Originally posted at the Dwelling of Duels Discord Server, in the context of our participation for Forest vs. Jungle Month (May 2025) and the competition in general...
Regarding this month, I have a few things to say. First of all, I’m sorry for two things: not being able to write reviews for all tracks, and taking up a third of the alts with my shenanigans.
It was an extremely important month for Team Mega Mixtape. Not only did I join the operations team, but MVisual got to do the banner art. Both things, I assure you, were completely unrelated. But it was a nice coincidence nonetheless. We’ll be doing our usual DoD segment for our podcast’s May episode, where we’ll probably go over some of this. But the 5 or so minutes we have for that might not be enough to truly convey how thankful we are for this community.
For me, it was also a chance to continue with “Interview With a Dweller”. But I need to tell a little story for some context: on a fateful day about 2 years ago, I decided to offer Mustin help with his website. He wanted me on a call right then and there, so my ability to properly speak English was put to the test after more than a decade without any practice. I’ve helped him out, and he’s been extremely kind in return. So we’ve been in constant contact.
But it was that first call that really got me going. It was the push I needed to start reaching out to more artists, and even doing full interviews with some of you. However, like so many things I do, I felt like I was doing it in the wrong order and that I was a tad inconsiderate for not having interviewed the one artist that had originally inspired me.
I still have 3 interviews to publish before you can hear Mustin’s full interview. But suffice it to say that his music has always been with me. In 2001 I listened to “Needles”, one of the first remixes he submitted to OverClocked Remix and from there, his music’s been a constant in my life. Monse and I went to see The OneUps play live back in 2012 and since then, their music has also been a part of her life. The Intergalactic albums and “Songs for the Recently Deceased” have gotten us through some rough times. When I told Mustin about all of this on that first call we had, and also told him how I had “gifted” my copy of “Intergalactic Redux” to my best friend, he sent me his whole friggin discography.
Last month we sent out a press release to promote the “Undertale EP”, and I was just so excited to see the photos of darmock, Tony (pud), Ailsean and all these people I now follow and admire from DoD and other adjacent communities and bands. So when I sat down for this interview with Mustin, I wanted him to tell me all about it.
He’s quite disenchanted with the VGM and music industry as a whole, so I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to convince him to do one more track. But fortunately, I knew that “Secret of the Forest” is his favorite piece of VGM, and he jumped at the chance to use this as a pretext to do one more version. He’s arranged about 8 different versions of that source, for different projects (this one was my previous favorite). But now, I can say that I helped bring this new version into the world, and that is something that I’m having a hard time coming to terms with. It feels weird and somewhat wrong, but it also feels amazing. Not unlike that time last year I helped organize a Pokérus Project concert, and then get to witness it first hand.
It’s a life changing event, even if this time was long-distance and “just for an alt”. That version of “Secret of the Forest” will forever be a testament that I somehow got to meet and collaborate with a person I’ve admired since I was at least 15 years old.
Anyway, not to go on longer than I should, I also need to confess that the excerpt about VGM Con almost doesn’t happen. It was too long, and I didn’t want to take up so much of Mustin’s time, asking him to arrange a 4 minute thing. So I asked for a 2 minute thing I could then loop, but he delivered an extremely inspired and jazzy 4 minutes of pure bliss to my ears.
Finally, “Dwelling On It” is something that might or might not continue in the future, but I always love to hear artists do arrangement breakdowns on their DoD entries. This excerpt was extremely fun (at least to me), so I was set on finding a way to make it fit the theme. Fortunately, Hydrasphere accepted to help with a quick “Phantom Forest” cover that fitted like a glove. A song that is also extremely important to me, but that I had somehow buried deep in my memories. Probably because it’s not a very popular source nowadays.
Hello??