ReMix: Super Mario World 'Koopa vs. Kefka'

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Dhsu writes:

"This is a track I did for the OUS Bad Dudes EP that nobody downloaded. The theme of the project was boss, villain, and other generally evil tunes, so I did a medley of "Sub-castle" from SMW and my favorite excerpt from "Dancing Mad." I wasn't planning on doing a track for the project at first, but changed my mind at the last minute and pounded this out in about 8 straight hours the day before the deadline. I didn't really have OCR in mind when I made it though, so I decided to have a little fun and experiment a little with multitracking and punching in. So who knows, this might be my first rejection. In any case, I had fun making this, and I hope you guys like it. Thanks again to Mustin for doing the production."

Are *you* bad enough to download the Bad Dudes EP? Apparently few were, but be sure to visit the link and mitigate that pathetic scarcity of both badness and dudeness, post-haste. Cool project theme, and of course you can't go wrong placing Kefka and Koopa in the same room together and seeing what shakes loose. Koopa seems to be kickin' it acoustic piano style, as per Dhsu's usual motif, whilst Kefka's weapon of choice is a big honkin' church organ. If David's last track from Earthbound was serene, this is ominous and menacing, although some of the upper-register material towards the front is too pretty to be scary. The rising, quick patterns are technically impressive, and there's effective use of dynamics to alter the tone from spooky to dramatic in seconds. Oji writes:

"Absolutely solid production as well from Mustin, and you know I was bitching about that quick job done on the original version of Nayru's Love, so this is a far cry from that. Conservative arrangement from David, but well handled and skillfully performed."

Even though it's four minutes long, I'd agree that arrangement drifts to the conservative side, but instrumentation, arranging for piano, and melding the two themes rather seamlessly is nothing to cough, sneeze, or otherwise exhale suddenly at. Production is, as Larry says, solid; I talked with Mustin "Mustin" Mustin at MAGFest a bit and it seems like he's definitely been focusing more on the production side of things lately, with apparently groovy results. Props to both, and kudos to Dhsu for getting into the multitimbrality game rather adeptly.

― djpretzel