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Kirkhope thought it would be “fun for him” to cover Bubblegloop Swamp, and asked Kellett if he’d take a shot at it. But he ended up being in Simply Red, who were a huge pop band back in the 80s, and he played trumpet for them.” “Tim Kellett is a friend I’ve known from school, we both were trumpet players. As Kirkhope mastered the instrument in his youth he befriended Simply Red‘s Tim Kellet, and the two have been friends for “donkey’s years”. Kirkhope’s trumpet-wielding days also came in handy at another point during the production of Re-Jiggyed. He went in looking for a tune to ska-ify, and eventually landed on Freezeezy Peak. With some creatively vocalised ska noises, Kirkhope explains that he likes the “oompah-type thing” of the genre and says ska is “very like Banjo-Kazooie“. I ask if that’s why I can detect a little bit of ska in Freezeezy Peak, and he happily admits that his younger days in a soul band – which he says used to support Bad Manners – may have crept in. He points to turning Gobi’s Valley into an orchestral piece with metal guitars “like Metallica or Nightwish“, and transforming the iconic Click-Clock Woods theme into a GameBoy-esque 8-bit piece. So I wanted to try and make it different and add different styles – as much as I could possibly chuck in everything and the kitchen sink – so that’s what I did.” I thought there’s no point in me doing that, because there’s a gazillion versions out there that are really good.
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“But they just kind of stick to the standard, you know, whatever the game version did. “I really wanted to do something that was different, because a lot of people have remixed my stuff over the years,” he explains. Instead of remixing each track like-for-like, Kirkhope wanted to take his legacy in a completely new direction. With the help of a site that specialises in video game song covers, Kirkhope managed to release Banjo Kazooie: Re-Jiggyed in October this year, and the end result is a fantastic love letter to the game – though not everything sounds exactly like you’d remember it.