Usually, when someone composes rock music inspired by Nintendo games it not worth taking notice. Like, "Oh hey, you did a djent cover of the 'Overworld Theme' from Super Mario Bros. 2 and posted it to Bandcamp? Cool. Relatedly, I'm about to set a record for speed in exiting a web browser, and also, possibly, my own life. Byyyyyeeeeeee!"
What typically makes most examples of rock and video game soundtrack crossovers so interminable is a tragic intersection of a lack of imagination and a dearth of confidence. Koji Kondo could truly churn out a banger, and if you're going to coast on his talent, you should put in the effort to match his skill and aptitude to the best of your ability.
Ian Cowell clearly gets this and his album Exceptional Goblins is exemplary of what it looks like when you apply yourself in making music that is as creative as your source of inspiration. From the sax and synth-funk make-over of the Super Mario's "World One" theme titled "One World for World One," through to the darkly poignant waterlogged dreampunk cover of Donkey Kong Country's "Aquatic Ambiance," Ian exerts every effort to make these tunes his own.
Such as with the latter of the previous examples, amongst the softly, drizzling guitar chords, Ian has inserted pilfered documentary dialogue directing your attention to the melancholia of aquatic lifecycles- its a chill track, but it will also give you an existential crisis in a way that I doubt the Rare team ever intended.
While Ian is a verifiable guitar god, whose chops could crack mountains and whose swells are as momentous as the tides of the ocean, this isn't exactly what makes Excpeitonal Goblins the magnificent journey that it is. He also has a real knack for finding unlikely connections and aesthetic affordances in existing compositions. A skill that is characteristic of producers like Macross 82-99, but which you really don't see outside of the vaporwave scene.
Ian's ability to mine for unlikely fusions within familiar tunes, combined with his dexterity as a guitarist, and a sense of timing that seems more suited to jazz than a rock 'n roll, makes Expectyional Goblins an uncanny and delightful overall encounter. It's like Ben Katzman's DeGreaser trying to remake Head Hunter with the intent that it be synced up with a Twitch-streamed run of Chrono Trigger in a Dark Side of Oz type of situation. It's above and beyond what you can normally expect for this sort of thing, and it will take you places you could not have anticipated, but in terms of sheer imagination, it's on par with what the source material of the project deserves.
