Category Archives: Music

The sound and the fury.

Awesome Music From Tokyo – in Toronto

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So back in August, by chance, I read a post about a tour from Zac Bentz’s music blog. I usually just skip posts about tour dates and stuff because I never expect them to be ones I can go to, but this one happened to be a Canadian tour with bands that I actually listened to! I was kind of surprised to learn that this was actually volume two of Next Music From Tokyo. After some wondering about whether or not I’d actually be able to go, my kind friends felt sad for me and decided to come along too.

We went to the Saturday show at Rivoli. The patio and restaurant portion looked pretty classy. The show was in the backroom which looked like it could fit maybe about 200 people. Apparently, there were about 100 people there, which made it seem nice and cozy without making it impossible to move around. Luckily, we snagged a place to sit on the side. Also, they had wireless, which made it convenient for twitteran’ in between sets.

Unfortunately for uhnellys, they were first and had to perform when most of the people hadn’t actually gotten there yet. They were pretty good, but I’m not really into rap, so it wasn’t really my thing. Their drummer was pretty awesome and I liked the guy’s trumpet and bass stuff. That is an instrumental combo that I don’t think you get to see everyday.

By the time susquatch was up, there was a pretty decent crowd. I think they were the most pleasant surprise of the night for me. Their style is exactly the kind of thing I like and their unique twist is also pretty great. The main vocalist likes how English sounds but isn’t confident enough to actually write a song in English, so the band essentially sings in pseudo-English. This is perfect for me because I honestly couldn’t give two craps about lyrics (hence, why I am far more open to music in a language that I don’t understand). The crowd seemed to really start getting into it during their set.

After this set, I went to check out the merch table and decided to pick up the susquatch album and the first two MassDre albums. Much to my massive disappointment, they didn’t have Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai. Anyway, I’m pretty sure (but not entirely) that the one I was trying to ask about the stuff was Natsuko, the bassist and vocalist for MassDre. She seemed super happy that I wanted not one, but both CDs.

After that was sgt., one of my favourite post-rock bands. Why? Because I friggin love violins in rock music. In the case of sgt., the violin kind of takes the place of vocals. What I didn’t expect was how loud and intense they’d be live. I do think the violin sounded a bit strange at parts when it was hitting higher ranges because it was so loud. I don’t know if it’s because they were the third band of the night or if they were especially intense, but my hearing took a noticeable beating after their (and MassDre’s) set. Still, their music is absolutely gorgeous.

But I’m pretty sure that the night belonged to Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. The NMFT organizer guy was totally right when he said that MassDre are monsters when they perform. I love MassDre because, like violins, female vocalists in rock are another thing that I love. They also get bonus points because their lead singer is also the bassist. It was pretty amazing seeing Natsuko go from standing, smiling and waiting before starting, and then go into all-out beast mode as soon as she starts playing. They totally proved their worth in being the reason I came back to Toronto for this.

So yeah, it was a pretty fantastic night. It makes me sad to hear that turnout is a bit lacking compared to the first tour and that this could be the last one, especially with the tentative lineup for Vol. 3. I mean, chances are that with it being in April (finals season) it’ll probably take a miracle for me to go, but the promise of Midori, Rin Toshite Shigure, and toe is enough incentive for me to try and make a miracle happen.

Also, I need to find some way of getting Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai now that isn’t prohibitively expensive to finish off my collection.

Introspection, featuring iTunes

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So, I am taking this opportunity in between arcs of Higurashi to bring you this fascinating look into what kind of crap I’ve been listening to. Those of you who have Macs will almost certainly be using iTunes as your main music player of choice and will probably own an iPod. iTunes keeps track of how often you play a given track and also does this when it syncs up with your iPod, allowing for a decent representation of your listening habits. One of the default iTunes smart playlists is the Top 25 Most Played. That’s right. We’re going to examine the top 25 most played songs on my computer that I’ve still kept ever since I’ve gotten this computer. WALL OF TEXT, BEGIN.

At the bottom of the list, we have Keikenchi Joushouchuu, the opening for the first season of Minami-ke. I can’t explain it, but it probably has something to do with how well it fit Minami-ke and the random shouting by the various characters.

Coming in at 24th, is Utada Hikaru’s Hikari, the theme for Kingdom Hearts. This is the song that brought Utada Hikaru to the gaming world outside of Japan. It’s the first of her songs that I’d heard and is probably the song that sold me on the whole games with vocal themes thing that Squaresoft was trying to push. She also takes 23rd, inexplicably with Nichiyo no Asa, a random track from her ULTRA BLUE album.

Tied at 21 and 22 are Utada Hikaru’s SAKURA DROPS and Hirano Aya’s Bouken Desho Desho?. SAKURA DROPS is an awesome song with a stunning PV. Bouken Desho Desho? is special because it’s the OP for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, an anime which broadened my perspective on the medium. Spots 19 and 20 are taken by Lia’s Toki wo Kizamu Uta and eufonius’ Megumeru ~cuckool mix 2007~. Both of these songs were OPs for CLANNAD, another anime, coincidentally also produced by Kyoto Animation, that’s introduced me to another genre of anime.

In 18th, we have Deep River by Utada Hikaru, an album track from her album of the same name. After that is Unnamed World by Hirano Aya, which is the ED for The Daughter of Twenty Faces, an anime that had a promising start featuring thievery and heists, but descended upon a road filled with disappointment and crappy science. Also notable for having an ED that I liked better than the OP.

Spots 12-16 are taken by Utada Hikaru and various tracks from her ULTRA BLUE album. These are BLUE, the third track; COLORS, one of her singles, again with a pretty PV; This is Love, the first track that had a pretty cool electronic sort of feel; Dareka no Negai ga Kanau Koro, the theme for the CASSHERN movie; and Keep Tryin’, another one of her singles.

Numbers 9-11 are another tie. The first is Allegro Cantabile by SUEMISTU & THE SUEMITH. It’s the OP for Nodame Cantabile, an anime that follows two music students and how they go about their lives at the conservatory. The piano is in the spotlight for this piece, which is fairly fitting. After that is WORLD END by FLOW, the second OP for Code Geass R2. I thought it was a good song, but that’s likely because I am attracted to songs that feature violin. Rounding the set out is the brilliant green’s Ash Like Snow, the second OP for Gundam 00. Ash Like Snow was fairly different from what I’d come to expect in a Gundam song, but it definitely fits the mood that they were trying to create for Gundam 00.

Eighth and seventh place are tied by Hirano Aya’s God knows… and ORANGE RANGE’s O2. O2 was the first OP for Geass R2 and isn’t a song that I really, really like, but I guess it’s alright. I’m surprised it made it this high. God knows… on the other hand, is a song that is awesome. Its status is enhanced by the fact that it was part of one of the best scenes in anime I have ever watched, the concert scene in episode 12 of Haruhi.

Sixth place is taken by HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR’s Ichirin no Hana, the third OP for Bleach, back when it was still in Soul Society and not in Hueco Mondo: really, this isn’t Soul Society again, we swear! It gets points for going really well with the OP animation and for fitting with the events of that arc, and definitely for not being a garbage arc.

Fifth place is taken up by T.M. Revolution’s resonance, the first OP for SOUL EATER. SOUL EATER was one of the first anime I picked up when I was looking to get back into anime after I stopped raiding in WoW and after Gundam 00 finished its first season. The OP animation introduced me to a world where Gundam 00 wasn’t the only anime in 720p. Not only that, but I would learn later that the actual lyrics of resonance was eerily relevant to the world of SOUL EATER. It also helps that SOUL EATER is one of my favourite shounen series now.

Utada Hikaru’s Beautiful World takes the fourth spot. This song was the theme song for Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone. This song had that different feel slow, but ethereal quality that some of her other songs had, like Passion or HEART STATION. Of course, I haven’t seen Evangelion, so I don’t really care about that.

Third place is taken by COLORS, by FLOW. This is the first OP for Code Geass, which was, in retrospect, a pretty interesting mecha anime. I don’t think I could have expected what R2 would bring when I first heard this song. I’ll always see Japan in the crosshairs when I hear the opening drumroll.

L’Arc~en~Ciel grabs the second spot with DAYBREAK’S BELL. I wasn’t a fan of READY STEADY GO, the second OP for Fullmetal Alchemist. But this! This song was different and persuaded me to reevaluate what I thought about L’Arc~en~Ciel. Combining this song with the visual of green sparklies coming out of a Gundam in 720p was something special. This song was definitely representative of what kind of change they wanted to bring to Gundam.

The top spot goes to a song which was the theme for a game that I’d never played. When I’d heard that Kingdom Hearts II wouldn’t be using Hikari as its theme, I thought that it was a waste. In my mind, Hikari and Kingdom Hearts were inseparable. And then I watched the PV for Utada Hikaru’s Passion. It was strange, because it definitely felt like Kingdom Hearts, but it felt like it had matured. And it sounded very different from her previous songs, but sounded exactly like her style. All I know is that this song deserves to continue to stay at the top of the list.

Mr Uematsu goes to a wedding

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So today, I went to a wedding. To my pleasant surprise, I found this in the program:

Processional
Eyes on Me – Nobuo Uematsu
Final Fantasy Theme – Nobuo Uematsu

Awesome. And of course, the processional was awesome. I mean, when I read it, I was trying to picture it in my head. When the actual thing happened, though, I couldn’t stop thinking to myself how absolutely perfect the choice in music was. Eyes on Me was played for the first part of the processional with all the bridesmaids and stuff walking in. The Final Fantasy Theme was the replacement for the traditional Here Comes the Bride thing and when the violin kicked in as the bride walked in, it was an amazing moment.

From what I know of the bride and groom, neither of them are particularly gigantic nerds or gamers. So what does this mean? It shows, that gaming as an art (in this case, the music) is gaining legitimacy in the mainstream. Gaming has some unfortunate connotations that are attached to it. One of the ways to legitimize gaming as even a normal hobby is to legitimize its influence on culture and to raise awareness of the artistic value in games.

Music is one of the artistic parts that games have. The most famous examples of gaming music are Mario and anything that Nobuo Uematsu has composed. I wouldn’t exactly call the Mario theme great music; I suspect its popularity has more to do with the character than the music, although Koji Kondo’s Smash Brothers Brawl mix of the theme and various orchestral arrangements do convince me otherwise.

So we have Final Fantasy as the representative of great gaming music. But, there is definitely other great music. The series that has been doing it for me lately has been Ace Attorney. I was playing the orchestral album in the car and I asked my dad to guess what it was. He responds with a ‘It’s Final Fantasy, duh.’ And then I get to explain that, no, this is music from a game that takes place in court. And you’re a lawyer. And it’s fairly linear. And it’s pretty much a point and click text adventure. Yet, it has an amazing and memorable soundtrack.

Another example of excellent music is The World Ends With You. As I’ve mentioned, everything about the game pleases me greatly. In accordance to it’s unique spin and setting, the music is largely J-pop and electronica. What? Vocals in my battle themes?. Rap in my RPGs? Eurobeat in my overworld themes? TWEWY’s soundtrack represents a significant departure from the established RPG tradition, as does the rest of the game.

But what is it that makes gaming music so special? I’d argue that part of the appeal is the associations that the music establishes. It works particularly well in RPGs and other story-driven games, where music can be tied immediately to various plot points and characters. Whenever I hear the main theme for Final Fantasy VII, I always remember the first time I stepped outside of Midgar and how the world suddenly became much, much larger. When I hear Terra’s theme, my mind turns to the three Magitek armour walking across plains of snow towards Narshe.

But even for games that aren’t as strong in the plot department have something for the music to associate with. The Mario theme is probably engrained in us because of the number of times we’ve been to World 1-1. If you’re playing in the same room, hearing the opening guitar riff from your friend’s computer will probably tip you off that they’re playing Terran.

Of course, this argument could be made for movies, except that movies are much, much shorter than the average game. If we’re looking at a Final Fantasy, we’re talking about forty hours, rushing through everything. A smaller game, like TWEWY is still fifteen hours. Even shorter than that is Portal, but Valve’s storytelling methods don’t translate into movies. As an aside, this is why games with an excellent story can never be made into a good movie. The length of a game is such that you’ll be playing it over weeks (or days if you’re addicted to it) and the associations with the music will be engraved in your mind.

The other kind of music that’s linked with gaming is popular music. Of course, as far as I can tell, this is happenning with any sort of significance in Japan. But let’s look at Japan. The first real theme for a game is Faye Wong’s Eyes on Me, the theme for Final Fantasy VIII. Of course, a theme for a game in Japan isn’t that huge of a deal; they’ve had popular themes for anime for a while now.

The next fairly significant theme for a game was the Disney-Square collaboration Kingdom Hearts, which had Hikari as it’s theme, by Utada Hikaru. The interesting thing here is that Utada Hikaru is the best-selling artist of all time in Japan. And she did a theme for a completely new video game series. Of course, nowadays, virtually any large RPG has a vocal theme. Even TWEWY has a theme by Jyongri.

But back to Eyes on Me. Eyes on Me made sense to me as a choice for a wedding. After all, it is the main love theme as well for FFVIII. What didn’t really make sense was the Final Fantasy Theme. It wasn’t tied to a plot point and it wasn’t a significant character theme. The only explanation then was that the music was used because it fit the occasion and, more importantly, because it was good music.