Thanks to Alistair from the Little Mathletics blog for his awesome interview with Jason 'XOC' Cox, the virtuoso video game musician who has both released the epochally good 'SMW' Super Mario World cover album, and the recently GSW-covered NES concept album Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album.

Interestingly, Cox references what may be one of the more bizarre albums in video game music history, and a possible next release for him, when talking about his next, possibly Metroid-themed album, for which a possible track or two has already appeared on his official website: "If it makes it to a CD release, then I'll put the original concept online as a free EP: an accordion-only Metroid cover album (which Nate Jahnke of metroid2002.com titled "Metroid Maligned"), which is about "specialty item" as it gets."

Finally, in talking about the 'XOC' album's success, Cox has some genuinely inspiring words: "And it made me believe that the internet might actually revitalize the do-it-yourself approach after all. It seems so much more meaningful to have small communities of people that genuinely respect each others' work, than to struggle for some imagined mainstream acceptance. And it would be one thing if we downloaded and bought each others' MP3s and CDRs just for mutual support, but I actually love the music people are making!"

He ends, happily: "That direct contact is more significant and encouraging, and it's really the way things ought to go. "Internet celebrity" should eventually lose its negative implication, because we're all equal here. Remember--you, too, are on the internet!"