Rita’s new album — a collection of mainly games’ theme songs – ”mighty“, might not be all that mighty, but it has its merits. To me, including Signal Heart’s OP&ED would be the biggest one, with the ED “refrain nostalgia” specifically. In fact, if you have read the post below, that song was one of the 10 new additions to my mp3 player, added just a week before this album is released (the version I added was ripped from the maxi single).
Here’s the tracklist:
1. mighty!
2. Signal Heart
3. refrain nostalgia
4. Kokoro no Tobira
5. Yumeiro Animato
6. Le baiser de l’ange -Tenshi no Kuchiduke-
7. Suzu no Naru Basho
8. Honto ni Hoshii Mahou no Jumon
9. Kimi no Na
10.Kondo ha Honki ni Honki?
11.Korekara memories
12.Yume wo Miru Yume
13.PAST COLORS SIGHED AGAIN
14.Ano Sora wo Mezashite
Personal picks are track 7 and, of course, 3. How about yours?
Added 10 new songs. You can find them in Download section.
1. Atarashii Katachi [Chata] (one of the 2 choices I picked from solfa album)
2. Blue Rainy Days [Horie Yui] (being a hocchan fan, it shouldn’t be surprising that I picked something from her latest album. This is one of the 2. Strictly speaking there’s nothing special about this song, but it’s highly listenable in different moods)
3. cise ek [Shimotsuki Haruka] (vocal version of one of my favorite Maeda Jun BGMs, “cise kor”)
4. everytime you kissed me [Emily Bindiger] (yet another collaboration between Kajiura Yuki and Emily Bindiger. When it comes to Kajiura’s English song, I think Emily was just born for it. Anyone else agrees?)
5. immature [Shimotsuki Haruka] (the other choice I picked from “5″ soundtrack. My favorite song from it. I know alot of people go for “Gin no Chizu” instead, but it just sounds weird to me as a song)
6. Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari [supercell] (Bakemonogatari ED. Catchy song)
7. Kimi no Soba ni [Horie Yui] (as I mentioned before, I prefer her passionate songs. I think she should pour more emotion into this song though)
8. only my railgun [fripSide] (10K+ downloads just on torrent alone. That should tell you something)
9. refrain nostalgia – Full ver. – [Rita] (I bet most of you have never heard of this one. It’s the ED of a recent game, “Signal Heart”. I was only trying it out at first, turned out to be a very nice surprise)
10.waiting [Rita] (the other one of the 2 choices I picked from solfa album)
After much expectation, here comes her new album, Griotte no Nemurihime. A RPG-story-style fantasy album — yes, it will remind you of Sound Horizon, except without all those narrations and sounds a lot more… acceptable/beautiful/your-word-of-choice. Let’s take a look at the tracklist:
1. Horobiru no Ri
2. Kienai Kakera
3. Erabareta Tami
4. Ohimesama to Doukeshi
5. Buchi no Oukoku
6. Hitori Yume
7. Sora Watashi
8. Kizuna no Hana
9. Shuuen no Koku he
10.Hane ni Sugaru Mono
11.Kooru Sekai
12.Gyaku Mawari no Inochi
13.FEL FEARY WEL.
You think that would be the tracklist, but actually, it’s not. Let’s take a look at the real tracklist:
1. Horobiru no Kotowari
2. Kienai Uta
3. Erabareta Tami
4. Ohimesama to Doukeshi
5. Madara no Kuni
6. Hitori Yume
7. Sora Watashi
8. Tsunagari no Hana
9. Owari no Toki he
10.Hane ni Sugaru Mono
11.Kooru Sekai
12.Gyaku Mawari no Inochi
13.FEL FEARY WEL.
If you still can’t figure out why the track titles are romanized that way after listening to the whole album, hop onto our IRC channel and ask me.
After almost 3 years, KOTOKO has put out this new album, Epsilon no Fune. Majority of the songs are upbeat ones as you can expect, however there is one comparatively slow song, namely “scene”. There is also an English song which she performed together with Kazuya Takase, who wrote “Real Onigokko”, “Hayate no Gotoku!”, and “BLAZE”, etc. Let’s take a look at the full tracklist:
1. ε -Epsilon-
2. Real Onigokko
3. -∞-DRIVE
4. scene
5. Ame to Guitar
6. Genkai Daha
7. Monera no Kizuna
8. Hayate no Gotoku!
9. RI←SU→KU
10.HELLION
11.Geoglyphs
12.BLAZE
13.LITTLE BABY NOTHING
Overall it’s a pretty satisfying album (that’s a very high compliment, by the way. I didn’t really expect much from KOTOKO lately, but this album impresses me), however I do have one big complaint: since there’s “BLAZE”, why there’s no “Sociometry”? It’s one of KOTOKO’s best songs as of late, and they just had to leave it out! I’m truly, truly disappointed at whoever made/didn’t make that decision. They did redeem it though by including the special CD of “Hitorigoto”, which features the 2009 version and 2001 original version.
For all the asians, how was your mid-autumn festival? For me, it wasn’t quite what I expected, but it turned out to be a nice memory anyway. October is a pretty exciting month, having the mid-autumn festival that just passed, end-of-month halloween, a lot of birthdays, and for Canadians their thanksgiving is coming up too next week. With all the fun, you might want to sit down and relax a bit in between. If you do, this month’s BGM will be a perfect choice. Click “Background Music” on the right under the link section to listen to it now.
Before I start, I know quite many of you already have this album, but it’s extremely likely that the one you got is the bugged version. There are two bugged versions: one is the original bugged version, meaning the original commerical disc is bugged; the other one is a bugged rip of the fixed version, meaning it’s a rip of the fixed commercial disc but bugged due to technical error during ripping. To tell if it’s the original bugged version, listen to track 3 and 9 of DISC 1. If the music of the two are the same, then it’s the original bugged version (the booklet/scans have errors too by the way, if you have them); to tell if it’s the bugged rip of the fixed version, listen to the 2:00 mark of track 1 of DISC 2. If there’s a skip between 2:00 and 2:01, then it’s the bugged rip of the fixed version. There is also a third version out there that combines the rip of fixed version and the scans of original version that have errors. To tell if the scans are the ones of original bugged version, check the lyrics page of OP&ED (track 9 and 10). The original one with errors has 3 columns of lyrics for OP (“Kaze no Kotowari Remix ver”), while the fixed one only has 1 column for OP.
Fist of all, I’m honored to introduce you this album. There are plenty of talented music composers out there, but since most of them make a living on music, they have to keep writing new works to keep their career going even when they don’t have the inspiration. As a result, you will hear mediocre compositions from them from time to time. However, there are a few exceptions. Maeda Jun is definitely one of them. I would assume you already know who he is since you’re reading this, but if you don’t, he participated in AIR and CLANNAD’s (Kanon’s too actually, but he wrote only 2 tracks in it, plus the so-famous “Last regrets”) soundtracks. I’m sure you have heard his famous BGMs such as Natsukage from AIR and Nagisa from CLANNAD (i.e. the background music of Dango Daikazoku). Just when you think soundtracks can’t get any better than AIR, CLANNAD, and Tomoyo After’s, he have brought us yet another surprise with this one. Even better, unlike the ones mentioned above of which he wrote some of the tracks, this one he is the major composer. In fact, he wrote the whole DISC 1 (and DISC 3 are vocal versions of some of the BGMs on DISC 1, except track 8 is adapted from DISC 2). Tomoyo After and AIR soundtracks have always ranked at the top on my list, and now 5 (yukar) has joined them to be my top 3.
While Maeda Jun is one of the major attractions of this album, the other one is not any less well-known, but in vocal part instead. She is no other than our beloved Shimotsuki Haruka. She performs all the songs in this album, with the exception of track 5 of DISC 3 “Gin no Chizu”, which also features guest vocal of Rita, Chata, and Katakiri Rekka. If you still remember, LonE has released the maxi single with OP and ED before. The full versions of OP and ED are also featured in this album, so in case you missed that one, you will still get to hear them. Other than OP and ED (which are both very nice songs written by Maeda Jun, by the way), DISC 3 of this album features the vocal versions of some of the BGMs of DISC 1, meaning that they are all written by Maeda Jun. As mentioned above, there is one exception, which is track 8 “immature”, adapated from track 1 of DISC 2, written by Kyou (aka Higawara Yuu). Ironically, that song is my most favorite of the album other than OP and ED. Maybe that means Maeda’s BGMs should just stay as BGMs. That reminds me, that one time we were discussing about Key on IRC, I suggested that Maeda is better at writing BGMs, while Orito Shinji (i.e. the one who wrote “Tori no Uta”) is better at writing songs. Anyone else agrees?
Tracklist:
DISC 1
1. Kaze no Kotowari
2. cise kor*
3. have a stroll
4. Yuki no Ko
5. Mori no Ko
6. SensitiveSoul Inst
7. Fuyu no Hidamari cise*
8. Bokka Musou
9. over the snow
10.Sora no Katari
11.Kumo Nagarete
12.Yuki no Ashiato
13.end of promise
14.perch_Ikoi
15.soldiers
16.Kanashimi no Mori
17.iruska*
18.Kono Chi no Sakebi
19.SensitiveSoul
20.Gensou Fuukei
21.Fuyu no Hidamari arke*
22.Eien
DISC 2
1. Little Snow
2. ihunke*
3. Okite no Ori
4. Endless Pain
5. Stew no Kaori
6. Itetsuku Daichi
7. imeru*
8. Shiro no Kouya
9. Tomorrow Song
10.rera*
11.Kaze no Kotowari short ver
DISC 3
1. prologue
2. cise ek*
3. Koi no Mama de
4. proudness
5. Gin no Chizu
6. Tabidatsu Tori
7. echo
8. immature
9. Kaze no Kotowari Remix ver
10.Eien Remix ver
11.epilogue
Note: the ones end with * mean the titles are written in/contains Ainu language. I believe most of you have never heard of Ainu language before. Wikipedia has an article about Ainu language that you can read up if you are interested to find out what it is. Many thanks to hisana/hisahisa and tomoyoafter for helping me with figuring out the romaji of all the Ainu titles.
Finally, I would like you all to participate in the polls below. First one is to choose your most favorite song of this album, excluding OP and ED:
Second one is to choose your most favorite BGM of Maeda Jun. Below are the links to full samples of them for your convenience:
If you still remember, we have released thir first album about a year ago (that time this blog hadn’t existed yet). These albums are basically collections of songs written by members of Elements Garden. For this 2nd one, the tracklist is as below, with singer’s name in [ ]:
If you have been following our releases, you should have heard some of them before, such as “Tazunebito” and “Shukufuku no Campanella”. Personally I like those two and “Tears in snow” the most from this album.
Quite a few people had said August BGM sounded familiar, but they couldn’t recall where it’s from even after I gave them a hint that it’s from an anime. Well, it’s no surprise since the anime wasn’t exactly a very well-known one (I do recommend the show nevertheless). However, it was written by a well-known composer, Katakura Mikiya. He also wrote the soundtracks of AVENGER and Kaibutsu Ojou. The name still doesn’t ring a bell? Then how about introducing him as the composer of ALI PROJECT? I think I just saw a few “Ahhhh!” faces there.
As for this month’s BGM, since September is the beginning of the season fall, I picked it from a game (series) that is heavily related to fall. The music, of course, also closely resembles the feeling of fall season. Click “Background Music” on the right under the link section to listen to it now.
NEKONEKO SOFT’s newest game, “Sorairo”, will be coming out in about 3 weeks (supposed to come out in 2 days on 8/28 but postponed). If NEKONEKO SOFT doesn’t sound familiar to you, it’s the company that made Mizuiro. On a side note, Mizuiro was animated into 2 different versions of OVA, with the 2003 version’s OP featured on my mp3 player playlist, which was also performed by Satou Hiromi. And on another side note, if you haven’t watched the 2003 Mizuiro OVA, go watch it now. Anyway, so, after Mizuiro, now we have Sorairo. The video below is its PV:
The background song is the OP theme on this single. It’s a pretty nice song, enjoy.
Here comes Suara’s 4th album, “Kizuna“. It’s Suara, I don’t think I need to say much (even though there’re people don’t know who Okui Masami is *cough*).
Tracklist:
1. adamant faith
2. Free and Dream
3. Kanajo no Senaka
4. Maiochiru Yuki no You ni
5. TOKYO-days
6. Mata Aeru Sono Hi Made
7. Friends
8. Crystal Tears
9. Shunka Shuutou
10.Hanakotoba
11.Utsusemi
12.Tenshi ga Miru Yume
It’s really not needed but I will still tell you this: recommended.
Let’s take a look at the tracklist:
