNi5ddg

This particular theme from MK64 have been a hard nut to crack, I've been listening to it now and then for almost a year and I always thought I wasn't ready to remix/cover it. However, I recently decided to give it a shot now when almost all MM3 remixes are completed (one left).

I knew early in the working with this that I wanted to put the Super Mario World Castle theme in here in some way. It presents itself at 2:23, I recommend you to listen to the whole song though and you'll see that this part really adds to the entirety of it. The atmosphere of that part is quite inspired by a theme you can hear in Unreal Tournament 2004 - the map called Tokara Forest. 

As you've probably heard by now, I'm using a new snare drum. I wanted to try a more modern electronic snare for once. I've used that 80s power snare for long now. Please tell me what you think of it compared to my standard snare drum. In the intro I'm also using some percussive indian skin drums (like traditional indian world music)

I kept the content of the song at a minimalistic level, no solos, minimum amount of melodies, atmosphere at a high level. And I hope the listeners can somewhat can fall into the atmosphere of this and let the tone and chords speak for themselves. As I write this I have listened many hours to this remix (I finished it early and wanted to get in the proper mood for changes and adjustments), and it really gives me vibes I haven't got in any other of my remixes.

The overall atmosphere in this remix is very infinite I would say. I thought of a huge alien space facility/fortress/castle, where Bowser sits on the throne ruling a distant planet (the video art I used says much about that atmosphere). By thinking that way I decided to give it the name of Alien Koopa Castle, silly maybe, but compared to just Koopa Castle it says so much more.

The monstrous scream is the original sound of Bowser from MK64 but with added reverb and volume, mandatory for any remix of this song

The video art took a great deal of time for this video. Even if I only added the Bowser castle to it, the time and effort for making it fit in colors, shape, lightning took me like 4-5 hours (yes, it's way more than usual). The castle itself was taken from another artwork where it stands on a cliff surrounded by floating lava, and if you look at the castle in my art there is a white/light blue liquid pouring out, that's originally lava as well. Thanks to Photoshop and a lot of pixel by pixel erasing I managed to get it to fit the rest of the background smoothly. 

Thanks for listening, and reading (if you made it here)! If this kind of remix style is appreciated I'm definitely doing more, was a lot of fun. It was almost like therapy thanks to the atmospheric take, a very unique experience for me.

[timaeus222]

NIce, I liked the arpeggiating plucks in the middle. Normally I look for progression in the remix, and it's kind of there, although it does have room for more---maybe add polyrhythmic elements alongside the arpeggios in the middle. When you introduced the castle melody at 2:24, I actually thought it would be a faster (less stretched-out), more spatially-upfront melody. The ending also fades out very quickly.

Other than that, nice and chill vibes, good listen.

Edited January 31, 2022 by timaeus222