ReMix: Super Mario Bros. 'Super Mario Blues'

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AmIEviL, Game Over, and Neskvartetten - Sweden seems to kick disproportionate amounts of musical posterior when it comes to game music arranging, particularly in the jazz and rock arenas. All three of those names are ABBA-sized powerhouses on OCR, but it's the latter who's latest mix breaks with their trend to date of only mixing Zelda themes. Granted, they've stayed safely within the Nintendo camp, but their group name translates to the "NES Quartet" (or something like that), so homage to the Big N is part of their stated agenda. You've got to love the immediacy of the live performance, here, highlighted by an audible count-off, presumably by the drummer Lucas Edman. Every member of this group is a truly impressive musician, and furthermore they all play off each other the way only a group of artists who've worked together for awhile can. It's very symbiotic, and it's the hardest single thing to try and emulate when doing a jazz arrangement all by your lonesome. The theme here is arguably the most recognizable piece of game music in existence, so it's interesting to see what the Nes4 are able to do with it; needless to say, it's somewhat more believable and professional than my own rather antiquated effort ;) A lot of the groups previous arrangement's have heavily featured jazz organ and/or saxophone, but in this instance it's a fret-fest all the way, with guitar dominating throughout. The pared-down instrumentation is probably more in keeping with blues as opposed to jazz arranging, although this still sounds rather jazzy to mine ears. Everything these guys have done to date is gold, and this doesn't break that streak, so it's a no-brainer for our jazz and live music afficionados or anyone interested in seeing how flexible Kondo's plumber's music continues to prove itself.

― djpretzel