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I'm a big fan of video games. I'm also a huge music fan, especially of the electronic variety. Merging the two is one of life's more delicious inventions, like peanut butter & jelly or computers and a musty basement. Unfortunately, it appears that all too many people have not been exposed to this niche genre of music so in order to illuminate and thwart our current update policy, every Tuesday I'll take a short look at one of many fine video game remixes.
This week's remix: Mahoney - M.U.L.E. (Aerobics in the jungle mix)
Don't let the opening scare you, although if the first game you played was FFVII you may have a difficult time discerning the tune. M.U.L.E. started out as an Atari 800 game (later ported to systems like the Commodore 64 and NES) and had a catchy, simple theme. As a great remix should do, it carries the main theme well past it's initial contextual home into a completely different world. In this case, the whole new world is populated by an aural feast of drums, bouncy bass lines, synth lines that blow through the wind, vocal chants, yelps and shouts. Magnificiently constructed and exceptionally produced (just like all of Mahoney's tracks), this mix has the right balance of depth, nostalgia and invigoration that grabs your ears, lifts your feet and makes you wonder why every song can't be this fucking good.
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#1 Anonymous Aug 19, 2008 11:56pm
No one is going to see this comment, but I thought I recognized this remix when Foot Locker's new "House of Hoops" ad campaign started in the Summer of 2008. So I researched what the music was, and it turns out the beat is originally by DJ Strobe. The Track is “Kodo — Strobe’s Nanafushi (Satori mix)” from the album Sai-So: The Remix Project out on Sony/Tristar music. All Mahoney did was lay a lot of samples over the original track. Granted, the two go so well together, it's like they were made to be one track, but I think Mahoney took a lot of credit that was due to DJ Strobe.
#2 Glenn Turner Aug 20, 2008 11:47am
Wow, thanks for commenting and letting us know about DJ Strobe's remix - it definitely puts Mahoney's mix in a different light. Like you said, his overlay certainly nicely enhances the track but certainly, the heart of the song is all Strobe and KODO's work. Ah well, at the least it's a nice mashup, I just wish I knew that five years ago!