Games - Bound Together

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	Games - Bound Together

Bound Together is an album of 32 arrangements tackling material from the Super Nintendo game EarthBound, the music of which having been composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka. The concept of the album was to present a project involving people from several different areas of the amateur video game music arrangement community, represented on the album by artists from OneUp Studios, VGMix, OverClocked ReMix and OverLooked ReMiX. As of December 15, 2005, the primary project archive and were downloaded over 12,000 times.

Lineup changes and controversy

Invitees who could not contribute

Artists were expressly gathered for the album through invitation by project director Joe Cammisa, with the stated objective being that artists selected their respective EarthBound tracks and completed their arrangements by mid-October 2005. Several of the artists originally committed to the project were unable to participate including Dan "Ashane" Liss, Marcos "BrainCells" Pascoli, Michael "Darangen" Boyd, Duane "DCT" Thorpe, Xavier "mv" Dang, Matt "Richter" Hackett, Devon Riley, and Steven "/slash" Velema.

Trenthian

Two notably unamicable depatures from the project were that of John "Trenthian" St.John and David "djpretzel" Lloyd. While Mustin's contribution to the project was being spotlighted on internet radio show VG Frequency, Trenthian openly complained of the track being hastily thrown together and not representing a substantial arrangement of its source material. Fellow contributor Joshua Morse subsequently voiced to Cammisa that he would remove his material, including two already completed arrangements, from the project if St.John was allowed to remain a contributor. Minutes later, Mustin made clear on VG Frequency that his contribution was solely intended to be a tribute cover of "Flying Man" from the 1989 Mother arrange album, and not an attempt to plagiarize. Cammisa, faced with the choice of losing Morse's already completed works, as well as feeling that St.John's comments should have been kept private and were against the spirit of community he hoped to foster, removed St.John from the effort.

Star Salzman

Cammisa briefly came under fire for rejecting the possible inclusion of an in-progress collaboration by Luke "Less Ashamed Of Self" Williams & Karl "Bladiator" Harmdierks, for featuring the vocals of noted video game music arranger Star Salzman, citing a lack of respect for Salzman from previous encounters. As the collaboration was brought to Cammisa's attention by Williams, Salzman was never directly involved in the ensuing debate. Several bystanders to the incident cited hypocrisy on Cammisa's part as his stated goal of the project was to unite various parts of an otherwise splintered community. Nonetheless, Cammisa and others cited the fact that Bound Together was his personal project and he thus possessed the authority to accept or reject personnel. Ironically, Cammisa later admitted to mistakenly overlooking Harmdierks for invitation to the project, but stated he would have accepted an instrumental of the arrangement or an entirely different song from Williams & Harmdierks.

djpretzel

Five days before the release of the album, Jake "virt" Kaufman, previously expected not to be a part of the project, was able to complete his track, with the request that his presence be kept a secret until the album's release. The prospect of Kaufman secretly providing an arrangement for the project had been explored by Cammisa since the start of the project, who had hinted at a major figure's surprise inclusion on the album in an interview with VG Frequency during the project's conception phase. Kaufman's potential involvement was made aware to other artists on the project who had correctly guessed at the secret, with OC ReMix founder David "djpretzel" Lloyd otherwise remaining unaware of Cammisa's hopes to include Kaufman, who had been a passionate antagonist of Lloyd's in 2002 when he left OverClocked ReMix to form VGMix.

Lloyd withdrew his participation from the project upon hearing of Kaufman's secret contribution, believing Cammisa to have a duplicitous attitude and citing that he was kept unaware of who he would be working with and did not want to be contributing alongside someone (Kaufman) for whom he had no respect. Kaufman soon after stated at EarthBound fansite Starmen.net that the reason he kept his involvement private was to surprise fellow contributor Royal Sefton after he claimed he could not participate. Strengthening Kaufman's desire to work incognito, Kaufman believed that if his presence went unrevealed until close to the project's unveiling, Lloyd would not feel compelled to either stop working on his arrangement or pull his track from the project. The nature of Lloyd's depature drew mixed reaction from members of the community and project participants, some of whom felt Lloyd was harboring antimosity at the expense of community unity, while many others acknowledged his privilege as a contributor to be fully informed from the beginning of who he could have been represented alongside.

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