DK Jammin' Jungle
So they're finally here, performing for you!
Summary
Donkey Kong Jammin’ Jungle is an audio experimentation project that features video art explorations of the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy. Components of the larger project include a combined album mix of both the Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance soundtracks of Donkey Kong Country 3, a music mix that merges the sounds of the Donkey Kong franchise with its source genres, and a soundscape experience that highlights the some of the unsettling environments of the original trilogy. Both of the former two are more music focused while the latter is more audio focused, but they all come together to create a unique listening experience. All of the components of this project can be viewed through the Donkey Kong Jammin Jungle YouTube Playlist where Arcmaevotix is home to the original versions and Nehrpsyznet is home to the remade versions.
Process
Production of Donkey Kong Jammin’ Jungle started with “Kongo Kaos: Back to the Jungle Floor” back in 2020. It was the first published music mix where I was exploring the nature of mixing video game soundtracks with music of the genres that they were inspired by. Prior to Kongo Kaos, all projects of the same nature were either much smaller in scale, shared locally, or kept in private archives since I was still struggling to make coherent sounding mixes with my Sonic music projects. The idea for Kongo Kaos came shortly after I became a pretty dedicated melophile back in the mid 2010s as I began studying music and rapidly growing my music collection. When I started re-discovering one of my favorite umbrella genres, Old School EDM, it dawned on me that there were a lot of tracks that sounded like they would have been items that inspired the musical tastes of retro games such as Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64.
Studying music composition in film and video games saw me taking notes of what influenced the sounds of media such as The Matrix or Sonic the Hedgehog CD. With only a few small scale mixes out in the wild combining genres such as Acid House, New Jack Swing, Synth Pop, etc. with the soundtracks of games such as Sonic 3 and Sonic CD, Kongo Kaos finally finished production and landed on the CSN28 channel in the summer of 2021. This came a mere six months after Ryland Kurshenoff dropped their first Nintendo 64 jungle mix 01 which really gave me greater reassurance that people hadn’t forgotten about Old School EDM sounds such as Jungle or Breakbeat Hardcore. And not only that, but there were others out there just like me who thought that the musicality of video game soundtracks and the genres that they pulled on was worth highlighting! Around the same time Breakcore was experiencing a revival of sorts that also shined a light on its sibling or parent genres such as Dark Jungle, Breakbeat House, Intelligent DnB, and others.
Soon thereafter, video game music mixes highlighting Old School EDM inspiration or combining visuals of retro games with Old School EDM became more and more common as people began to remember the musical environments of their childhoods from games such as Super Monkey Ball 2, Bomberman, Jet Set Radio, and plenty more! After Kongo Kaos was published, I was interested in combining the soundtracks of the Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance version of Donkey Kong Country 3 since they both have distinct sounds due to each version having different composers. Unfortunately, no one had ever attempted to combine both soundtracks into a single listening experience and it was incredibly hard to find something even adjacent to the concept since as far back as the early 2000s. So, I got to work assembling a combined CD mix of both versions of the soundtrack so that people could listen to the compositional variations of Donkey Kong Country 3 all in one place. This eventually lead to me wanting to create a soundscape that mimicked the more atmospheric and darker tones of Eveline Fischer’s version of the Donkey Kong Country 3 soundtrack which culminated the creation of Dark Delusions which served as the final component of the project.
Studying music composition in film and video games saw me taking notes of what influenced the sounds of media such as The Matrix or Sonic the Hedgehog CD. With only a few small scale mixes out in the wild combining genres such as Acid House, New Jack Swing, Synth Pop, etc. with the soundtracks of games such as Sonic 3 and Sonic CD, Kongo Kaos finally finished production and landed on the CSN28 channel in the summer of 2021. This came a mere six months after Ryland Kurshenoff dropped their first Nintendo 64 jungle mix 01 which really gave me greater reassurance that people hadn’t forgotten about Old School EDM sounds such as Jungle or Breakbeat Hardcore. And not only that, but there were others out there just like me who thought that the musicality of video game soundtracks and the genres that they pulled on was worth highlighting! Around the same time Breakcore was experiencing a revival of sorts that also shined a light on its sibling or parent genres such as Dark Jungle, Breakbeat House, Intelligent DnB, and others.
Soon thereafter, video game music mixes highlighting Old School EDM inspiration or combining visuals of retro games with Old School EDM became more and more common as people began to remember the musical environments of their childhoods from games such as Super Monkey Ball 2, Bomberman, Jet Set Radio, and plenty more! After Kongo Kaos was published, I was interested in combining the soundtracks of the Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance version of Donkey Kong Country 3 since they both have distinct sounds due to each version having different composers. Unfortunately, no one had ever attempted to combine both soundtracks into a single listening experience and it was incredibly hard to find something even adjacent to the concept since as far back as the early 2000s. So, I got to work assembling a combined CD mix of both versions of the soundtrack so that people could listen to the compositional variations of Donkey Kong Country 3 all in one place. This eventually lead to me wanting to create a soundscape that mimicked the more atmospheric and darker tones of Eveline Fischer’s version of the Donkey Kong Country 3 soundtrack which culminated the creation of Dark Delusions which served as the final component of the project.
Reflection
Donkey Kong Jammin Jungle was crucial in me learning not only how to mix music more naturally but also how to compose music and craft soundscapes with better theory. Since Kongo Kaos served as my first ever complete music mix, I owe a lot to Donkey Kong Jammin Jungle for being the project that marked the turning point in how I approached most audio engineering and music production. Giving myself the necessary time to learn new production techniques, coherent crate building, and tricks for soundscape design proved to be worth the while later on with projects such as Rave Realm A3 and Winter Wonders which were far more complex. Being able to also engage once more with video art in Dark Delusions made the project feel creatively rewarding as I was further refining my skills of building soundscapes in tandem with visual landscapes.