ReMix: Donkey Kong Land 'Revisiting the Ruins'

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I recently started a new job with a longer commute; it's more challenging, but it's definitely taking awhile to adjust to the schedule shift. I've also been filling some of my free time with The Wire, the current season of which has to be some of the best television I've ever seen; HBO really is worth the extra dinero. Meanwhile, the panel's been cranking away, and has approved this ReMix by Patrick Burns, our first from Donkey Kong Land. This arrangement comes close to featuring some birdcussion in its intro, what with the avian effects, but a mellow bossa nova groove kicks in with a wonderful acoustic guitar solo over top, and things get real smooth real fast. The same fx are later used as a bridge to a more upbeat section where synth bass is replaced by slap (fresh move there, Mr. Burns) and there's more of a latin feel, with free-range xylophone grazing in pastures of synth pad. A lot of the instrumentation touches - bass slides, pad fades, transitions of all ilk - are very polished, even achieving a sort of "workstation demo" vibe at times, only with more coherent musicality than most "look at all the impressive sounds" demos you'll hear from Korg, Yamaha, Roland, etc. The acoustic guitar adds a valuable organic element to the slickness, even though it's got a sheen to it as well. Shariq writes:

"Oh man, I love that smooth bossa nova feel. More people need to work in this style. Guitar work is really clean and competent. Balance and production is really nice; good choice of sounds. I liek it~!"

Patrick impresses on several levels - performance, arrangement, instrumentation, and production. The use of fx bridges and the two truly complimentary sections are only made better by the instrumentation changes (e.g. the aforementioned synth/slap swap) that are effective in adding variety without being at all jarring or non sequitir. The overall piece seems also to have benefitted from the revision/resubmission process. It's just downright solid stuff; I'd be proud of it were it mine, and it's definitely got some stylistic attitude that diffuses any "smooth jazz ennui" that might have cropped up. Patrick's been around awhile, but with this mix he not only crosses the infamous OCR submission bar, but does so definitively, with a great first mix of DKL and a great first mix in general.

― djpretzel