Kirby: Triple Deluxe "Bonkers!" 3:17

It's Looney Tune bananas over here for ReMix #4900(!), as jnWake channels his prog & funk fandom into our favorite pink puffball, combining themes from Kirby: Triple Deluxe & Kirby 64! Once Wake noticed Triple Deluxe's miniboss music was a little off-kilter, the prime was pumped to eventually tackle it (though who knew it would be this stylish!):

"Aaaaaaaaand another DoD track! This is my submission for the latest Dwelling of Duels' Free Month (March 2025), where I got second place out of 35 entries! Chosen source this time was "Chasing Down the Miniboss" from Kirby: Triple Deluxe, aka the miniboss or midboss battle theme. Miniboss theme is criminally underrated, indeed a very overlooked theme. I searched for other covers and didn't find much. Ever since I first played through the game, this theme caught my ears since it has such a weird chord progression for the first section and some wild harmonies. I had always wanted to remix it but was never too sure where to take it until this month, where I basically went ham on making it a fun, crazy prog. fusion jam. Main inspirations are bands like Frost* and KNOWER (my template for the drum writing). Also, since there's nothing that Kirby composers love more than cameo-ing old tracks in their stuff, I decided to add a fitting cameo, putting a melody from Kirby 64's boss theme into the arrangement. [...] Hope you enjoy!"

Oooooh wow, the main verse of this Triple Deluxe source definitely sounds like Nintendo invited KNOWER to write something for them, this is cool! :-D Panel colleague prophetik music invoked yet another virtuosic act in comparing Wake's introduction, so his praise was in "crazy-good" territory from the start:

"as soon as i heard the original, i knew what to expect from you =) this is so right up your alley.

big Dirty Loops feel on the opening, with the flourish in the keys and the moving synth lines right after. melody's in right away after that, and it's very peppy and has some fun drum work going on. there's a quick half-time(ish?) section right after that which is pretty forward-focused still and has a lot of fun synth work going on.

1:00's a bit of a break, and the kirby 64 cameo comes in right after and sounds great in context, really nice idea giving it a flowing melodic line there. it picks up right after and we get some keyboard soloing. both of these [...] i love what they're saying.

the chiptune arps bring us back around to the original material nicely, and we're back to a building section with lots of little call-outs. there's one more set of riffs, and it's done on an extended chord.

this is a lay-up as expected. tons of clever arrangement, the band sound is great, and it's mixed well and performed better. excellent work."

The only thing better than a glowing judgement is a deranged, salty one, so fellow OCR judge and DoD competitor Emunator showed up and started blasting (/s):

"Fuck you man, you think you can swoop in at the last minute and churn out a brilliant track all on your own and then get second place? Get a load of this guy, everybody.

This source was literally made for you - I'm actually starting to believe that the entire Kirby series body of musical work was invented just so you could have source material to remix to perfection. KNOWER is a great analog here, it's pretty much non-stop controlled chaos that teeters on the edge of being a mess, but falls on the right side of that line 100% of the time due to your technical competence and musical vision. It's brilliant. And I hate you for it :'-D"

Emu's unhinged for the Wake hate, but DoD trophy battles DO do that to friendships; they're so metaphorically shiny and genuinely precious! Meanwhile, besides what my brethren j00js already took notice of, there were several other sick smaller details, e.g. the cool soloing over the bass riff arrangement at 1:52, and a brilliantly beautiful textural change at 2:24 that was quite a shift in the energy until 2:51. It's insane how much more this one's grown on me since hearing it on the judges panel, and that's a testament to jnWake's tenacious tendency to live perform his parts, giving everything a lunatic level of personality. Smart stuff throughout, with great energy per Wake's impressive standard. You're out of your mind if you pass this up! :-P