This seems like a perfectly valid cover approach to me when it comes to OCR's standards. The melody's straightforward, but all of the supporting instrumentation around it is wholly original. You can go melodically conservative and still have a valid arrangement approach if there's different or expansive original writing integrated with it.
This would have been approved in the oldest days of OCR when it had a lower bar for the level of interpretation/personalization. This does go well in the right direction, but I thought it still lacked some polish and complexity in the presentation. I'd argue it wasn't complex enough, so it felt like the track was texturally pretty empty and underdeveloped, and that's the biggest issue I had
I'd argue this would have been better with more melodic interpretation, and while there was variation in the instrumentation for the lead (e.g. 1:09 with the new sounds for the doubled leads), the melody itself was very by-the-numbers.
Outlier or not, I don't think Chimpa going YES is against the spirit of the Submissions Standards, but I do think, while this is in the right direction of personalizing a cover-style arrangement, more melodic and/or textural development would make this more likely to meet our arrangement criteria and stand apart more from the original song. Good stuff so far though.
NO (resubmit)