ReMix:Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest "Distorted Forest" 5:16

It's time to turn the intensity up for Mario Month as we wind back into the Jungle Kingdom for more DKC action. This time, we've got our community's tenth take on a classic DKC2 theme as Rockos (Roch Côté) experiments combining drum & bass with David Wise's "Forest Interlude"!

"This song was made [...] as a guitar practice but became a full length song. I'm glad it did. This continues the current drum & bass merged with rock style I've been making lately.

Sending it now because of the Mario movie month. I hope/wish you will like it.

The song has fast drums and distorted guitars. Lots of psytrance pad effects and is very close to the source."

The judges panel collectively felt the D&B writing and mixing could have been varied up and tightened up, respectively, yet we all were on board with the overall interpretation and execution, which brings BIG MONKEY NRG your way, as primate-adjacent judge Chimpazilla confirmed in her vote:

"This is a pretty unique, heavy, intense and interesting piece. The opening gated saw sounds quite dry to me before the first arp enters the mix. When the drums hit, the energy goes straight to 11 and stays there. My meters are pegged. [...]

Good use of chiptune leads although I find them rather loud and piercy. The delayed delays at 1:36 and again at 1:47 make those bits of lead feel too dry. By comparison, at 2:09 that lead sounds lusciously reverby. The guitar backing fits really nicely with this soundscape and there is nice synth detail in the backing as well. I really like the writing shift at 3:56 (matches what the source tune does at 1:32), and how it builds back into the source motif at 4:38. All of that key-change tomfoolery is exactly the same as what happens in the source tune and I think it is handled very well in the remix with drum pattern and energy changes.

Overall I wish this mix was mastered a little quieter. I always feel that with the right EQ treatment one can obtain a super loud mix without hitting such a high RMS number. But, I don't hear any overcompression artifacts. The more I listen to this, the more I am enjoying it."

You see? The cure to dealing with any track you feel is too loud is to just keep repeating -- you'll like it more & more! Eventually, your ears are worn down and the loudness wins. ;-) If THIS track plays in the forest and no one's there to hear it, don't worry, it WILL make a sound!

But seriously, besides the loudness wars, there were lots of cool timbral moments to be found; I like Rockos's warbling sound design from the opening, and the lead fading in around :21 was awesome, where the chiptune timbre became more apparent as the volume rose, which was so cool. And we had several other flavors involved like the lead going even chippier at 1:36 (some stylistic similarities to D. Wise's Battletoads music), the Fez-like lines at 2:52, a kick-ass bit of transition SFX leading to bird chirps & lush pads at 3:13, and some final shots in the arm via the chorus lead at 4:14 and the closing distorted melody at 5:00 to bookend with the feel of the opening.

The beats could use some additional variation spices, sure, but they (along with the guitars) hit hard like one of DK's Giant Punches. We're also more than happy to be Rockos's petri dish for meaty beats as he develops his D&B chops! Nice job by Roch taking a piece he'd had on the backburner and getting those gorilla gears turning to put the finishing touches on it for Mario Month. He's even got another drum & bass effort in the hopper that you'll hopefully see on the front page very soon!