As a huge ARIA fan I was surprised and saddened last year to hear the news of Eri Kawai's death. I still don't know much about it but I'm fairly sure she was very young, and it really came out of nowhere. As I was browsing Anime News Network I saw that Victor Entertainment has released a memorial album featuring her songs..

Rachael Carothers of ANN writes:
"It was sad news when, just before noon on August 4, 2008, singer-songwriter Eri Kawai passed away. She contributed songs to Aria the Animation, Air and Tales of Symphonia, among others. A memorial tribute album, Himawari (Sunflower), was released on December 24, 2008. The album features songs from Aria, Bamboo Blade and Sketchbook ~full color'S~. Four live tracks from ARIA The CONCERT, which were never intended to be released to the public, complete the present to Kawai's fans. "
read more here

I would love to hear these live tracks, myself. I didn't know they had an ARIA concert :O

Anime Remix
Oh lawd. Here's what I said over there:
WE'LL DO IT LIVE! We did a LOT of testing with this new version of the site, to iron out all the big bugs, but there's likely a few left just from carrying this new design over. If you find anything wrong or if you'd like to give feedback on the design, let Xaleph know [because that's not my job :D]. Well I think it's great, the black and brownish greens were getting depressing. All those headers read more...everyone worked on are now gone but I hope anyone didn't work TOO hard on those. Perhaps we'll enlist everyone's help on making new site headers this time too! AAAAAAAAnyway, welcome to the new site.

There's also a new mix by Xaleph featuring some woman I've never heard of :D Check it.

I've been posting more at my personal blog recently, but right when AnimeRemix went down and OverCoat revived NMM, the perfect opportunity to post here popped up. A friend of mine recently acquired a copy of a CD called Exit Trance Presents SPEED ANIME TRANCE COMPLETE BEST while browsing Kinokuniya. It's a pretty fun album that contains a lot of trance remixes of popular anime songs (mostly opening themes, but with a few others). The limited edition also comes with a figure of some Exit Trance anime mascots (the ones in the image). It turns out this is sort of a collection of tracks from several previous Speed Anime Trance albums on the Exit Tunes label.

The style and quality of the music is pretty reminiscent of Beatmania trance, if you're familiar with it. This is not a coincidence - our resident Bemani-fanboy Spiritsnare took one glance at the box and recognized some of the same artists! That's not to say that it's bad - in fact, most of the music is pretty catchy if you like trance. It leans towards the cheesey side once in a while, but overall I'm a big fan of the album. And most people should recognize at least a few tracks. (I knew just over a dozen; my friend was familiar with all but three or four of them.)

The vocals are all covers sung by a few different artists. None of them are really up to par with the tracks' original singers (Maaya Sakamoto, KOTOKO, Nana Mizuki, etc.) but it's nice to hear a fully original cover rather than just sampled vocals. I also feel like the mastering of the vocal tracks is unfortunately muddy, but it doesn't make the songs unlistenable.

The CD is presented as a gapless "megamix" in 30 tracks, which is pretty impressive. A few of them are presented as full versions, but most only follow the TV-size versions of the original songs. I've bolded the full-length tracks in the following tracklist:

1. Delaction feat. CHIKA - Cruel Angel's Thesis (Neon Genesis Evangelion OP)
   This one sets the tone for the rest of the album, with pretty decent and instantly-recognizable vocals soon backed up by gating synths and a pulsing bass beat. It's actually probably the cheesiest song on the CD, with voice samples such as "Pump this party!" and "R-R-R-Remix!"


2. Delaction feat.MAKI - Sousei no Aquarion (Aquarion OP)


3. MK feat.CAMRY - Wheel of Destiny (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED insert theme)
   I love this original (It's Yuki Kajiura - what can I say?) and the remix is awesome, but pitifully short.


4. SHO-YA feat.KANA - innocent starter (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha OP)


5. Dizzi Mystica feat.Florence - Kom, susser Tod ~ Come, Sweet Death (Neon Genesis Evangelion insert theme)


6. MK feat.KANA - Arashi no Naka de Kagayaite (Mobile Suit Gundam 08th MS Team OP)


7. Starving Trancer - Tank! (Cowboy Bebop OP)
   I had the hardest time recognizing this song. It follows the original's composition so closely, but is so differently instrumented that it just barely escaped recognition.


8. MK feat.CAMRY - For Fruits Basket (Fruits Basket OP)
   One of the most hilarious tracks, considering how much they sped up the original.


9. Ryu* feat.YURiE - Uninstall (Bokurano OP)


10. MK feat.MAKI - Shooting Star (Onegai Teacher OP)


11. Starving Trancer feat.chum - Re-Sublimity (Kannazuki no Miko OP)
    I love the original to this song, but it's already really good trance... so this remix feels kind of redundant (and chum pales in comparison to KOTOKO). It's a great original, though, and it fits really well into the album, so I'll let those qualms slide.


12. MK feat.MAKI+KANA - agape (UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie insert theme)


13. Icon feat.MAKI - Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Higurashi OP)


14. Icon feat.YURiE - Soul's Refrain (Neon Genesis Evangelion insert theme)


15. Icon feat.Florence - Red fraction (Black Lagoon OP)
    It's not as sonically dense as MELL's original, but the lyrics are comprehensible! My mind was blown.


16. B.U.S feat.MAKI - LION (Macross Frontier OP2)


17. Ryu* feat.MAKI - HEMISPHERE (RahXephon OP)
    Possibly one of the simplest-but-most-effective adaptations on the disk. It starts off sounding a lot like the original, and then the excellent bass synth starts up, and it's all great from there. MAKI even manages a pretty passable impression of Sakamoto Maaya.


18. B.U.S feat.chum - ETERNAL BLAZE (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's OP)


19. Ru* feat.NON - Butter-Fly (Digimon Adventure OP)


20. Acid=Stone Valle feat.YURiE - Shangri-La (Fafner OP)


21. Ryu* feat.chum - PLATINUM (Cardcaptor Sakura 3rd OP)


22. MK feat.Ma15 - Happy Material (Mahou Sensei Negima OP)
    Negima! may be a stupid series (or at least a stupid adaptation), but this song is catchy as all hell in that really generic J-pop way. I love it.


23. Ryu* feat.MAKI - JOINT (Shakugan no Shana II OP)


24. Hommarju feat.NINE - O2 (Code Geass R2 OP)


25. B.U.S feat.MAKI - TRIANGLER (Macross Frontier OP1)


26. Judas feat.MAKI - Hishoku no Sora (Shakugan no Shana OP)


27. Ryu* feat.KONEKO PROJECT - Seishoujo Ryouiki
    I have to think the "KONEKO PROJECT" thing is a joke, since this instrumental remix doesn't even try to imitate ALI PROJECT's distinctive vocals. Personally, I've been tired of the ALIPRO genre for quite a while, so that's not a bad thing.


28. DJ Sa9 feat.MAKI - Over the Future (Zettai Karen Children OP)


29. Ryu* feat.YUKI - Makka na Chikai (Busou Renkin OP)


30. B.U.S feat.MAKI - Iteza Gogo Kuji Don't be late (Macross Frontier insert)
    The song that Cheryl sings in the first episode.

So there you have it! If I don't pick up a copy of this CD at Kinokuniya soon, I'll probably end up ordering it or one of the other volumes.

Did I mention that the album jacket art is pretty nice, too?

Edit: fixed some references to the Macross F songs in the tracklist. It's hard to properly mark something as "OP2" for example when there's another song used for one episode between it and the first OP, and it's sometimes used as an ED, too... but I've tried to use the most obvious way to refer to things.

Prolific and sexy anime/videogame music remixer Avaris turned 23 today! Happy birthday Shaun!

Maybe I'll get you a present if you come to MAGFest again :)

You can listen to the song on his myspace page.

I'm always pleasantly surprised to see a new anime remix out of a new face. I'd tell him to submit it to Anime Remix but the site's down at the moment and I can't seem to find Xaleph anywhere. Plus Strike911's actual site is down. Hrmph. Oh well, for now, it's on his myspace page.

I first heard of Strike911 when Auld Lang Sine 2 ended and we all handed in our finished records, and while I thought his music was a bit generic I still liked Trance Insurgency part 1 and 2 a lot :).




Also yeah I know this blog hasn't been updated in more than a year. Welcome me back, bitches! Also a fair bit of news, I have officially started my anime collection. I now own Project A-ko, Perfect Blue, and Gunbuster on VHS. Awwright. That's probably it for a while now, though. I'm also starting a new cyberpunk album. Watch out for that sometime... next year.

There was actually lots of news coming out of Anime Remix, but I forgot this blog was here. Some blogger I turned out to be!

Well, the big thing every year at Anime Remix is the halloween competition, and this year was no different. We got 4 entries, all of which are actually themes to villains! Except mine, of course, unless you count Mushi as villains. Xaleph won the contest with Orochimaru's Mansion, a... well, it's Xaleph, you know what it is. Psytrance. Next up Avaris busts out this cool digital cover of "Floating Museum" from Ghost in the Shell. I have the cleverest title of the bunch and was the only one to remix an anime that hasn't been on the site before, "The Shinen" which is both a punny book reference and the name of the original track with a "the" tacked on. There had to be a last place, unfortunately for Aktulua, but his Cell remix was still pretty awesome, and probably should've at least beaten mine. It was also the only non-electronic song of the whole competition, which is pretty refreshing since all we get these days are trance remixes.

Sorry for the long absence, dear one reader. I'll be back with the random youtube videos shortly.

DistantJ - Slayers Next - A Reason

What's that low booming sound, getting ever closer? Why, a DistantJ track of course! And this one is way better than his last Slayers remix, which was a bit... Well, not too good. This new track is totally heavy hitting and well done, and I didn't even mind the cliché'd vocal clip. Unfortunately, it's a short track for the genre, and I wish it were twice as long. Still, Slayers fans must check this out.

Okay, so finally AR gets some new material. Perhaps the most horrible of coincidences is that they are both remixes of the same song.

Electric Concerto - Sadness and Sorrows Trance
Themaister - Sadness and Sorrows

Oh boy! Electric Concerto's tune is surprisingly good trance, and themaister, while his song was initially not good enough, he resubmitted it to AR twice and now it's something passable. Good dedication, man!

So today I received the OP single to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, by Eiko Shimamiya. Considering that the CD was officially released in Japan this very same date, that is freaking fast. The title song, 奈落の花 (Naraku no Hana, or "Flower of the Abyss") is pretty much exactly what I expected out of it - a long (5:01) version of exactly the same thing the opening is. It has an extended intro consisting of some more filtered, reversed sounds (actually the reverse of the ending few seconds of the long version, it seems), which is pretty creepy-atmospheric. Some segments in the longer version that remind me a little of the first Higurashi OP - at least, moreso than the TV size version does. That's a good feeling. There's also what's almost a solo of the extremely synthetic sounding guitar lead (I suspect it's just very filtered, not actually "fake") which leads into a wonderful breakdown with just the chorus over some slight pads. It works beautifully to provide a refreshing pause before the climax of the song. I was also impressed with the strength and quality of the bass during the second verse. Overall, the song is still quite what I expected, in a very good way.

What I didn't expect was how interesting it would be to listen to the "instrumental" (read: karaoke) version, which omits not only the main vocal track, but the reversed versions of the old Higurashi intro. There's a lot of interesting audio texture and composition going on here that's lost behind Eiko Shimamiya's (admittedly wonderful) vocals. There's a lot of good string composition, some generic but nicely played, quiet background guitar, a few more filtered sound effects that I didn't notice, and an overall different feel - the emphasis goes on different beats and it feels much more laid-back when just the kick/bass/sfx groove takes over during the verse or the pads take over during the bridge.

The B-side, "FLOW", is not bad, but it's not up to par with Naraku no Hana, in either incarnation. It's getting closer to traditional J-pop, with an upbeat and totally overdone chord progression - though it doesn't develop into much else, as huge chunks of the song are spent switching between only two chords repeatedly. It has a nice, slow-attack, rhodes-esque synth lead laying down the main melody, while the stereotypical J-pop guitar riffs over drums, which are so obviously sequenced it's painful. There are some interesting effects here and there, but the song doesn't do much by comparison, and the instrumental / karaoke version really doesn't go anywhere, without Eiko Shimamiya's vocals.

As for packaging, aside from the cover which looks like it's trying to be Henry Matisse, the back is a picture of Rika and Hanyuu back to back, apparently naked except for a bed of flowers and flowing hair. The inside of the booklet is plain, just mostyl red, grey, and blue, with some inversed flower pictures and the lyrics; the CD is a nice texture and shade of plain, empty grey, except the title written in small red text. There's also a "Character Card" inserted in the pack - I don't know if they're all the same, but mine has a couple images of Hanyuu on one side, and part of a larger picture on the back: I got most of Rena plus what looks to be Shion's hair and a bit of her cafe uniform. Honestly, the card is not worth really noting, despite the sticker they put on the packaging proudly advertising its inclusion.

Overall, it was quite a tasty album, and the karaoke version of Naraku no Hana is a pleasant surprise, but the main point of the single is the one, title track. And when shipping (¥2000) is almost twice as much as the already-pricey CD (¥1200), that means that this song comes at a very dear price to fans. Is it worth it? Probably not. But is it good? Oh yes.

I'll leave only minimal explanation: Karaoke versions of anime tunes with the vocals replaced by Delay Lama [one of the best free VSTi ever]. This is for the synth nerds!

Sousei no Aquarion

Lucky Star

megaman

Sumomomo Momomo [which I have just seen and reviewed! Check the AR forums]

AIR

Higurashi

Gloria Gaynor


Okay, I swear I'll have something more than youtube videos next time. SERIOUSLY. But these are all entertaining anyway :D Also, to download Delay Lama, get a VST host and go to http://www.audionerdz.com/. Free Tibet!

Yes, Hinamizawa.

This song is, apparently, the character single for Keiichi and Detective Oishi in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. The images are just a MAD put together by a fan. I think they only complement the incredibly amazing song, though.

SANK YOU.

As an aside, I got an email from Amazon Japan this morning - I didn't get a chance to look at it closely, but I think it means my El Cazador OST shipped. I'll be sure to review it when it arrives!