The main reason for this is because is that if I’m going to write tracts of texts on a highly specific subject a few people are going to care about, it might as well be contributing to my BSc. Trying to write in the convoluted style of scientific papers is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done (scientists are not known for their clarity of conveying ideas.), plus referencing other work takes more time than writing the paper itself. And when I finally finish my work, the last thing I want to do is more writing – no matter how enjoyable the subject may be. I’d rather sit down and watch some Top Gear or play Pokemon Platinum or even listen to some music than try and conjure up another block of text.

Maybe when things are less hectic, I might go back to writing regular posts on here but otherwise, it’s byebye for now.

P.S. I did get tickets for Utada’s concert in February, so maybe I’ll write an entry about that someday.

Artist: 坂本真綾 [Sakamoto Maaya]
Title: ヘミソフィア [Hemisphere]
Catalogue No.: VICL-35358
Tracklist:
1. ヘミソフィア [Hemisphere]
2. 音楽 [Ongaku]
3. ヘミソフィア without maaya [Hemisphere without maaya]

I can’t remember exactly how I discovered Maaya Sakamoto’s Hemisphere, as it was so long ago. This was pre-Youtube, so that immediately rules it out. Back then I was more into eroge than anime so that rules out me watching the anime this is from (RahXephon). The most plausible explanation that comes to mind was a friend was watching the anime and sent me the song as a “Hey, listen to this! Isn’t it awesome?”

I had to agree, it is. Hemisphere sounds like the good kind of anime theme in my eyes – distinct, a rich arrangement and a female voice without the saccharine. For the longest time, I didn’t even know that this was the theme song to an anime because it sounded something way too ethereal to be anime theme. (And yet, here comes the paradox – such an ethereal song would only be composed for an anime a lot of the time.) Yoko Kanno gives me strings, synths and a beautiful arrangement that is deliciously downtempo though uplifting. And Maaya’s voice… Maaya’s voice has a haunting, longing quality to it that suits the atmosphere of the song perfectly.

The b-side Ongaku shows more of that mysterious haunting that Maaya’s voice. The song beings with something akin to a clock winding down and has an eerie, almost enveloping quality to it. And of course, the string arrangements makes me happy. But unlike Hemisphere, Ongaku is less uplifting and more contemplative. It ebbs and flows as a piece of music.

Of course, rounding off the single is the instrumental version of the A-side. Listening to the instrumental without Maaya sounds strange to my ears, like I need Maaya there otherwise the song lacks something completely. It’s still good as an instrumental track, but it doesn’t stand out if it just were.

This single, as a whole is breathtaking. Both songs on it are beautifully crafted and it has left a lasting impression on me. It’s a very unusual single in that respects. I felt the need to review it after finding the single tucked away in my bookshelf and ripping it for my music library. But sometimes, words fail me and all I can recommend sometimes is just to listen.

Artist: Various
Title: Shot Music Presents Super Shot -Bishoujo Game Remix Collection-
Catalogue No.: SHOT-001
Tracklist:
1. Shinsei Philosophy (JAKAZiD Remix) – Veil ∞ Yui Yamamoto
2. HE∀tingSφul (DJ SHIMAMURA’s H∀RDCφR3 R3mix) – Katakiri Rekka
3. Tears to Tiara ~the essence~ (bh’s trance mix [remix by Blasterhead]) – Uehara Rena
4. Shukufuku no Campanella (StripE Trance Remix) – Satou Hiromi & NANA
5. Answer (Emotional MEGA Beat mix [remix by Samplingmaster MEGA]) – Katakiri Rekka
6. Daichi no Uta (DJ SHARPNEL Remix) – Itou Kanako
7. rebirthday eve (Aura Qualic Remix) – Marica
8. Concerto Note (DJ SHIMAMURA’s 5AM Remix) – NANA
9. reach for the runway (REDALiCE Remix) – Rita
10. Himitsu Recipe (Disconation J-Euro Remix) – Hashimoto Miyuki
11. Primary (DJ SHIMAMURA’s 10PM Remix) – Rita
12. Koisuru Kimochi (DJ Hirojack Remix) – Sakakibara Yui
13. Heart To Heart (kors k Hardcore Remix) – Uehara Rena

While kors k and DJ Shimamura seem to have been working overtime with these remixes, I can’t help but feel that the remixes presented here are going to be… watered down? It aims more for the mainstream than Ultimate A-Style did, and I can’t help but feel like this is going to be a CD like Amasia for me – Not something I’d really, really actively listen to but I’d buy it for collection’s sake. The choice of remixers isn’t bad at all – the surprises of Blasterhead and AQ were certainly unexpected.

I do have my hope on Aura Qualic actually doing a good job on this provided he doesn’t do any hardcore and sticks to doing trance/vocal trance, which is probably the area he does best in.

However, I can’t tell until I can listen to this CD. Meanwhile, M3 has come and gone so I am eagerly awaiting the releases that come from that (with the exception of REDALiCE’s bazillionth Touhou album).

Which does mean, of course, that it is easier to get. The official website details how to get the CD and which other stores will have it in stock. And for $12 shipped worldwide, that isn’t a bad deal.

I am glad that this CD, among things, will have a proper mastering engineer who knows what he is doing :p So this is probably one of those few CDs in which I will have no gripes about the mastering (as is my perennial problem with most doujin CDs.)

Artist: Various
Title: Allkore Riot Squad Vol. 1
Catalogue No.: AKCD-0002
Tracklist:
1. Rioters Choice◕ ‿ ◕ – Vol. 1
2. M-Neko – 月光の終わり
3. DJ Melancholia – White Reflection
4. Traffic Jammies – Getter Line
5. Rex Buron – All Star Core
6. DJ T2Kazuya – Heart 2009
7. Black Ace – Don’t Give Up!
8. Thanatos – euphoric field (Final Shaft Remix)
9. Helblinde – First Day of Summer (立夏)
10. Shingo Dj – Be Water
11. DJ Clonepa – Rogue 990
12. CDMA – Doggyman
13. Karanabe – Ondervinden
14. fornever – 完
15. OBSiDiAN零 – Dark Elusory
16. SBZ – YKSX

Firstly, what is with the first track? Why the need for the smiley face formed by semi-obscure symbols hidden deep in the Character Palette? Does it serve a purpose other than to not display anywhere in my system besides Safari?

The thing that gets me excited more than anything else on this tracklist is Thanatos’ track “euphoric field (Final Shaft Remix)” which is a song he had on his myspace for ages but made no indication of where he was going to release it.

This CD intrigues me more than anything.

NB: The author has been missing for a while because she has been spending weeks waiting for things to appear on Guhroovy so that she can buy them, unlike several other j-core sites who steal rips

Basically, with your DS, you had the ability to request pretty much stuff from Sharpnel’s collection via the chat function prior to Sharpnel’s set. And he basically offered SRPC0001 to SRPC024 to begin with – though the list that he compiled has other things too, like SRPC-C001 and SRPK-0001 and SRPC-H003 plus the remixes he did for things like Veil, BPT and even his remix of Sayonara Revival by Saori@destiny. (The full list is available on mixi and on the official Sharpnelsound blog)

Jea Sharpnel was basically willing to play any song that he produced if people wanted. That’s around 400 songs in total. How often does an artist on the scale of Sharpnel open up their entire collection for people to request from?

It also shows how large Sharpnel’s actual amount of produced material there is. Granted, not all of it is good but there are good things in there. I mean, come on. 400 something songs is no light number.

(If you’re wondering about why use the DS’s Pictochat function – the function is very much a well accepted way of communication between parties on the handheld device that doesn’t require much fuss in Japan. Groups of people stayed connected via their DS at Comiket – and it’s pretty clever since it’s not as expensive as a mobile phone and it’s easy enough to see what a group of people are doing.)

Interestingly enough, the CD that kept me company the best was Eri Nobuchika’s somewhat eponymous album of nobuchikaeri.

For those of you who might not know who Eri Nobuchika is, she was an artist who auditioned to Sony and was successfully signed to the label and coupled with producer Shinichi Osawa aka Mondo Grosso. She had her first single “Lights” featured in the highly innovative PSP game Lumines and that is where I first heard of her.

Shinichi’s production worked well for dear Eri while he was Mondo Grosso because she has a smooth, powerful voice that has a very unique quality to it . Mondo Grosso made her standout with the acid jazz, funky house sound that made Eri Nobuchika more than just a pop artist. It made each of her singles a delight to listen to and nobuchikaeri a cohesive collection of nicely produced songs with unusual elements (such as the flamenco inspired guitar in Voice or the horns in Kodou) and Eri’s voice soaring over them gracefully and fluidly, like the swallowtail butterfly that was Eri’s logo.

After a period of releasing several singles, vinyls, an album and a remix album with Sony, Eri went into a long hiatus in which it had been speculated that she cut ties with Sony – though this was never officially confirmed on either side.

I decided to check up on Miss Nobuchika’s work post-Shinichi Osawa and to my disappointment, neither delofamilia or her indies album hands managed to interest me. At all. After being treated to the winning combination of Mondo Grosso + Eri Nobuchika, the alternative flavoured pop that she’s come out with is bland in comparison. Her voice, was still as powerful as I can remember it but that wasn’t enough to keep my interest.

I can think of many instances in which there are good pop vocalists have crap composers. Or if not crap composers, then composers who play it too safe so the song as a whole becomes unremarkable, no matter how good the vocalist is. They have perhaps a handful of songs that work really well, and then the rest is just too bland to be of any listening value to me at the very least.

There doesn’t seem to be hope of Eri Nobuchika reuniting with Shinichi Osawa since he seems kinda busy being famous. But at least, Eri’s collection of work under Sony will stand as perhaps one of my most favourite examples of Japanese music beautifully done.

I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. I just love the way Enjo-G’s so prominent in that video. Bubble-B needs to come out with a new DVD release in the style of Good Evening Bubble-B soon, because I think part of the fun in Bubble-B’s music is the videos that he makes to go with them.

It turns out that there are going to be three more songs on this release to bring the grand total to 13 tracks. That’s a whole CD already and with that goes my hopes of any sort of original music.

But then I reminded myself, this is a bishoujo song remix CD – not just a CD that caters to the Akiba market who would be interested in this as a whole.

So without further ado, here are the three tracks that will make an appearance remixed.

- Heart To Heart – Uehara Rena
To Heart2 AnotherDays
- Tears To Tiara ~the essence~ – Uehara Rena
from Tears to Tiara Gaiden -Avalon no Nazo-
- コイスルキモチ [Koisuru Kimochi] – Sakakibara Yui
from xx na Kanojo Tsukuri Kita

So, since I don’t really care about who does the vocals so much (I was never really into eroge music because a lot of these vocalists are a dime a dozen and there are very few of them that are good), I sincerely hope that the next update for this CD will have something about the remixers.

Though, the potential upside of this CD is that we’ll have loads of varying remixers. I hope this is the case.

Yes, believe it or not KOTOKO’s latest song is named after a controversial Islamic term. The short version of the song doesn’t sound bad at all, but… why that term, out of all the random wikipedia pages?

While I find I’ve Sound have always had a history of bizarre titles (The penchant for Botany related terms is something I picked up on – song titles such as Lythrum, Meconopsis, Oxisols exist plus strange things like Everything is assumed to be connected, intron tone, Vacillate, Scheherazade), this one just makes me scratch my head more than usual.

So in some sort of experiment to satisfy my curiosity, this is a meme that I plucked off livejournal which uses the Special:Random page over at wikipedia to generate an album and some songs. Will it resemble anything particularly I’ve Sound-ish? Let’s see.

1) Go on Wikipedia.
2) Click Random Page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:random . The title of this article is your band name.
3) Click Random Page again. This is your album name.
4) Click 12 more times. These articles are the CD’s tracks.

Disregarding step 2 for the moment, I shall proceed with steps 3 and 4. And just to make it more interesting, I will alternate between the Japanese and English wikipedias for each track. Of course, this will be restricted to words/phrases that would make some sort of sense as a title, it would be no good having “List of pages relating to Singapore” as at title.

Album Name: Chanteheux
Tracklist:
01. Tiger Kidnapping
02. 千世 [Chiyo, Thousand years in English]
03. Importer -computing-
04. Soul Vacation
04. Itzamna
05. 補助 [Hojo, Assistance in Engilsh]
06. Century Theatres
07. タイラギ [Tairagi, Atrina pectinata in English]
08. Rockin’ Every Night – Live in Japan
09. クローズド・ノート [Closed Note]
10. Morpheus
11. バブル [Bubble]
12. Ansonia Latidisca

Would this work as an I’ve Sound album tracklist? In all honesty, probably. To go the whole hog, I’d even say out of the entire tracklist, the songs that would most likely be singles would be 3, 5, 9, 10, 11.

So my conclusion would probably be that the I’ve girls need to lay off Wikipedia for a while. Or KOTOKO, for the most part.

I have an iPod. It’s a nice little iPod Nano in black (because I couldn’t find a red one). I listen to it a lot – I take it with me everywhere and when I’m driving, it is often playing music to keep me company during the traffic jams.

So in no particular order, here’s the songs that have caught my interest recently.

1. そらとぶひかり – COLTEMONIKHA
Soratobu Hikari is one of those songs that amuses me greatly because it’s both in Japanese and Mangled English. The first line goes soratobu hikari kimi no moto e or so a lot of heat curry, gimme no motorway. Kate Sakai’s quite good blurring the line between the two languages and it’s a cute, silly little song that reminds me a little bit of capsule’s FRUiTS CLiPPER. The song, not the entire album mind you.

2. Adagio – DJ Depath & M-Project
I’ve always had a thing for pieces for string orchestra as the violin is a beautiful instrument and the cello can sound really lovely and warm and they’re my favourite string instruments. Barber’s Adagio For Strings is one of my favourite pieces of 20th century classical music – sadly the best remix of this is William Orbit’s – as the other trance version by Tiësto was a piece of shit (actually, Tiësto is pretty shit no matter how I look at it). But this remix… confuses me slightly but I like listening to it. Maybe it’s my love for the source material but I do shake my head in puzzlement each time I listen to this song on how it goes from strings to KICK KICK KICK KICK CUT UP HIGH PITCHED VOCAL SAMPLE KICK KICK KICK KICK STRIIIIIIIINGS KICK KICK KICK KICK STRIIIIINGS. You get the idea.

3. Ligaya (Yoji Biomehanika Remix) – Gouryella
Personally, I think the time in which Ferry Corsten was at his best was when he made the Gouryella tracks. That’s probably the best Tiësto’s ever been too, considering that all he probably did was make the coffee. I love the original instrumental version of Ligaya (the vocal version effectively ruined the track) but I am very fond of this remix because Yoji gave it more of a bassline and kick. It’s still very uplifting (it does fit the name, ligaya means “happiness” in the Filipino language) but at the same time, I do like that it is harder and the breakdown is one of my favourite parts in the entire song.

4. Attack the music – DJ FX
One of my favourite 5 key beatmania songs. It is a shame that the song actually doesn’t have a sample that says “attack the music” but I was overjoyed to hear when this was revived in beatmania IIDX DistorteD CS version.

5. The Talking Goat – DJ Shimamura
… lol youtube remix.

6. GOLD DIGGA (DJ Hazime Remix) – MICHICO feat. AI
I’m not really a fan of hip-hop/r&b/rap a lot of the time, but I do like this collaboration between MICHICO and AI. (Actually, I just like MICHICO’s O.P.D. single. That’s it.) The original version of the song was a bit flat, but this sounds like it’s got a lot more punch.

7. The Prophecy Unfolds (The Playah Remix) – Tommyknocker vs. The Viper feat. MC Mouth of Madness
I think Tommyknocker is one of my favourite gabber artists and I’ve been listening to Tha Playah’s The Greatest Clits compilation. I think this is my favourite track on there besides The Viper and Tommyknocker’s remix of Fuck The Titties.

8. Chasse – 詩月カオリ
This song is very cute. I think I like it since it isn’t too nauseatingly denpa and sugar coated, but cute enough to be enjoyable. Admittedly it isn’t the best song Kaori Utatsuki’s put out, but I think this is a little song that you can enjoy singing along to. waratte runrunrun rara runrun ruru~~

9. G-Sigh – Remo-con
I love Remo-con’s album. Tech-dance makes good music to do statistics to, as I did the majority of the statistics for my reports while listening to A life with remote controllers. While Bemani fans bemoan the lack of IIDX songs, for heaven’s sake this album is pretty good and Prototype resembles Golden Cross without the bassline and more tech dance-y.

10. tsugihagi Construction – t+pazolite
Such a good way to end Hardcore Syndrome 3. I love this track. Hardcore Syndrome 3 was made of pure gold. C76 actually wasn’t too bad, overall. There were quite a few albums I could listen to without skipping anything. And just how it rounds off Hardcore Syndrome nicely, I’ll end this list with this track.