Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! "Thalassophobia" 2:40

1-2-3, the DK hits continue! Following coverage from the first two games, we've got our DKC3 album director Emunator returning to the game that first made his name into our community via our first DKC3 ReMix in a decade! Emunator's joined by younger sibling mo.oorgan as they make a splash in Donkey Kong Country 3's "Water World"! You're not scared of large bodies of water, are you? Emu's essentially asking you to let him & mo lure your ears into the water with lo-fi:

"This is a sibling track to "Mechanomania", which is being submitted by mo.oorgan. There's multiple levels of synchronicity here - two Donkey Kong Country tracks, remixed in a lo-fi style, by two IRL siblings, each clocking in exactly at 2:40 (a totally unplanned coincidence), and the titles even play off of two opposing states of mind (mania = extreme passion, and phobia = extreme fear). Although the two tracks are very different in tone, with this track being the dark, moody, electronic-tinged counterpart, they feel like perfect A and B sides to the same EP.

I took the lead on this arrangement, mapping out the structure and putting the core synth and percussion sounds together that formed the foundation, and Mo came in with some really vibrant, totally original sound effects, transitions, and melodic layers, including the intro guitar and cello melody, that totally tied it all together. To be truthful, I don't even remember who came up with what at this point, but I'm in love with how this turned out. This is my first time covering anything from Donkey Kong Country 3 since I directed the DKC3 album project nearly 15 years ago. It feels good to be back here."

Have no fear, "Mechanomania" will be featured in due time; we can't saddle you with two psychological disorders at once, that would be mean, but keep those ears peeled, and if you wanna hear alternate versions of both, be sure to check out Hotline Sehwani's new lo-fi album DK's Tree House After Hours 2. Judge jnWake was surprised by the siblings' surreptitious submission:

"I've always felt the water level theme from DKC3 is severely underrated, glad to see you cover it!

Anyway, this begins with an acoustic guitar, setting a much calmer and less menacing vibe than what I was expecting given the source. At 0:07 we get one of the main motifs from the original on a piano (I believe?) and around 0:12 we move to a more electronic vibe, there's some cool chords going in here. We get a lofi slow beat at 0:25, nice. There's some different build-ups with the melody changing to a couple different instruments and some neat sound design flourishes (Emu and Mo together was definitely going to lead to that!). 0:51 continues the trend, still keeping at the same melody over a chill backing. I love how starting at 1:16 the tone of the main synth changes slightly. Around 1:32 there's a small tease of another melody from the source but at 1:39 we return to the first melody on a more menacing chord progression and we settle on a dark mood around 1:52. Another source section is briefly represented at 2:04 and at 2:11 we finally get the "main melody" of the source. [...]

On arrangement this is really cool [...] I love each individual section and the transitions are well handled. [...]

On production this is stellar, as would be natural when you get 2 people that are so good at both at it! Love all the samples, how the sounds evolve and also the very large array of SFX you guys used for transitions and just general ear candy.

Overall, easy pass! I love your particular brand of more complex and extremely well produced lofi, and it's a perfect fit for this source."

Wake's right, especially with Chimpazilla handling the mastering, these folks've got the juice for sure. Personally, this was a difficult source me to wrap my head around; it happens. Thankfully, the lil' repeating pattern anchoring this track's taken from the source and ends up being the foundation of the piece, so that made the source usage checkbox easy. At 1:52, the repeating pattern dropped out until 2:11 and made way for some even darker, more ominous instrumentation choices. I appreciated the sound design evolution and experimentation throughout, it's a wonderful (albeit foreboding) trip! Can't wait to also feature the sibling ReMix to these siblings' ReMix. ;-)