How "Smoke & Scowl" Was Written

this tune came together pretty effortlessly. it was an underslept wednesday evening that i decided to download every single sound from super mario 64, load them into ableton, and attempt to make a rhythm section out of them. this song was sort of a classically ‘bp’ song - i brought it to aaron and he was more or less like ‘yep, this is what this is gonna be, not much to change here’.

i added that zany solo at the end, and it became a really ‘feature’ element of the song. it was totally improvised on a synthesizer, but i recorded the MIDI of it during the take. so, then i put a saxophone instrument on that midi track to get it in unison with the synth - i thought it would be really neat to hear a saxophone do what it ‘couldn’t. to my surprise, aaron and david williford (saxophonist) found a way to actually do it on the final version 🤯

Can you spot all of the super mario 64 samples used in smoke & scowl?

didja catch this live version?