Desert Planet - Mario Built My Hot Rod (2005)

1) Return of the Ninja Droids; 2) Breakout Button (feat. Aleksi Eeben); 3) Granny Hunt (feat. Eläkeläiset); 4) She-Creatures of the Dry Sea (feat. Custom Drummer); 5) Red Dwarf (2005 Remix); 6) Turbo; 7) Hot Rod Garage; 8) Salsa Kong (Monkey Mix); 9) Cherokees (Red Dog Remix); 10) Slurp!; 11) Four Snowmen; 12) Interstellar Agent

Charming and catchy bleep-bloops, even if not completely consistent.

Key tracks: "Return of the Ninja Droids", "Granny Hunt", "Salsa Kong"

Everything about Mario Built My Hot Rod is wonderful conceptually. Desert Planet are two guys from Finland in budget space suits who create chiptune music, with each song being a theme tune from an imaginary game. How is that not a cool concept? The CD even has multimedia section with a small game built around one of the featured songs! A+ for effort.

The problem I have with chiptune music is that as much as there’s a part of my brain that loves it (which has nothing to do with gaming nostalgia and everything to do with the sounds themselves), it’s a genre that struggles to support itself in large chunks. In capable hands the bleeps and bloops are wonderfully evocative tools for crafting melodies but because the sound library is so limited, those melodies have to be damn strong to find new frontiers. It’s extremely rare to find a musician who can actually support the sound for an extended period of time and the vast majority of chiptune releases consist of a few kickass tunes and a lot of indistinguishable filler. There’s a reason why people mainly remember particular themes from that era of gaming, not full soundtracks.

Mario Built My Hot Rod doesn’t escape this either. When it’s good, it’s really good. “Cherokees” is a triumphant, energy-pumping blast, the brilliant synth horns of “Salsa Kong” are married to an infectious hook and “She-Creatures of the Dry Sea” has an atmospheric vibe that resonates with the evoked ambiance of so many video game desert levels. “Granny Hunt” is a particularly interesting one, not just for being a good song but featuring guest vocals (well, chants) from the irony-oompah group Eläkeläiset and as a result it almost breaks the genre’s conventions, nearly stretching out into the world of general electro-pop that suggests Desert Planet could be capable for a lot more than they let on. You can sort of say the same for “Return of the Ninja Droids” which, thanks to its structure and general flow, sounds like a chiptune remix of a rock song. In-between, everything blends together to a mass of retro sounds that range from plain wallpaper-esque to even slightly irritating. When “Interstellar Agent” abruptly ends and suddenly finishes the whole album, there’s a borderline sense of slight relief – which is awkward considering the runtime of the album is only around 40 minutes.

Like pretty much every chiptune album, this too would have been better as an EP rather than trying to fit it into the album mould - especially so when you consider that half the tracks are remixes or can be found on previous releases, so it’s not like the creative juices were overflowing. At 5-6 tracks this would have been a brief but amazing blast of great retro bops, now it overstays its welcome and rarely invites you to pick it up from the shelf. That said, when Desert Planet are on form they are very good composers.

For what it’s worth, the multimedia section also features a bunch of the duo’s music videos, including the one for “Lost Galaxians”: the best song Desert Planet have released and a key reason why the duo got my attention in the first place.

Rating: 6/10