ReMix:Yume Nikki "Now You're All Alone" 3:52

Newcomer urdailywater (Aaron Corbitt) has made a lot of contributions on our forums, but now debuts as a ReMixer with this atmospheric, downbeat/ambient arrangement of "independently produced surreal psychological horror adventure PC game" (thank you, Mr. Wikipedia) Yume Nikki. He writes:

"So yeah, totally excited about submitting this mix. Yume Nikki is an absolutely awesome game. Not something that's for everyone honestly, but if you like dark, creepy, unsettling and ambient games, then it's for you. It's a game I find myself doing concept mixes to a lot, this is the first one I really felt was somewhat close to an arrangement hopefully somewhat acceptable to OCR. The source is only 6 seconds long, and the song itself is pretty minimalistic (which goes with the whole idea behind the concept EP I'll be putting this on, which is currently on hold at the time of submitting this mix), so this probably won't be mind-blowing arrangement wise, but as of writing this is still what I consider my best work. It's ambient, but very fun and playful at the same time.

I actually started this song way back in December (which seems like a long time), but dropped it. I decided to pick it up again because the idea fit so well on the aforementioned EP, and after about 6 or 7 hours I finished it out while upping the production (which sucked back then). The end result like mentioned before is pretty ambient. I was going for a windy desert feel, seeing as that's kind of where the source takes place (minus the windy part). Hopefully you can hear that in the song."

So this is a very minimalist source, and it's a game that most won't be familiar with... to be honest, these circumstances usually seem to result in mixes that are too liberal and/or underdeveloped, but happily this mix is neither; the connection to the source is readily apparent, things progress nicely, and it actually does an admirable job of morphing a haunting skeletal melody into something with a little more structure. halc writes:

"I probably would've liked the source if like, ANYTHING else happened in it. struck an EarthBound vibe with me at first, until I realized a minute later that nothing would. haha. either way, pretty solid mix you've got here, with a ton of great expansion on that 2 bar loop of a source. mixing could have been a little brighter in the high end imo, but overall things were pretty well-executed. keep up the good work."

WillRock adds:

"Not too much to say about this one! I have to say, I was a little unsure about how i'd react to this remix due to the fact you've taken a six second source and turned it into a 4 minute remix. Somehow, you've kept the mix interesting with melodic expansion throughout while keeping the source prominent, and it doesn't even get boring. Bravo. I loved the piano bit at the end."

It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to do what Will describes above, as things almost inevitably meander into the unrecognizably liberal on one end or the monotonous on the other, but Aaron pulls it off. I'm interested in checking out the game, too, so perhaps this mix will help expand its audience as well, good stuff.