ReMix:Super Mario Galaxy "Meteorites and Rabbits (Ultimate Version)" 3:16

There was tragic news in the game music arrangement community recently, as British arranger Daniel "PirateCrab" Woodyer shockingly passed away on April 26th. One of the BEST metal performers in the scene, he left behind a genuine musical legacy with 10 contributions to OC ReMix since his first from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 nearly a decade ago, as well as participating in several community efforts including Pixel Mixers, Shinesparkers, one collaborative performance for Dwelling of Duels, and as part of a pair of OCR albums. We hope you listen to Daniel's ReMixes and visit his YouTube channel to enjoy his intense, polished, and passionate performances, music that demanded you take notice. He will be missed and will live on through his music.

PirateCrab always loved to rock, so I felt it fitting to reflect on his loss here with the posting of a rock arrangement he likely would have been down with. Rockos wasn't the only person pulling double-duty for our Mario Month spotlight, no, sir. After previously dipping his brush into the Mario Paint, jmr has also circled back to deliver his second arrangement for this special event, but he didn't return alone. Jeff's joined by the second half of Marshall Art, Mikhail Ivanov, along with a merry band of musical brothers:

"Credits:
Jeffrey "jmr" Roberts: arrangement; NES, Game Boy, Sega Genesis programming; mix, mastering, video edit
Mikhail "streifig" Ivanov: Ebow guitar, rhythm guitar
Cory Johnson: lead guitar
Jer Roque: piano
Erich "ErichWK" Beckmann: drums, drum mixing"

Welcome back to streifig (Добро пожаловать!), Cory, and Jer, and a welcome aboard to Erich of Kirby's Dream Band! This fearsome fivesome have come together for another rare kind of OC ReMix, the arrangement of an arrangement, as jmr shares how his serene space exploration of Super Mario Galaxy transformed into this chippy, grungy, ultimate version:

"Another Mario one for you all. This is a new version of my first posted OC ReMix (#1944) from way back in 2009, adapted for my band, Marshall Art. It's the same general arrangement but with completely different instrumentation, setting it further apart from the original source tune than my initial version. I think it's different enough to justify submitting it as a companion piece to my first version.

We first re-arranged this track back in 2017-2018 for our MAGFest main stage performance and subsequently recorded it for our 2020 album/performance video, ULTIMATE. This submission is largely the same as the 2020 version, but with a few tweaks to freshen it up for you guys. I saw one of the main complaints was the intonation on the theremin-style NES triangle parts. Quirk of the hardware - the pitch gets kinda squirrely on that channel in the upper registers. I hit the triangle parts with some pitch tweaks in Melodyne. For context, I knew that part was a bit flat, but accepted it because it was a limitation of the hardware I chose, and that's a good chunk of the band's aesthetic. The album was intended to be a pseudo-live recording with no major edits or things we couldn't achieve on stage, so it was left as is. Outside of the context of the album, I'm completely fine with faking it. :-)"

Shhh! We won't tell nobody! :-D I actually did one of my rare table flips on the judges panel, as the initial version of this was voted down off some of the chiptune lines being "a little pitchy for me, dawg"; I felt it was perfectly fine as is and DarkeSword chimed in with a co-sign that he loved the wall of sound and the detuned lead, so the battle was joined! Once we sent our comments back to jmr, he was, as noted, able to tweak the NES lines to garner enough support, but I was ready to give fools the KIYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA if needed! (OK, OK, we didn't end up fighting...) Judge DarkSim rightly noted that pristine production isn't required 'round these parts, and invoked Billy Corgan to make his point:

"Sure, it's a little rough around the edges and the frequency spectrum lacks balance in the ending section, but I'd have the same criticisms of classic grunge production (Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins had awful production, and that's a cracking album anyway). This is more than good enough for a grunge-style remix, and definitely a significant style shift from the 2009 version.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna listen to the remastered version of Siamese Dream..."

This is actually unrelated to stylistic production quirks, but jmr did mention that he recently developed some ear issues that'll prevent him from working on music for a while. All of Marshall Art's ULTIMATE album is worth the journey, so we certainly hope (and will keep our fingers crossed) that Jeff's able to bounce back to 100% so that he can continue pursuing the work that he loves, both as an arranger and as an audio engineer. Thanks to Jeff, Mikhail, Cory, Jer, and Erich for joining forces to bring more unique textures to our extra-long Mario celebration!