May 12, 2018

Finding Abstract Hope [Preservation]

If you're into wasting hours of your life listening to multiple remixes and variations of the same ten 8-bit songs since the 90's (and who in their right mind isn't), then you've probably already came across a certain Megaman 2 Bubble man Remix.

Pictured above: Metaphorical robot white rabbit

(Warning: Opinion){ Posted by the ancient-video-game-remix-compilation-youtube-channel, TheNintendoCode and attributed to one "Abstract Hope", this version features a loud and distorted guitar-like lead voice and a synth accompaniment cheesy enough to make any gen Y-er shed tears of happiness.

I consider the original chiptune an achievement in efficiency of composition under hardware constraints, as it manages to mix strong atmosphere, melody and rhythm. And this version... kinda manages to mesh all three OK, even though the melody can get overbearing with that distortion. [Score: 3.7/5]}

So, why make a blog post (and open a blog to begin with) about a slightly above average remix of such a commonly remixed song?. Because i wanted to properly tag some files on my music player and couldn't for the life of me remember the author (music geeks know this is a life-altering situation), and the quest for the original artist sunk me into a slightly above-averagely deep hole of Music Tagging Madness.

Ironically enough, it all started with two other songs. While doing my monthly cleaning of dozens of GB of untagged music files, i stumbled upon two songs with a pretty fucked up names. And i don't mean it in the usual grindcore/aphex twin sense of fucking up good principles in vocabulary. This file had these tags: 

title:   •—‚Ì“²œÛ 
artist: ‘Š–ÍŒ´‘•bŽ˜—žÙ’c 

Me trying to read the metadata.

After concluding my PC wasn't having a stroke i decided to open the dreaded file. It turned out to be a somber and cheesy (somehow at the same time) remix of Chrono Trigger's "Corridors of Time", a song so often abused by unscrupulous remixers that is often banned from remix projects and competitions; fate shared with haunted videogame creepypastas on the creepypasta wiki and Slipknot on Metal-archives. The other song was a similar remix of "Longing of the Wind" from the same game (most of the game soundtrack has been remixed to death).

I decided these were decent enough not to call the musical abuse hotline, so i had to tag them properly. But, as i didn't have a readable artist nor any trail to begin with, i used the only thing i had: the filenames: one was called ct_kaze.mp3 and the other one ct_tkkr.mp3

After a sophisticated google search (Yes, that means that i used the quotation marks and yes, I'm basically hackerman), i came across a site listing what seemed to be various remixes of Japanese artists and semi-direct links to their files. Found one going straight to ct_kaze.mp3 and... dead link.

Literally me

Through the use of our friendly cyber-necromancer neighbor the wayback machine, i got access to a 2008 snapshot of the site. This was the site of some japanese dude who posted his remixes in a very japanese way.

You see, the big issue with japanese remixers isn't the fact that i can only pretend that i can read what they write, nor the fact that their remixes are miles ahead of any non-russian westerner. But the fact that they culturally, for years, self-hosted their work. Only lately they've adopted soundcloud, but lots of old personal sites are gone and their creations with them, leading to the 404-a-ton, i often experience (and if you're reading this far, so do you) when their work is pre-2010. 

So as any japanese guy, the dude had a very non-2008 website, completely lacking any kind of emo imagery and with neatly organized sections labeled as Original Mp3, Arrange Mp3, MIDI, Profile, Days since the last impulse to hara-kiri, etc. 

Japanese Site#1

I knew the hosted mp3s were dead links even in the snapshot, but at least i had to compare any data the site gave me. ct_tkkr.mp3 was nowhere to be found. Maybe this wasn't my file. Using my weeb skills i realized the mp3 were exports of his MIDI work, as he mostly worked with MIDI. And, surprise surprise, some of the midi files were actually archived! Downloaded ct_kaze.midi and yeah, it wasn't my file. 

But i saved all of this person available  MIDIs for preservation purposes (available below), so i guess that my little detour wasn't as fruitless. The dude called himself mihiling back then, and after some searching i found out he now goes by ミハイル @mihile and his current site still has lots of his old arrangements, so go check it out.

I realized ct_kaze.mp3 was a common name for japanese artists to call their contribution to the conga line of cruelty that is remixing "longing of the wind" (the song is called in japanese "Kazenodōkei") so i tried my last bit of luck and willpower with ct_tkkr.mp3. The only result directed me to a chan post with links similar to the last one, but this one directed me to ABSTRACT HOPE's website.

I always feel watched when in japanese chan boards.

At that moment i went "huh, i think I've heard this before". I searched for abstract hope on my library and there it was... the equally pathetically tagged remix of bubble man's stage mentioned before, among four other equally mistagged megaman 2 remixes. I was flabbergasted. "Case closed", I said, and tagged all 3 files with artist: abstract hope. 

I was about to have a semblance of a night of good sleep when it occurred to me that i should had double-checked the name and looked proper hiragana to add it to the tags. Went to last.fm, and note that the artist:abstract hope only had me as a listener, and it was i who tagged the file manually. So the tags were wrong. 

Googled "abstract hope, bubble man" aaaand only the infamous TheNintendoCode video showed. The link was visited so i figured i got my file there. I needed a real name. The video description directed me to http://www.bungakuseinen.com/ which was also already visited. The site was still up, but the mandatory arrange-mp3 section was nowhere to be seen so i figured this person had no street cred. 

Japanese site #2

It had a similarly japanesey layout and i figured the arranged songs were removed at some point. Dreading the frailty of the site, i downloaded his original work so it wouldn't end in the japanese website afterlife. And upon opening the files on my library i noticed the artist wasn't actually called Abstract Hope, but something in hiragana. 

I read in the profile section that Abstract Hope is apparently just the name of the site (or the name of his overall lifework) and their artistic name (either that or how they call their genitals, it wasn't made  too clear) was the long string i saw in the original work: 相模原装甲侍女樂団, which translated means Sagamihara Armored Maverick Orchestra, and that is, of course, is among the most insane and cool names i've ever heard for an artist not called Surrada Monstruosa.

You, reading the real name without sunglasses

So this was the real artist. I figured i just needed to confirm this was the creator of the remixes by seeing their original post. And with an old trick i call "using the wayback machine on every friggin' site", i found out that our abstract friend removed the section in 2016 with no explanation. In the archived arrangement section i found links to the CT and MM2 Remixes i already had and a couple of them i didn't download because I've never played Metal Max, nor i plan to. But then i realized they were lost forever. 

I grieved, but quickly recovered, and now, armed with the real artist name i found that some saint posted the Metal Max remixes in a public folder here. And now just some super robot wars and one squaresoft arrangement are missing. I'm not terribly anxious about getting them. Really. Not a single bit.

So that's the story which can be summarized as "ABSTRACT HOPE is actually called 相模原装甲侍女樂団 so TheNintendoCode is wrong i guess". But we had fun along the way and now you want to help me find the rest. That's why i like you. 

Thanks for joining me this time in this pointless endeavour, and to not let our favourite content creators be forgotten is something i have an abstract hope for. 

*disintegrates*

Downloads:
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