*NO* Donkey Kong Country "Dancing Monkeys" *PRIORITY*

[Emunator]

Your ReMixer name: Pixel Pirates
Your real name: Tobaunta Torkelsson & Fredrik Vinterstjärna
Your email address: 
Your website: pixelpirates.nu
Your userid: 37469 

Name of game(s) arranged: Donkey Kong Country
Name of arrangement: Dancing Monkeys
Name of individual song(s) arranged: Main Theme

[MindWanderer]

Nice classic EDM, for the most part.  The supersaws are a little lo-fi, but otherwise this hits all the beats.  There's something about the production that's bugging me, but I can't put my finger on it.  Perhaps another judge will.

Those bongos crack me up.  They're so clean, and cut through the mix so much.  I mean, it's DKC, so bongos make sense, but still, these are very silly bongos.

My biggest concern is that it's really short.  EDM tends to be a little repetitive, but good EDM is progressive, transformational.  This has a great hook, then a breakdown, then a return to the hook, and then it ends out of nowhere.  The phrase in particular not ending on the tonic is really unsatisfying.

I'm on the fence about this one.  What's there is pretty good, but that ending is such a letdown, it makes the whole thing feel incomplete.  I'm coming down on the side of it not being a dealbreaker, but only just.  I may revisit this vote.

YES (borderline)

[prophetik music]

really obvious limiter pumping right off the bad. not a great sign given that it's just a fuzzy pad and pianos.

the bongos are indeed really out of nowhere and don't feel like they're part of the mix. similarly, once everything comes in at 0:42, the mix overall sounds super dense with no treble. what's being played is pretty standard stadium anthem style stuff. there's a big drop at 1:24, some more bongos and a return of the keys, and then it blows through the melodic material (on a copy-paste, as far as i can see) and then it's just sorta done with zero prep or outro around the ending.

from an arrangement perspective, there is a lot of repetitive material here done exactly the same. i get it, it's trance, you hear repetitive stuff all the time, but most trance is additive or subtractive in the way it approaches things (ie. pare it down, add more back in) to make things not just the same loop over and over. i don't hear that here. the altered chord progression is nice (aside from the third-to-last 'chord' that is just a unison and sounds weird alongside everything else) but admittedly there's very little outside the initial hook. it's not like the track has unique synth work, a special drum pattern or usage, or something else driving it forward.

i'm on the other side of the fence from MW. i think this is too derivative of itself. even if the mastering wasn't dull and the pumping wasn't bad and the synth work wasn't very generic and the ending existed, i think the same hook being copy-pasted for over half the track on the clock is too much.

 

 

NO

[DarkSim]

I'll be the Source Police on this one - the DKC title theme is actually a remix of the NES's Donkey Kong title theme:

So technically would this be a remix of the NES source? One for Larry to figure out...

Anyway, on to the remix! It's Pixel Pirates, so we're gonna get some Eurodance. This time with added bongos. Donkey Konga remix when, lads?!

The bongos are downright comical in that they sit right on top of the mix like Will Ferrell with a cowbell. Fellas, I gotta say, we need less cowbell! Love the idea, but the execution needs to be better to integrate the bongos into hard Eurodance.

There aren't too many elements at play here, and the ones that are here haven't had much care shown to them. The big sound at 0:43 is great, but even the gating pattern is unchanged for its entirety, so what starts as an interesting effect on the supersaw quickly becomes worn out. There's a hint of filtering at 0:54, but it's only a hint, and from 1:24 we're not treading any new ground, and the mix sounds very empty, despite its volume. There needs to be progression within the repetition, and more detail in the arrangement and production.

NO

[Chimpazilla]

This is so loud from the very first second.  Opening piano is very loud and rigid/plodding, and with too many lows (needs a lowcut).  The supersaw that comes next is so heavily distorted that it sounds overly fuzzy, overcompressed and pumpy.  The bass also has buzz that is barely audible over this giant saw.  At 1:24 there is only bass and kick playing with the occasional piano stab, and that bass sounds so plain and boring.  The returning piano still sounds too gridlocked and bass-heavy (and bass-reverb-heavy too).  The writing in this remix is repetitive, changing back and forth only between supersaw and piano, with the same writing patterns each time, with no other elements added or removed.  The kick sounds too heavy and intense.  The bongos sound repetitive, rigidly timed and they stick out of the mix because they are the only thing mixed cleanly.  The mixing overall is a heavy wall of sound.  The master is cut off above 15-16kHz, which means this mix lacks the highest highs (sparkle and presence), but the mid-highs and highs are so overhyped that it is fatiguing to listen to.  The abrupt one-piano-note outro also feels lazy, giving the arrangement no resolution. Quite a bit more work to do on this arrangement, in terms of writing, instrumentation, and mixing.

NO

[Liontamer]

For DarkSim, this is just considered an arrangement of the DKC track, but we have a parent-child relationship in the database for the DK arcade theme and the DKC expansion of it.

Super mechanical piano to open up and a muddy soundscape, neither of which bode well. The noise in the background until :41 just sounds like fuzz rather than anything purposeful, not even like ocean waves or rain, just white noise, which I didn't understand the point of. The saw lead fading in at :14 was pretty weak as well, as it didn't sound melodius and with timing that feels too locked to grid, plus the mixing needed to be sharper, IMO.

When the beat came in at :41, I had to put on a control track just to ensure my audio wasn't messed up, because the piece sounded very distant. The saw lead is just so plain and the whole groove feels very static and plodding despite some overall good energy. Totally agreed that the gated saw action quickly got old and overused; just subtle tweaks there could spice up the presentation and keep it from dragging.

The dropoff of the saws at 1:22 was good... a jarring change in the clarity with this dropoff though, wow.... dunno why it couldn't be that clean overall; you can still get dense and grimy with instrumentation, but not turn things into mud, yet the saws came back at 2:17 and that's what things turned into. 

I liked the piano line's mixing, though that was also rigid and too fake-sounding as well. I dug the bongos from :18-:41 & 1:36-1:49, mixing critiques notwithstanding.

The saws came back at 2:17, and I looked up to see that the track was practically over. The way the ending unceremoniously cut off would certainly need to be fixed as well, if possible.

Definitely an underdeveloped concept, but without some more appropriate mixing, less rigidly timed instrumentation, and further variation and ideas in the writing, this isn't ready for primetime. The other Js are much better at production critique, so take stock of everything they mentioned and see what you can agree with. It's a fun foundation though, so if the source files are still available, I'd see what else could be done with it.

NO (resubmit)