Soundtrack Reviews

Death Note Anime OST Review

Sunday, January 28. 2007

Death Note music can make ANYTHING dramatic!

So anyone who's anyone these days is following Death Note, the hit-manga-turned-hit-anime about a college student who finds a notebook that kills anyone whose names are written in it. Though some people will tell you they're only reading the manga, I'm here to tell you that watching the anime is totally a better experience because it has the power of incredibly dramatic music! They finally put out the soundtrack to the anime, not just the live-action movie, and it really is great, but it gets so intense, it's almost (almost) silly. I am serious here - this is the sort of OST that makes eating potato chips a matter of life and death. If you're looking for the most dramatic songs yet used in the anime, Kyrie is the sad, tense choral melody used when Light is being particularly evil; and Low of Solipsism is the dramatic song used in the potato chip incident. Both of them are heavy-handed orchestral themes with plenty of choir action in there. And then there are so songs that are so extreme, they haven't even been used yet (so far as I know) in the anime - such as Death Note Theme and the Sephiroth-killer Domine Kira, or as I like to call it, "One-Winged Light". There are plenty of other gems in the soundtrack that I'm sure I'll discover in their full right after a few days of listening, such as L's Theme and Shudder (Senritsu), both of which utilize a nice grainy electric guitar and a piano, and have pretty awesome melodies.

Overall, I'm quite impressed with the audio quality that Yoshihisa Hirano and Hideki Taniuchi have come up with here. It's not only an incredibly atmospheric soundtrack, setting the mood perfectly for the show - it's also quite listenable and with some songs that can really literally make anything intense. So next time you eat potato chips, you know where to turn.

Update: I have gone back and uploaded all the old fileden stuff to Dreamhost, so if you had any problems about downloading files from us before, there should be no such problems now - things should be consistent and blazing fast, too. If the RSS feed seems out of order, that's an unfortunate side-effect of all this. To celebrate our ability to host more stuff now, I've also uploaded a 30-second demo from the Death Note anime soundtrack:

Light's Theme [484k, .mp3]

Posted by mDuo13 in Soundtrack Reviews at 03:13 | Comment (1) | Trackback (1)

Mushishi OST Review

Tuesday, January 23. 2007

Last night I finished one of the best anime I've seen recently. It's called Mushishi, a very mystical, fantastic anime about these things called Mushi. In a way you can call them spirits, or tiny little angels and demons. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, and sometimes they affect humans. Some humans can even see the Mushi, and a Mushi-shi is one who hunts Mushi. The story revolves around a Mushi-shi called Ginko, a man with white hair and a single green eye who is always smoking a strange cigarrette. The anime itself is not actually a single story, but 26 different stories about Ginko and Mushi, all of which I enjoyed. A pleasant surprise was the music, which sets itself apart from most soundtracks by not sucking.

Here is a small sampling of the music.

The moods it creates are about half of what makes Mushishi so good - the other half would be the art. They did a pretty good job showing all these different unique kinds of Mushi and this nature that surrounds Ginko, and the music completes the feeling of mysticism and intrigue. The wonderfully relaxing OP theme is "The Sore Feet Song" by Ally Kerr, a Scottish singer-songwriter. His website can be found here. However, the rest of the music is by a Masuda Toshio, not to be confused with Masuda Toshio the director. Masuda also composed music for another anime you may have heard of, Naruto. Or Mahoromatic. Or Digi Charat. Or Ai Yori Aoshi. Maybe Excel Saga. Though those anime, maybe not Naruto, but definitely Excel Saga, have an almost entirely different sound. The kind I mostly do not like to hear :(

What I do like to hear, though, is music like this. It's a relaxed and doesn't get too active, just like most anime music I enjoy, but like the series, much of the music is serious rather than playful. I find the music very pretty but it can get pretty ominous!

Speaking of anime with soundtracks I love, check out what I discovered on YouTube:

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou with Ally Kerr's song over it. Works pretty well!

Ally Kerr's song is fantastic, and Masuda's work fits the show like a glove. I fell asleep listening to OST 1 last night! I recommend it for standalone listening as well. Also, everyone should watch Mushishi someday :) it is a neat experience.

Posted by OverCoat in Soundtrack Reviews at 16:22 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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