Beautiful World full-length PV

For completeness. It's been a bit over a week since it first aired, but it completely escaped my notice. Thanks to DarkMirage for the heads up.

There are at least two versions floating around on YouTube. Both have sequences or scenes that have been recycled back in, too. The first one bears a broadcast station's watermark up to the length of the short teaser version of the PV. Given that the title screen appears twice, it seems less authentic than the second one, which DM linked to, although I'm still skeptical that they'd be so cheap as to recycle stuff in a real PV release.

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This one's a keeper

After watching this, her CDTV performance went right out the window. Stronger voice, nitpicks that were more along the lines of, could be improved as opposed to that's just outright wrong and I'm cringing now, and generally not flat and not uninspired.

I also like the hair, a bit of a return to her old style. Then again, I always thought bangs in front of forehead to be out of place.

[YouTube] for those who don't have 490 MB to spare.


Update: Her Utaban performance is incrementally better, with Music Fighter up there as well. Still has range trouble, though, and she cuts her phrases short compared to her album version. Her return to Music Station was a nervous one. While the added echo/reverb from the stage setup was neat, she showed nerves and was uptight, plus she clearly mis-pitched on a couple occasions.

While I'm at it, I thought her Music Station performance of Kiss & Cry was quite good, although we're going to have to disagree on this one. I suppose she's unhappy because nothing special came out of it, but there's nothing wrong with a perfect textbook performance, either.

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Hikki-sensei!

That is all. Visit U.Blog for some more pictures!

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Ulrich Schnauss talks to his feet

But fails to shoot it. I think.

Warning! This is not really related to j-pop or anime, other than a brief reference to Nodame Cantabile. This entry does feature more of my scatterbrained listening habits.

Following on from Martin's comment mentioning My Bloody Valentine, I thought I'd mention Ulrich Schnauss' latest, Goodbye, which arrived in the mail the other day.

Preliminary reading: Billboard.com interview, and Pitchforkmedia review.

I don't come down as hard on Goodbye as the reviewer does, but I do have my own misgivings. For one, it's not the Ulrich Schnauss of Far away trains passing by, which I encountered one sleepless night by randomly tuning my clock-radio to the now defunct Brave New Waves program on CBC Radio 2.

Shoegaze is the name of the game here, a far cry from the warm, uplifting, and very tuneful lines of two albums prior. You might say that he's seriously returning to his roots. If you do happen to be a fan of shoegaze, Goodbye may be worth saying Hello to, but I say preview first before committing.

The review brought up a term that I forgot to include in my entry on Megumi Noda but mentioned in another: self-consciousness. That is to say, Megumi Noda is not self-conscious at all; not about her appearance, not about her playing style, not about the things she says. That's about as close as this entry is going to get to anime.

That Ulrich is being too self-conscious when it comes to shoegaze just doesn't compute to me. If one takes the claim to the other extreme, then any fool or two can just stand there with a few guitars and set up this giant wall of sound for a few minutes while muttering into their microphones, and call it shoegaze. Wait, maybe they do, and it would be called bad shoegaze if anyone did see what they did there.

Shoegaze at its best is meticulously layered. Ulrich notes that tracks in Goodbye may have about 100 elements running at the same time. The man deserves some praise for effort.

I can't just like something because of the amount of effort that went into its production, though. I suppose that means I will never rise above the practical listener, who can't or won't appreciate effort for the sake of effort. There may be beauty in these tracks, like tantalizing but microscopic portholes in the sonic wall, but I'm of the opinion that beauty be emphasized and not buried. As such, I find little resonance in shoegaze.

Reviews have generally been positive, though, so this may be an excellent addition to the genre. I don't know enough about what makes good shoegaze to say.

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An infectious jam session

I only recently got on to the LP bandwagon. Well, only really Your Song, again via U.Blog, which from my limited Love Psychedelico sample size, remains my favourite track. Still, there are any number of solid, laid back jam session tracks. It has all the common traits: catchy guitar riff, plenty of texture in the riff, snug backing vocals in the chorus, strong rhythm everywhere. So why Your Song in particular?

The vocalist is bilingual and really sounds like she has an english inflection in her japanese singing. While intriguing, it's only a point for novelty. The real answer, is this:



There's just something deal sealing about an awesome live performance. I've been sold on Hikki's Distance/Automatic work when she went Unplugged. Ditto FictionJunction YUUKA when they performed in a studio session. Basically the artists that have received the most play on Winamp are solid live performers.

This Budokan 2005 performance of Your Song features a sharper guitar, an extended solo section to close off the song, and the obvious enthusiasm of the audience. The vocalist sounds strained and nasal, especially after the first verse, but the song isn't really about her. It's a jam session, after all. Nor does her singing take anything away from the fact that the band is having a blast.

This isn't a song about perfection. It's about performance. And what a monstrous performance at that.

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New Evangelion Footage with Beautiful World

Via U.Blog. I'm still trying to sort out how the music fits with Evangelion as a whole. I'm learning toward the side that says that it doesn't really. Both are epic, but Beautiful World's ethereal atmosphere is at odds with the grim war being fought on the ground.

Combat is shaping up to be pretty intense.

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Utada Hikaru - Kiss & Cry

Lyrics translation and DDL, if it's still up.

I don't suppose the PV was included in that promo package sent out, because it has leaked as well. See jpopsuki. The PV itself is pure footage from the Freedom OVA, which is partly an advertisement for Nissin. The only modification to the animated scenes were split mirroring and applying component R/G/B filters. It appears that quite a bit of effort was put into synchronizing the mouth flaps with the lyrics.

As for the song, it's a throwback to Hikki's Automatic and Distance days. The opening, with its brass fanfare, muted and old (as in analog old), is reminiscent of the bold days of experimental remixing. It didn't quite matter if the spliced in material was at odds with the main body of music, it was the point. Ditto the bridge, which contains the chorus material from Hotel Lobby.

Kiss & Cry sounds early 90's. It just has that classy, glamorous and bold feel of rappers and R&B singers living it up and "featuring" on each other's work. The brass fanfare and interjections help, as does the shiny synthesizers and strong, if minimal, rhythm support.

Looking at both A-sides, Kiss & Cry tops Beautiful World as the better written and produced track. Hikki is very much in her element with the former; she even sounds stronger. Kiss & Cry also benefits from being much less ethereal. It's brash, it's in your face, it's got attitude.

Still, this being almost a period work, I'm not too big a fan of Kiss & Cry just like I tend to prefer ULTRA BLUE/Deep River Hikki to Distance/Automatic Hikki. I'm enamored by the fact that it's well written, but that doesn't necessarily endear me to it. I still have my electronica leanings.

For me, the single is shaping up to be a bit inconsistent, but at least it'll have something for the experimental/electronica fan, the R&B/Hip-hop fan, and the Evangelion fan.

I can't really comment on Fly me to the moon. It's been done to death, and Hikki's R&B cover of it is a radical departure from the original as well as the Evangelion version. The ballad style introduction is fine, if standard, and the jump to the R&B part is somewhat sudden.

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Beautiful World at 192 kbps

Utada Hikaru enters the teens in her twenties. For more of Hikki's rebellious look, see U.BLOG

Thanks to Kuroshiro for the lyrics translation. Definitely written about Shinji, but from someone else's perspective. It's a bit too solemn to be from Asuka, though, and Rei is just this black box.

So! A few days have passed since a full length, non-radio rip version leaked. There's no sense in delaying the inevitable, so I am here today to answer the $11.99 question (plus shipping and handling) question: How does it loop?

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As Beautiful World opens with ethereal synthesizers and echoing percussion, anything can happen. When the piano chords enter like it's 1996 at the height of the dream music craze, the realization hits that it's going to be pretty good.

Beautiful World has elements in common with both This is Love and Keep Tryin'. Like Keep Tryin', Beautiful World opens with atmospheric ambivalence before getting into the song proper with the chorus. In between the verse and chorus, there is a distinctly contrasting bridge in singing style, key, and harmony.

Structurally, both Beautiful World and This is Love have no significant instrumental breaks until the end, although this is a bit of a tenuous connection given that This is Love has a second verse section in the middle.

In the lower range there's this earthy, tribal feel to the song. It's a good foundation for the lines that float gracefully above. I have heard quite a few good piano parts as of late, and Beautiful World just adds to the collection.

There's just one aspect that prevents Beautiful World from topping best atmospheric electronic track, Making Love off ULTRA BLUE, but it's a big strike.

There isn't enough contrast.

There is a lack of a range jump between sections. This is Love had a brief break right before the chorus, Keep Tryin' breaks into the chorus with a bang, and Making Love experiences its own dramatic register shift.

You could argue that Beautiful World is a lot more dignified than either of the above three, so register skips would contradict its character. Fair enough. There are other ways of generating contrast, and the first one I can think of is change in texture.

I suspect that Beautiful World suffers from a lack of sufficient texture primarily in the chorus. The verse is actually pretty spare in terms of accompaniment. The chorus needs some serious bulking up. It should be like some gigantic steamroller of a chorus, with bottomless bass support while Hikki belts out her alternating low and high register lines.

Beautiful World sits in an awkward place. It's supposed to be more energetic than Keep Tryin' but fails to top Making Love for intensity. As a result, it doesn't loop as well as either of the above. It's also not a ponderous work compared to the 800 pound compositional gorilla known as BLUE.

Last criticism, honest. Why does Hikki's voice crack during her final lines before the outro? It's likely deliberate, but it just reeks of a mistake.

The extended outro is probably the other best part of Beautiful World. I can never return to the days of Dreamland without feeling that it's just a bit hokey, but this outro section fills in the gaps while retaining the dreamlike core. The continuously running piano, the ghostly backing voices, and the synthesizers are pure ambiance.

If Beautiful World/Kiss & Cry ever made it to iTunes outside of Japan, I'd probably cherry-pick this track from the single, although I don't hold out much hope since the current iTunes selection is all album material. The other tracks are blah, but I can elaborate later.

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Tsukiakari GET

Someone at the mixer board must have adjusted the balance in the two most demanding passages of the full length version [YouTube], but the change in dynamics is only slightly perceptible. I don't think it's a range thing, but more of a conscious decision to not step up, which I don't understand. Those two sections are the worst points of the song to take a backseat to the backgrounds. If you've got it, belt it out!

Her live performance was pretty [YouTube]. No pitching problems, but still her upper register is muted. She also clipped her phrases short. Still pretty though.

For reference, I commented that the TV version was weak. Not fragile, weak. I extend that opinion to the full length version.

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Latin is back, in black

In keeping with anime as a gateway to music that I wouldn't otherwise listen to, most of the instrumental stuff I have comes from OST's. Still, I haven't given an OST serious consideration in ever, and to be honest I wouldn't have given the Darker than Black OST a spin were it not for the enthusiasm of an early adopter.

From the 15.24 km view, Darker than Black's soundtrack is another dominantly jazz themed score similar to Cowboy Bebop. I didn't ever see Cowboy Bebop to its conclusion, but all of my friends liked the soundtrack even though, as noted before, they wouldn't normally listen to jazz. They liked it, then, for the novelty factor. I didn't find it as awesome as my peers did, with really only Tank!, Piano Black, Blue, and Green Bird being stand-out pieces, and even Tank! was pretty dry for a big band jazz work.

If nothing else, Darker than Black's original soundtrack is a better effort by Yoko Kanno, sticking closer to some of the influences that define the pieces. I'm not a student of contemporary music and have nothing to back that (or the following) up with, but I think that most of the pieces don't suffer from the cookie cutter effect that Tank! did.

Still, most of these tracks are necessarily pure exposition, and generally aren't allowed to go anywhere throughout their mostly less than 3 minute windows. The reality is that an OST is not a score, just a collection of incidental music that is taken for granted even when consumed with the animation content.

Specifics after these messages.

Update: For a third opinion, see A Gabriela Robin Site.

Update 2: Another review, off Anime Nano.

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GO Dark is pretty straightforward jazz rock (fusion) with a few standard hooks. Trumpets feature prominently, whether they're wailing in the commotion or punctuate the sax solo.

Howling is, well, Howling. It's dark, it's hard rock, and it's got a decent amount of contrast packed into 1.5 minutes. Heck, it's even got vibrato. It's not written by Yoko Kanno, so I'm not going to add anything further.

High heel Runaway is probably an Afro-Cuban jazz form, maybe a fast rumba. I can't pick out the rhythm on the high hat, but it would probably yield a good indication of the style. Prominent piano with stylistic runs and improv section. Nice fade (to black!) tricks the unsuspecting first time listener. There is no back beat — most Latin jazz is played straight up — but energy is derived from syncopation heavily laced throughout the piece.

Tenderly sounds like Take Five. It's not quite quintuple-time (it's phrasing in two major groupings of triplets), but it's got that light, game show music atmosphere. Subtle back beat due to emphasis on the second group of triplets.

Sid is…I won't even try to guess. It's rustic and does not conform to any Western music scale. I suppose that in keeping with the Latin music trend it could be a Latin rustic style, maybe a flamenco derivative. Oh, I did say I wasn't going to try to guess. I'll stop now.

Was — the great urban jungle. Opens with a line sounding like Morse Code, the symbol for all things that beep electronic. Even though there's a wistful guitar line, it yields to the genre that holds greatest influence on this piece: drum and bass. It's hard to mess up drum and bass since it's just pure atmosphere. It's also why drum and bass tracks tend to be insanely long and it can be hard to tell one from the other.

Since Ulrich Schnauss is epic unto himself, I will gratuitously throw in two of his drum and bass pseudonyms, Ethereal 77 and View to the Future. Moving on.

Outside — standoff-ish reverb in chords, with periods of "dead space" (stop time) where the percussion fades out and the guitar is allowed to drift, but where meter is never lost. Problem is, I don't know what the meter is. My best guess is a use of two or more odd-numbered meters that are always in flux. Polyrhythm is always disconcerting and puts the listener on edge because it's an unstable and thus tense temporal situation.

No One's Home is a jazz ballad, and a fairly straightforward one at that. It's not Blue epic because it's not as ethereal and has less build up. At only 2 minutes 43 seconds, length might have something to do with that.

Guy is a typical detective funk theme and gives the character more coolness than he deserves. That sax has way too much real guts for a guy (hah!) who just bumbles around. Nice pentatonic twist gives this piece an asian flavour. It's too bad that the sax doesn't get to expand on that pentatonic rift in the beginning.

ScatCat features, what else, scat singing. Usually scat singing is much faster, using the voice as an instrument in its own improv section. In this case, it's transplanted into a much more laid back blues, hearkening back to the days of the traveling solo performer. Can you picture it? He's muttering in a raspy voice to while sitting alone outside a deserted train station.

Keiyakusha is another big band piece, this time a tightly performed samba. Characteristic bass and percussion patterns provide most of the drive. That energy is counterbalanced by the somewhat uninspired and hollow harmonies of the trumpet line leading into and out of the trumpet solo. Nice bridge, though, which serves as a small modulating playground over sustained trumpets.

Good dancing music, and by extension, fight music, as attention is usually on the participants of either. If everyone's watching the band, there's something wrong.

Shadow is likely Afro-Cuban influenced, given the clave rhythm. The simple intro, outro, and middle passages are present to serve up and round off the two solo sections, the first for piano and the other for guitar. Overall, muted and lazy. Feels like being in a darkened bar in the middle of the afternoon, staring out at the beach.

Kuro reminds me of Hitomi no Theme, one of my favourite pieces from the Escaflowne OST. Both have that cool night atmosphere, and the guitar plays a role in both, Kuro being the more prominent employer. The opening bars gave the impression that it might have been Hitomi no Theme ported over to Latin instrumentation and composition. This isn't as sparse or fragile but it's just as solitary.

Deadly Work — dark, distorted, with vocals. Didn't find anything of interest. Kanno's English vocal work has always been a mixed bag for me. This one is going into the "nothing special" bin. It's better than the "abusing Maaya's upper register and making her sound like a nuisance underneath Steve Conte" bin.

Tentai Kansukou features cavernous piano, ethereal and haunting. Typical stargazing music, if a little short.

BlueCat — cautiously optimistic, like watching dawn break after pulling an all-nighter. That you're not holed up in your room by that point either means you're done whatever it is, or you're slacking, in which case this is the wrong music to be listening to.

Eclectic mix of instruments, keeping the Latin percussion.

Tsukiakari is more to my liking than the OP. It starts off like a casual folk song with warm piano and vocal, builds towards a high point with increased layering of strings and backing vocals, and drops out suddenly leaving Rie Fu alone in the spotlight for a brief moment before closing out. I only wish that the layering didn't dominate her upper register. She sounds so weak in the build up.

Maybe it's worth looking into the full length version.

Water Forest — urban electronica, hazy and open-ended like the future. Brings back memories of Miles-Gurtu. It's a good fit for the preview scene.

Blend in — another victory(?) for adult contemporary. Also going into the "nothing special" bin.

In no Piano is a Romantic era influenced piece with rolling arpeggios and a singing style after Chopin. Decently played, although a bit light on the touch.

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Fire those retro rockets

There are some things I wouldn't willingly listen to, like atonal music and by extension most pop music. Oldies are included in that list and I've only ever wanted to listen to that stuff due to purely academic reasons, like passing a contemporary music history course.

It's not that old music is strictly bad, but I am not a child of that era or, it seems, any era at all, so I feel this generational disconnect. Although digital recovery from analog sources has worked wonders, it's a strike against me for not being able to shake off the stigma that songs still sound old even if they are light years better than before.

It is probably also a strike against me for using anime as an excuse a gateway into the past. Well, whatever works. I know of several people who would never in their right mind listen to big band jazz, but for whom the jazz soundtrack contributed to Cowboy Bebop's appeal.

So far Doujin Work's ED is the only stand out feature amid a standard OP and mostly mindless content. Mai continues her fun retro schtick in Yumemiru Otome [320 kbps], hauling in a Dixieland band, walking bass, and backup vocals. Jazz clarinets defy classical conventions perhaps solely because they're not played in a classical fashion. Thin reeds, bright sound.

The rhythm section keeps things on a pretty even keel. Only the clapping falls on the back beat. There isn't much in the way of typical jazz syncopation other than in the instrumental breaks, and Mai's accents tend to fall on all of the beats. This is written like a march, something that most songs try to avoid if at all possible. But, as Yumemiru Otome proves, marches don't have to be dry and boring affairs. They can be, dare I say it, fun.

Nakashima Mika is listed on her profile as one of her favourite singers. That's hard to see, as the two seem only connected through the very large umbrella known as jazz. Within that sphere, their singing styles are polar opposites with Mai so far being much brighter and upbeat.

I'm still impressed that she is only 15. She carries a maturity and understanding usually possessed by singers at least 3 years her senior, although whenever I think this I should remember that Utada Hikaru and Tamaki Nami, among others, hit it big at 15. Miracles seem to happen more often than I'd like to think.

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Utada Hikaru - Beautiful World on radio

128 kbps

Cross This is Love with Making Love, and splash in a modulated bridge the likes of Keep Tryin', and you get Beautiful World.

In other words, it's great. I can't wait to get the single.

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Hitohira OP/ED

Hitohira is indeed a gem, but you don't need me to tell you that. I am once more behind the curve, but the OP and ED tracks are so refreshing to listen to that I am compelled to mention them.

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Part of the reason why opinions on songs can be so subjective is that I as a listener have a memory. Call it baggage, if you will, which stems from the atmosphere, emotions, even memories, invoked by whatever is loaded into WinAmp. Since I have this high tendency to loop single tracks for hours and days at a time, those sentiments are highly reinforced.

Having most recently had the dignified composition and performance of Yuki Kajiura and Yuuka Nanri ingrained in my mind, the effect of Yume, Hitohira and Smile is not unlike stepping out of a darkened concert hall and into a breezy mid-afternoon day with clear skies, as if attending a lunchtime concert was not unusual on its own.

Both tracks are distinctly relaxed, which is an odd thing to say of the much faster ED. Yet both draw inspiration from the days of a more spontaneous sound, where people were mostly comfortable with blues but there was still treasure to be found.

Yume, Hitohira [full length, washy audio] recalls a time when it was perfectly acceptable, even expected, to have a string ensemble in a pop song, of casual conversations with an enameled piano. The whole thing smacks of jazz, from the odd (but cool!) sounding intervals in the melody, to the trumpet interjections that punctuate the chorus. The only thing I didn't much like was chorus, which sounded a bit washy. I don't know if it was from the strings being a little too loud, possible pedal in the piano, ringing that didn't fade fast enough in the bells (xylophones) in the final chorus, or some combination thereof.

I am even more taken by Smile. It hits the ground running and never lets up. The short passage that is the intro and outro borrows a page from hyper-active Broadway musical numbers. It's in the same vein as nowhere and Silly-Go-Round — high energy, tight vocal lines — but it's not as dire as nowhere and it's not as reserved as Silly-Go-Round. The piano that audibly keeps pace with the vocalist throughout is a joy to listen to. Sunny synthesizers are, well, sunny synthesizers.

I was surprised that the vocalist for Smile is a mere 15 years old. This was a performance on par with Tamaki Nami, who debuted in her mid-teens as well. Mai Mizuhashi's style seems distinctly retro, judging from Smile and Yumemiru Otome, the Doujin Work ED. Her collaboration in the Kamisama Kazoku ED, a classic rock song, just reinforces this stylistic image, although the OP for the above is an exception.

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Utada Hikaru - Beautiful World 45 sec preview

Once again, via U.Blog.

Impression? Mixed. 56k streams from the likes of RealPlayer aren't a solid foundation from which to form any sort of opinion, but for what it's worth Hikki's voice sounds like it cracked at one point, and her upper register is tinny, but that could just be the 56k talking. The trailing edge of the preview had some nice atmosphere, though.

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Music as an evolutionary product

melody.'s latest, READY TO GO! is pretty forgettable, I won't dispute that. It reeks of cynicism to say this, but melody. and her production team are just doing their job. That there is a market for this kind of music must say something. Whether that something is positive or negative I leave up to you. Speculation as to what that something is, after these messages.

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Memorable were the last two tracks, Shine and Dangerous, the former a decent upbeat pop track, the latter a stronger dance offering than Finding my Road. But in general, this album is safe, capable of being mindlessly consumed.

You can rag on people and the music they listen to until you're blue in the face, but the truth is some people just need something to consume, like food. I can and have eaten instant noodles for lunch for a week or two straight and haven't given it a second thought.

With the advent of epic quantities of disposable income following World War II and the subsequent baby boom and sharp rise in post-war standard of living for countries who weren't bombed back to the stone age, comes all these neat things such as disposable cars *cough*GM*cough*, disposable clothes (but only in the sense that they're unfashionable; few actually try to keep a lid on the size of their wardrobes), disposable technology through built-in obsolescence and making gadgets as fashionable (or unfashionable) as clothing. Why couldn't the western industrialized nations have disposable entertainment? And so they did, and through cultural hegemony, the rest of the world embraced the concept.

Disposable entertainment is not new, as evidenced by the likes of the Brill Building and its predecessor Tin Pan Alley, but it's only been recently that people have thought to link it to, say, capitalism, or the ruining of modern society, and then complain bitterly about it.

For those who like their music only semi-dignified

So, about that something, maybe it's as mundane as evolution. We may complain about how pop music all sounds the same, but we really just see the trees in the forest. The revolution may happen overnight, but it's decades in the making. In that time span, people need something new. It doesn't have to be different, it just has to be new.

Some things just don't change. It's a sore point among classical (era) music lovers to claim that all of their music sounds the same, but in many ways it was just as predictable as today's pop structure. When the predominant structure back in the day was the Sonata-Allegro form, you really did know when the performer was modulating. This distressed Debussy to no end, and breaking away from that form was a hallmark of Impressionism.

As with most other things, it is technology that is the great differentiator. Where there was only one Haydn or Bach capable of cranking out prodigious amounts of music, a few stars like Lizst or Beethoven, and the obscure guy like Franz Schubert or Mozart (he died broke), there are any number of cookie-cutter producers, great live acts, and obscure indie bands. The music video has displaced the live concert as a promotional tool as well as an experience mechanism. Accurate digital audio synthesis has replaced sheet music, which had varying quality directly proportional to skill and orchestral organization. Back then, sometimes it was literally only possible to listen to music when the composer themselves delivered a concert, because it was just too hard to play.

If anything, technology is accelerating the progression of musical styles. Consider yourself back in the 1800's. You would have heard classical music your entire life. Full stop. In this day and age, we've had a jazz revival, a latin fad, a classical blip (in the form of Celine Dion and Titanic), the age of boy-bands and girl-bands. This all occurred in the span of just over 10 years.

I myself want to experience the music I listen to. Experiencing is a lot like going to a concert, and it takes a bit out of me, and so I don't listen to as much music as the average consumer. But I have no overriding disdain for the average non-fanboy or non-fangirl. Yes, mainstream music continues to sound the same at the same time, but take comfort in the knowledge that it does not progress at a glacial pace.

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FictionJunction YUUKA - circus album redux

I never mentioned which tracks I prefer. I had completely forgotten, actually, but the truth is I will prefer different styles at different times, much like most people. What I can say is, there are definitely some tracks I will only listen to on occasion, if at all.

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Kouya Ruten has really nothing to gain by the extension of the song. I would stick to the single version if I need an epic cowboy Japan dose. yorokobi is worth the occasional listen if only because it's eclectic, but the contrast is so strong it can be jarring. I think I made it somewhat clear that I'd be avoiding the likes of romanesque and angel gate, and rokugatsu ha kun no eien requires a very specific mindset, and specifics generally don't occur all the time.

At the moment, I like aikoi the more I listen to it. Yuuka's voice has a really nice punch in her accented attacks, in particular to bridge into the chorus. It's emphasized by the elimination of everything but the beat leading up to the accent, the synth interjection in sync with the accent, and then only the beat in the accent's aftermath. What results is a vocal and instrumental rimshot effect that's a staple of genres like big band jazz.

This is not earth-shattering in its originality, but it's been a while since I've heard this technique pulled off with such clarity. You may chalk that up to me not listening to much new music from any genre, so I have a limited sample size.

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FictionJunction YUUKA - circus album

Notes on the latest album from Yuki Kajiura and Yuuka Nanri follow. Some of the tracks I've commented on before, and have added the appropriate reference links.

I wrote these entries out of order, and it probably shows. As per Yuki Kajiura's style, there is a lot of overlap in the elements that get used. I've saved the most description for particularly stand-out tracks.

The executive summary: where Destination did not have many stand-out tracks in the new material, circus contains well-written songs that can and do stand out from each other. Another great vocal performance from Yuuka Nanri.

All romaji conversions performed by — what else? — Romaji Translator. Great little service.

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circus has a 3/4 bar division, a bit of trivia given the dominant 4/4 time that the vast majority of pop songs are written in. Given the moderate waltz tempo, appreciating all the vocal and instrumental layering is a breeze. The rich texture is not to be taken for granted. Yuuka doesn't get much solo time in this one, as choral lines seem to stalk her everywhere she goes. Fun and flighty.

Question: do those held cadences end on tonic and dominant only? I get the impression that there is a hollowing out of the chord due to a dropping of the third/mediant.

aikoi is oriental pop/electronic distortion fusion. The melody is instantly interesting because it uses a non-western scale, and it's in these moments I hang my head for recalling pushing only black keys on a piano to get a pentatonic scale and then saying that I'm playing Chinese music.

Violins and choral are present to add distortion and dissonance, enhancing the club atmosphere put forth by the heavy bass drum back beat. This is pretty good in its original form as club music, but definite re-mix material.

Silly-Go-Round [PV] is a strong classical rock track. When I say classical, I mean the introduction of classicist elements. There is Yuki Kajiura's trademark inclusion of floating choir in otherwise instrumental-only passages, for instance, and the use of old instruments such as acoustic piano and an oriental stringed instrument that I tend to lump into a generic er-hu category out of ignorance. While the er-hu is not a western classical instrument, it is nonetheless a nod to history.

One gets the sense that running, movement, is a strong theme in Silly-Go-Round. Tempo is a big factor, but movement is also generated by typical rock elements like strong back beat in the snare, as well as the flowing minor key melody in the verse section, with piano emphasizing the harmonic progression. Yuki, no doubt due to her operatic influences, writes a really tight recitative-like line as demonstrated in nowhere and other songs. Yuuka Nanri, meanwhile, delivers the necessary performance with precision and poise.

This is not an over the top performance. Composition, and the symbolism of history, keep this track grounded. There is rocking out, but something is held back for the sake of ornamentation. This is one of those tracks that I can loop for quite a while, enjoying the little details over and over again.

blessing is another 3/4 time track, and served as the Kouya Ruten single's b-side track. There is zero modern instrumentation, unless you want to count the accordion as relatively modern. This song has strong Nutcracker vibes and waltz vibes in general: very light texture, strong general emphasis on all beats of the measure in the chorus, almost march-like with the inclusion of snare and bass percussion.

Damn, why am I trying to conduct this in front of my computer monitor? I should stop.

Kouya Ruten [PV] I have commented on before, and don't really have anything to add. It's a solid, period inspired work, that sounds just a bit like from out of an old western (i.e. cowboy) movie. The album version is extended by an intro section before getting into the song proper, as well as an outro section.

yorokobi was disconcerting as I got lost trying to find the beat, having just come off 4/4 time. Yep, it's another 3/4 track. Incidentally, verse material is pulled from blessing to construct the chorus. Sleigh bells, electric guitar, drum kit, are used to brighten the previously delicate melody.

The verse melody itself is modal, and so contrast is generated in part by a transition from modal to tonal harmony. There is more movement and layering in this verse section compared to blessing's, the acoustic guitar making the most impact. There's nothing wrong with atmospheric east/west fusion, but I don't think it's for me.

hikaru sabaku is almost like the obligatory ever-sunny pop song embellished with Yuki's choral touch. I retract that, actually. Maybe it's more accurate to say that it's a healing song, like Christian rock, which I had the pleasure of listening to a couple weeks ago. Walking pace, lyrics written in quarter notes, up-lifting, strong harmonic progression and equally strong backing vocals. One would have to be pretty jaded not to feel something.

That said, is this just an easy play on the heartstrings? It's not the most original or compelling work, and this is not the first foray into this kind of music, Seiya being more to my liking. But hikaru sabaku sounds quite dignified, without understanding the lyrics.

romanesque [PV] suffers from sounding too long, even though something like Silly-Go-Round is longer in absolute terms. I was initially tricked into thinking that the opening section was the verse since, as previously noted, the arrangement is sparse enough that, without another section to reference against, it could pass for a verse section. Another reason was because it was quite long. This slight inversion of the typical song structure weirded me out at first, as the conclusion of the chorus naturally transitions into the contrasting verse section. Except, when you're expecting the chorus to be up next, the reality is rather jarring.

I suspect it's this tension that makes romanesqueappear to be longer than it is, which is good if you can latch on to a hook. I couldn't, as the melody and style aren't the kind of things that resonate with me.

I might sound inconsistent, and I am. I can't articulate why I kept thinking that the opening was the verse whereas for other songs, like blessing I could quickly recognize that it was opening with the chorus.

piano, trio for vocalist, piano, and cello. Chamber music on a Yuki Kajiura album? Not unexpected. Not unexpected at all. Being chamber music, it's kind of (just a tad?) to difficult to appreciate without having that kind of background. What is easier to appreciate, and therefore probably a more likely metric to be used by most people, is Yuuka's vocal performance.

On that front, her sudden transitions into the upper ends of her range are effortless. One of my friends has complained that her voice tends to have a nasal quality, especially in the upper register, but nasal timbre is greatly softened throughout the album. This song, whose arrangement leaves her much more exposed, is direct testament to that fact.

rokugatsu ha kun no eien is by far the slowest song of the album. Indeed, it's the only lounge ballad. Ballads are hard, the contemporary judge of vocal ability. Yuuka has no cover at all, with only the piano to keep her company. To get a ballad right takes a lot of power and dynamic range at both ends of a vocalist's register.

She's airy trying to get her dynamic range down, and her nasal timber is most noticeable in the chorus, when she tries to inject more power into her upper range. The moment she backs off towards the end, the nasal quality fades. Despite timbre troubles, she continues to be expressive.

The track is short, second only to piano, and Yuuka's singing time is even shorter. It's worth your while to listen at least a few times, if only to soak in the atmosphere. On that tack, here's an alternate look at the song that might account for some of my initial misgivings. I did say it was styled for the lounge, not for the concert hall. Is intimacy bordering on the edge of airiness in keeping with the style? Perhaps. It stills conflicts with what I usually hold to be good singing qualities. This is one of those songs that I have to be in the mood for before playing.

honoo no tobira [PV], meanwhile always puts me in a 1-3 mood.

angel gate is movie credit music: slow anthemic rock, doesn't really make much of an impression nor is it original, but hey— most people get up and leave when the credits roll. Is this listener's fatigue setting in? I don't think so, but angel gate's placement as the last track is kind of convenient, and does reinforce that image, desired or not.

circus is a much more consistent (in strength) and varied (in style) album than Destination. I like the majority of the new tracks, something that can't be said for Destination.

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Utada Hikaru to sing in Evangelion movie

From the U.Blog.

I do believe it is time to fanboy.

I hope the picture in that post makes it to the cover art. The Flavor of Life cover art had her looking…stressed.

I don't think her cover of Fly Me to the Moon ever appeared in any of the ending sequences for the Evangelion series, which is what the entry implies. If it did, this is news.

It seems like Fly Me to the Moon is just there to capitalize on the connection Evangelion fans make with the song and series, especially if it's just a re-mix, which requires minimal to zero singing on her part. If she does the re-mixing herself, then power to her.

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Utada-Online is back, but...

The community forums are gone in favour of a blog. Given the bandwidth and moderation hassles of running a full-blown forum, this was a good move on the RetroJapan's part, but I'll miss the forums as a source of lyric translations and live performance recordings.

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KOTOKO on YTV

A bit of a promotional appearance in advance of AnimeNorth 2006. Once again, KOTOKO re-affirms her status as a great performer by giving it her all on a children's channel.



Had I known that KOTOKO would be appearing at AN'06, I'd have skipped class and dragged my carcass down to see her perform. At the time I had yet to have discovered Re-sublimity, but I had encountered Second Flight (ft. Hiromi Sato), the famous (although not so great) Shooting Star, and various other image songs from Onegai Teacher/Twins and Triangle Heart ~Sweet Songs Forever~ OVA.

For anyone interested in a bit of trivia, Triangle Heart (based on a game of the same name) featured a Takamachi Nanoha, but not as the incarnation that wound up in MSLN, MSLN A's and now StrikerS. Likewise, none of the other Triangle Heart characters make any serious appearance in the MSLN series.

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