Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest "Diamonds and Dust" 2:55

Emunator's back again with a chill, post-rock take on "Mining Melancholy" from DKC2 with some friends! And surprisingly, this one isn't from DoD's David Wise Month!

The man himself was happy to shine a light on the background for this track:

"This concept has been floating around in my head for a long time, but the timing was finally right to finish it this year. "Mining Melancholy" is my favorite sleeper-hit on the DKC2 soundtrack. The juxtaposition between the percussive, bouncy verses and the lush, moody chorus made it into a permanent earworm for me.

I drew heavy influence from Tame Impala across the board here, but since I'm not Kevin Parker and can't play all my own instruments, I had to pull in some help. The guitar was especially fun because Seph and Josh were actually spending the weekend at my house, so we had a completely impromptu 1AM recording session where he laid down a metric-heckton of guitars over my demo. It was a thrill to see the man work in real time!

I then passed the track off to Chimpazilla, who proceeded to make diamonds from my coal with her incredible mixing and ear candy skills, making some subtle but important changes across the board that really brought out the shine in this piece. She kept the original vibe intact but made it better in every conceivable way!

Shoutouts to Zack for tracking some live electric bass that gave this the last bit of oomph and groove it needed to get across the finish line!"

That's right, I was a fly on the wall – er, Squawks in the cave holding the searchlight – when this melodic machine was on the assembly line (and as I recall, FL Studio was on its best behavior that weekend; no crashes for Emunator while Pixels & Paradiddles are in the house!).

Those evil judges were pickier about Emunator's execution this time around, though prophetik music could see the light at the end of the tunnel:

"opens with percussion loops and some stuttered synths. 0:10's beat feels great. there's some guitar [...] there's a break fairly quickly at 0:31, and then that takes off again after a short build. beat feels great, especially the snare. [...] the bass is pretty by itself and feels a bit boosted [...] there's some fuzz at 1:15 that i'd call distortion in the lead. [...] 1:51 brings another drop and chorus, and when the beat comes back, it's a solo section. [...] some more scalar patterns and it's done. [...] the arrangement's fun if not overly complex"

Fellow judge Liontamer found some bright spots to highlight:

"Hits pretty hard. [...] Once the melody dropped out again at 1:30, I could hear the source tune in the backing writing [...]. Nice quiet layering of the chippy line at 1:53, which was a cool way to double the theme. Sweet guitar soloing section at 2:14 [...] Bumpin', thumpin' energy!"

Well then, enough blabbering. Strap on a hard hat and take a seat in the cart – we've got a Kong to save!