Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack (SNES)

Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack (SNES), Robin Beanland / Eveline Fischer / David Wise, 1994

It is probably fair to say that Donkey Kong Country was always destined to become a blockbuster. What put the game on course to dominate the 1994 Christmas season were its ground-breaking graphics. More than nine million copies later, Donkey Kong Country had become a milestone in gaming history.

Yet while it was the game’s quasi-3D visuals that caused the greatest stir in 1994, what has arguably aged better is the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack. For the first time in Rare’s history, David Wise was joined by co-composers Eveline Fischer (now Novakovic) and Robin Beanland. Beanland’s contribution extended to just one piece, “Funky’s Fugue”, which Wise then adapted to run on the SNES. Fischer, by contrast, contributed seven compositions. The soundtrack also became one of the very first Western game scores to receive a commercial release, and on both sides of the Pacific.

Given the lavish, intricate look of the game, as well as its initially jungle-based setting, where exactly would Wise and Fischer take the music? At times, they do play to genre expectations. For the most part, however, Donkey Kong Country operates almost as an antithesis to the normally bouncy sound of 16-bit platformers.

Where the soundtrack remains closest to convention is in its use of lively swing jazz to underscore the jungle environment. The most memorable and best-developed expression of this influence is “DK Island Swing”, which introduces what has effectively become the unofficial Donkey Kong Country theme and would later be reprised throughout the series. It is worth noting, though, that this melody, however closely it is now associated with the franchise, appears only briefly on the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack itself. The same is true of the jazz element more generally. Fondly remembered though it may be, it accounts for only a relatively small portion of the score.

As seamlessly as Wise and Fischer integrate jazz, along with some rock ’n’ roll touches, the soundtrack truly shines elsewhere. More often than not, they respond to the game’s immensely detailed and colourful visuals with unusually ascetic music suggestive of a very different aesthetic. Whether to avoid sensory overload or not, the score generally prefers to establish a mood rather than directly underscore on-screen action. For a 16-bit platformer soundtrack, Donkey Kong Country is at times strikingly minimalist. Wise and Fischer suggest a world rather than spelling it out, leaving spaces for the listener to fill in.

The results of this restraint are stunning, thanks to the care with which Wise and Fischer compose. Consider “Cave Dweller Concert”, which runs to nearly six minutes when looped. The sound of dripping water mixes with wooden xylophone strikes and other percussion, all echoing into the depths to suggest a vast, dimly lit cavern. This is music that tantalisingly suggests rather than reveals. The utterly spellbinding “Misty Menace” pares the instrumentation back even further. At first, it consists of little more than white noise and echoing metallic strikes, before a single swelling string chord and a few more metallic fragments join in. At this point, the world of Donkey Kong Country becomes elusive and almost sublime, captured appropriately through the barest of gestures.

None of this means, however, that the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack is a cold or overly cerebral affair. True, it is not as overtly melodic as its sequel. But it still manages to be deeply emotional without resorting to obvious sentiment. “Aquatic Ambience” offers a perfect example of Wise’s slowly evolving soundscapes, evoking 1980s synth film scores more readily than typical SNES music. Softly undulating synth layers drift through the ether, creating an otherworldly mood unlike anything else on the console. Then, after roughly eighty-five seconds, a dreamy yet wistful melody of unforgettable beauty finally appears. Quietly moving, “Aquatic Ambience” performs its magic with astonishing ease.

That the music can cast its spell so powerfully is also the result of painstaking technical work by Wise. To get around the SNES’s 64kb sample-size limitation, he worked with single-cycle, custom-created wave samples. The results more than justify the effort. Many of the soundtrack’s synth-led pieces suggest a 32-bit rather than a 16-bit machine.

While Wise understandably receives most of the credit for the soundtrack’s success, Fischer’s contributions are every bit as strong. Indeed, considering that this was her first game score, the quality of her work here is remarkable. Take “Ice Cave Chant”, which adds a welcome dose of catchy, shimmering pop melodicism to what is otherwise a fairly hushed soundtrack. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest would push further in that direction, placing greater emphasis on melody. Even so, the original Donkey Kong Country soundtrack remains a singularly engrossing experiment in SNES music, one that happens to arrive in the unlikely guise of a blockbuster game score.