LogFAQs > #967456181

The Spirit of the Mountain
In Hell We Live, Lament

Alto's Adventure - Alto's Theme (Brian Crawford)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOIFNQNEiOo

This was the first Alto series track I heard, during a KCF game back in 2019; Toxtricity linked An Endless Desert in that same conversation, I realized the latter was by Todd Baker and checked it out, then got hooked shortly afterward. Again, Endless Desert draws away a lot of my attention for music in this series, but I enjoyed this a lot when I heard it and think it's a very nice track. It's one of those constantly nonresolving tracks that I like; it has these waves of repeating clarinet notes that show up in Endless Desert as well! It's fun to see that sort of subtle musical continuity, even when the music is handled by different composers.

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 - Naked Glow (Kohta Takahashi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKn8UWvEraE

Of the tracks I considered for this entry (Lucid Rhythms, Quiet Curves) this was the funkiest to my ears; you might say this was the one that moved me the most, in getting me to bob my head and tap my foot instinctively. R4 tracks are funny in that I'm pretty cool with several of them but most of the time there's like one section of the track that jumps out to me more than the rest of it. This one actually changes up a few times, and I appreciate that. It starts with the funky guitar riff, then goes into a cool sampled brass section, then a different guitar riff I dig even more, then a take on the original chord progression based around a smooth electric piano. 2:29 feels like the track's centrepiece and it's groovy as well. This grew on me considerably while listening to it during this writeup.

Key Ingredient - world.execute(me); (Key Ingredient ver.) (Instrumental) (Cassie Wei & Yamato Kasai arr. Shogo Nomura)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqMNSwN0WyQ

Wildly breaking eligibility rules here I don't care. The point of this entry isn't to highlight Mili, though I enjoy their work well enough-- it's to highlight Shogo goddamn Nomura. This is an utterly wonderful piano arrangement of world.execute(me); (which appears in Arcaea) on Key Ingredient, which is a piano arrangement album of Mili songs-- there's a version of the album with vocals and one without. (You can check out the vocal version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB5gfmWQzSA) I don't have much more to say other than that I just ran into this today and I love it. Shogo Nomura! Check out his work.

Emil Chronicle Online - Under the Pressure (Kenji Hiramatsu)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEI9YcW1jEI

SupraDarky entry #637. Before the Xenoblade series, ACE+ did some cool work on Emil Chronicle Online. I like the really cold, mechanical vibe of this track; you can hear some earlier signs of how Hiramatsu would use various background electronic elements to enhance the mood of his tracks (which he continued to do in the Xenoblade series), and his enjoyment of big guitar payoffs (though they don't sound quite as clean here). This is a track I actually discovered through SD's list-- I originally ran into Song for Battle from the same game (which I maintain has an awesome intro) and traced through his other Emil Chronicle picks.