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A remix/cover of the song 'Shanty', from the soundtrack to unreleased SNES/N64 video game 'Project Dream' by Rare. (Composed by Grant Kirkhope; rearranged by Jim McGrath/FrDougal9000)

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LINER NOTES: 19/July/2015

Back in 1995, hot off the success of their Donkey Kong Country games, Rare Ltd decided to make one last great hurrah for the Super Nintendo. It was an enormous sea-venturing game where you tackled pirates, the graphics were rendered in that iconic DKC style, and the team was even lead by Tim Stamper (one of Rare's founders back in the Ultimate Play the Game era) for a good chunk of the project. Unfortunately, due to hardware constraints on both the SNES and the N64 when they moved it over, the game known as Project Dream was changed to a smaller scale adventure known as Banjo-Kazooie...

For a game so instrumental in bringing more Rareware to players across the world, it's odd to think that all we've ever gotten was a single screenshot and a small selection of the music tracks by the game's composer Grant Kirkhope (8-9 songs out of the 107 that he composed for the game!). That is, until late May 2015; it's been revealed by Tim Stamper that he has prototype cartridges for the SNES and N64 versions (the former of which is genuine due to opening up the cartridge to show its insides), which might mean we'll be able to see what the mysterious game would've played like.

As a celebration, I decided to do a cover of my favourite of those unused songs: a simple tune under the name of 'Shanty'. A particular reason I went with this song is that this is the only one of the released selection that Kirkhope hasn't gone on to rearrange in a later game (a common tactic he uses for unreleased songs, such as turning Dream's main theme into 'Oven-Fresh Day' in Viva Piñata), and there's no other remix or rearrangement of this song on the internet. A damn shame, since I actually think it's the man's best work.

Not sure exactly what inspired me to go for a calm swing/rock style, but I suppose I wanted to do the sort of rearrangement that could pop up in a beach level in Yooka-Laylee (the excellent Snakey Dealings fan animation was also a big inspiration behind doing this cover). Fun fact: Shanty's not the only song to be covered here - take a listen to some of the other instruments, and you might find nods to other Rare/Kirkhope songs (one of which was also never used, but I'll let you figure out what they are).

Instruments used: Fretless Bass, Ethnic Drumset (Bongos and Brush), Vibraphone, Strings, Power Guitar, Harmonica

-Jim McGrath

P.S. I actually cocked up the time signature by accident. The song was originally in 3/4, but I forgot to change it from 4/4 when I started working on the remix. So if anyone's wondering why the melodies are a bit different in timing, chalk it up to my hilarious incompetence.