This week, we continued the Month of Composers with David Wise. First was a trek through Castle Harman in Time Lord. Then we grew some ram horns in Battletoads arcade. We shot through barrels across brambles in Donkey Kong Country 2. Speaking of barrels, we heard a song from Star Fox Adventures. And finally we heard a remix Wise himself made for Overclocked ReMix.

If you want to see the music as it goes up (and not wait every Saturday for these wrap-ups), remember to go to our Tumblr page and follow it. Music for Night-Time Listenings goes up every weekday at 10PM

Time Lord – Castle Harman

Composed by David Wise

 

I’ve talked about Time Lord a long time ago back when TWF was on LiveJournal. I hated the game. Hated it with a passion. But I can’t turn a blind eye on how great the music to the game is. What you’re hearing now is the theme to Castle Harman. This is was one of David Wise’s early compositions, back when Rare was still a Third Party developer. The composition here is genius, making use of 8-bit instruments and techniques barely utilized by others at the time. It had reverb, echo, and rapid-fire notation for the secondary melody. It would also change tempo midsong. On the gameplay side, how evil do you think some of the objectives were to get some of the Time Orbs?

Battletoads (Arcade) – Stage 1

Composed by David Wise

 

You probably knew I’d put Battletoads music up. But to mix things up, I’ll be showcasing the Arcade version of the game. Way to start off a first stage, full of energy and fury; a perfect fit for the game’s ultra-difficulty. Before he started doing music for priamrily the DKC games, he was almost everywhere and adjusted his genre stylings accordingly. Since Battetoads had a more rock-inspired soundtrack, Wise composed accordingly. So, how many hairs did you pull playing the Battletoads games?

Donkey Kong Country 2 – Stickerbrush Symphony

Composed by David Wise

 

Here is the song many consider to be the pinnacle of David Wise’s career. Wise said in an interview once that during this time he was in his “experimental Paris” phase of composing and it showed in his compositions for DKC2. His music here had an stage environment-to-music disconnect this still worked. Case in point, if you never played the game before, you’d wouldn’t think Stickerbrush Symphony (the song you’re hearing now) was played in a stage full of brambles and barrel cannons. He starts the song off calmly with almost vertigo-like instrumentation for the backing melody. Two instruments go back and forth to form the main melody. And then, the percussion kicks in to give the song some extra oomph. And all throughout, that memorable 5-note bloop plays, never ceasing to stop ‘cause the other instruments got louder. So, did you ever tear up a bit hearing this song?

Starfox Adventures – Krazoa Palace

Composed by David Wise

 

Some called StarFox Adventures the beginning of the end of what some would call “Classic Rare” as shortly after the game’s release, Microsoft bought the other half of the share Nintendo didn’t own. Nintendo then sold off their share to Microsoft, thus making Rare a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. Here, David Wise would take up the composing duties for the game. You’re now listening to Krazoa Palace that has both an Egyptian feel and a Northern feel to the composition. The song is quiet and somewhat relaxing while at the same time foreboding. How did you feel playing this game the first time?

Serious Monkey Business – Re-Skewed

Composed by David Wise, Grant Kirkhope, and Robin Beanland

 

This song set a new milestone for website Overclocked ReMix as they had a composer on board to remix a song. David Wise (along with Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland) stepped in to remix his own song for OCR album Serious Monkey Business, which contained remixes of music from Donkey Kong Country 2. The song he remixed here was the credits theme for DKC2. Wise will be coming back for remix album Double The Trouble and remix the GBA version of Jungle Jitter. Now for a kinda tough question: of all the videogame composers out there, which would you choose to remix what song?