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Alternate Soundtrack: Donkey Kong '94 vs. Les Savy Fav
The following originally ran on 61 Frames Per Second on May 27th, 2008. Making this video was the very first thing I did once I got my new iMac up and running last year.
The original Donkey Kong is justly considered one of the great landmarks in video game history. It popularized the now all-too familiar concept of platforming and introduced two of the most memorable video game characters of all time: the titular villainous ape and the overalls-clad carpenter named Jumpman, soon rebranded as the lovable plumber known Galaxy-wide as Mario. Even though the game was only four stages long, it demonstrated a clear story - ape abducts pretty lady, climbs up skyscraper, hero gives chase, avoiding obstacles - that resonated in the hearts of millions.
After thirteen years, Donkey Kong was starting to feel a bit restricted and, as all teenagers do, decided to branch out to seem more exciting and relevant. The result was 1994's Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. It starts off with the original four stages but then continues for an astounding ninety-seven more that see Mario struggle across cityscapes, jungles, icebergs, valleys, and more outrageous environments. The soundtrack is sparse, with only a few sound effects for your actions and gentle musical clues to make you aware of time constraints. It is so elegantly simple that it induces a zen-like state; it invites a calm focus on the tasks ahead so you can rationally solve the puzzles before you. The only problem with this is that it’s completely unrealistic to be calm and rational when jumping across one-hundred-and-one stages in pursuit of your girlfriend and an enormous ape! Thankfully, this minimal soundtrack allows me to choose my own mood music without having to eliminate those all-important sound effects like I do with other games.
Les Savy Fav are a lot like Donkey Kong, and not because their lead singer is a wild, hairy ape who climbs scaffolding (see Coachella 2008). Les Savy Fav are genre pioneers themselves, credited with creating the Brooklyn dance-punk sound that made bands like Liars and The Rapture famous years before their respective breakthroughs. While they are best known for their frenetic live shows and for 2004's Inches, it is 2001's Go Forth that is their best music for alternate soundtracking. Go Forth actually manages to take the innocently bizarre narrative scenario of Donkey Kong '94 and transform it into beautifully desperate drama.
Seth Jabour's skyscraper-tall guitar arpeggios look down on you with contempt and disdain. Syd Butler's crunchy, angular bass lines brim with the steady virulent aggression of an ape carrying away your lady friend. Harrison Haynes' drums are a pendulum, swinging between the steady march of a man at war and the rebellious rat-a-tat-tat of a thinking man taking action. Maybe I'm just reading into this, but Tim Harrington's lyrics paint the portrait of a man on the verge of desperation, battling for his livelihood against seemingly insurmountable odds. Sound familiar yet? This is most apparent in the mantra-like lyrics that Harrington uses to close his songs. "Reprobate's Resume" closes with the repeated pleading, "Please, go easy on me." "Pills" ends with a few aching refrains of, "You and I, we were meant to be together. You and I, we are gonna hang together. You and I, we are going down together." And "Bloom On Demand", the album's final proper song brings it all home with two minutes of Harrington worrying, “This giving in is wearing thin." It’s repeated as he, along with the rest of the band, are slowly washed away by the cold, unfeeling rain clouds of synth keyboards. At the close, despite the previous thirty-seven minutes of flexing their muscles and proving their might, the environment is just more powerful than the band had imagined. Les Savy Fav have become Mario, trying desperately to evade the obstacles in their path that only increase in breadth the further they travel.
Or I could totally just be projecting here.
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