The Craze

The most celebrated and famous composer of today might not be dead. I’m talking about the legend Nobuo Uematsu, Japanese video game composer. While his life and works might be fantastically interesting, I’m concerned about his fans.

 

OCReMix has a number of Nobuo-fanatics, such as Children of the Monkey Machine, mp, FFMusicDJ, and site founder and owner DJPretzel. My lawyer advised me not to further speculate about DJPretzel, so I will focus on the other Nobuo-groupies.

 

Children, or CotMM, having 10 Nobuo-track remixes accepted onto OCR, is presumably the worst of the fanatics. Apparently, he expresses his interest in the composer in a remix titled Eyes on Me (Obsession), which seems like a fitting name. The first step is admitting it.

 

FFMusicDJ also seems aware of his condition. Both he (or she or it) and Cot collaborated on the examples I’ve mentioned. While it’s possible to fight off addictions alone, it helps to be accountable to someone, which Cot and FFMDJ both seem to have arranged.

 

This leaves us with the enignatic lowercase zealot, mp, who appears aware of his addiction but deals with it differently. Apparently, Violent Rage attempted to rehabilitate mp, as they collaborated in producing a remix that I assume was made to vent the frustration over the unreciprocated feelings for the composer. It seems that this was unsuccessful, as mp produced two more remixes of Nobuo-tracks before…

 

Still, the very night I was writing this, I noticed the craze is not over. A Nobuo-track remix produced by OCR homie Zircon made its way to the site’s vast database of remixes. The track in question is the winner of a Nobuo-competition. Is this a passing trend, a fad that will fade? I think not. While the relatively recent release of a Final Fantasy fan arrangement album might delay further arrangement projects that grand, there’s no doubt more will follow.

 

Who is to blame?

 

The Most Productive Remixers

The OCReMix community is a interesting place. At the time of writing, the average number of songs is 3,07171314741 per remixer. 50 remixers are responsible for more than 50% of the remixes, leaving the remaining 1452 remixers sharing an average of half a remix. While collaborations make these stats somewhat unreliable, it still points towards nepotistic tendancies.

 

While we might forgive the founder and administrator for the site and “non-profit organization” that is OCR for this 68-remix bias, McVaffe and Mazedude seem to be unjustly favored. Such major contributors to the growing database of rearranged video game tracks must either be extremely talented and productive or enjoy unfair treatment in their favor.

 

Let’s examine these possibilities. After listening to a random McVaffe remix, I feel confident in my assumption that he (or she, or it) is a typical electronica “musician”. Four on the floor, loops and minimalism throughout. Repetition isn’t a very time-consuming process, so we can classify Mcvaffe as “productive”. It seems to me like McVaffe has been banned from OCR, as his latest remix is dated 2004.

 

Mazedude has a more interesting style, but the creepy style he (or she, or it) employs is offputting and bizarre, ultimately more confusing than anything else. Mazedude remains an OCR leech, most likely through bribing the judges to get the works of his Halloween fetish hosted and corrupting millions of innocent surfers.

 

Where does this leave DJPretzel? Presumably, as the owner of the site, he is collecting ridiculous amount of profit from donations, google ads, selling OCR-branded merchandise, and supplying video game music addicts with diverse “discount” items via Amazon. Hence, he only needs to maintain his image as a friendly musician and fellow fan, and he has all the time in the world to produce remixes while sitting in his mansion growing round.