LogFAQs > #937229986

IDOLA The Strange Fruits
Beyond the Darkness
steelchambers2

An incredibly stacked day today! Best set of two matches in the main bracket so far, and I'd be SHOCKED if any four-pack in round 1 outdoes that. I don't expect even later round four-packs to match it! Both matches are difficult choices.

The ToC match is utter garbage in comparison. I ranked Metal Beat #144 of the 180 retirees, while steelchambers was #152. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I like steelchambers more here, though... lol rankings that can never be consistent! Honestly EVERY one of these tracks has a serious shot at being in my top ten in the entire bracket.

IDOLA The Strange Fruits (9.5) / RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against- (9.0)
Beyond the Darkness (10) / Hinagiku (9.5)

Eh, might as well talk a little about each of them, even though I SAID only one per day.

IDOLA the Strange Fruits:
Talk about the very best ethereal AND the very best exciting! Great intro... nice choral chords relative to the bass. It becomes instantly infectious at 0:13. Seriously I love the semi-arbitrary placement of the super low piano D-flats. Extremely harsh grindy guitar-like patterns that don't fit neatly in a meter. Percussion and way cool pitch falls from another harsh grindy sound gets added. Very acidic. Finally an orchestra gets added on top of it all, put on top of unstable harmonies. WAY TOO AWESOME. 1:03 brings an amazing ethereal sound (the slow piano triplets are PERFECT), but with those acidic drums still there, aw yeah. GREAT harmonies there.... WOW. Gotta love when everything drops out except the little piano lick before the exciting stuff comes back again instantly blowing your socks off again. I could go on but I need to get on to the other music.

RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against-:
Deemo! I love that music. I have this massively long track on Youtube that plays hundreds of Deemo tracks! This one is definitely one of the best I've heard, though. The intro nice, but then that Very, very high energy synth gets added, WHOOOAAAAA. Gotta love the xylophones at 0:29 when they double with piano... these are very in your face compared to when they get used in most other music game tracks. 0:34... it sounds like you get some kind of complex meter changes there, but there's actually...not! At first I thought it was It sounds weird because the syncopation is based on 16th notes rather than 8th notes... LOVE IT! (If you listen to it at half speed, it soiunds like standard syncopation.) Piano and xylophone chords at cool right after. 1:22 great virtuosic piano+xylophone combination there. I love that crescendo from 1:00-1:05 especially when that high energy synth comes in again. Maybe in terms of note choices and harmonies this music is fairly standard (there are some weird notes at 0:47... it's a cool little rhythmic insertion!) , but the instrumentation and energy makes up for it. Kind of like Infestation (Crabulon), but better!

Beyond the Darkness:
Finally, one of my nominations appears for the first time! Every time I listen to it, it seems to get better and better. It's rare to hear music that utilizes a heavy dosage of jazz AND is very emotional, but this fits that bill in spades. Oh my gosh Mycro and deo, you'd better not rank this like #150 or something! If so all I can say is =( I suppose first I'll talk about the singing (Runa Mizutani). What a great melody that emphasizes certain nice notes in a chords that really communicates those strong feels! I especially like the moment at 1:25-1:30 where the harmony changes like expected, but Runa sings the same little lick again... wonderful emotional moment there. I like the stuff after where it kind of cycles the circles of fifths (not exactly), too! (Kind of like Star Trek IV music that does a similar thing) Okay, now on to the rhythm section. The bossa nova style adds a nice amount of chillness. Everything about the rhythm section is just WONDERFUL. Big cluster chords on the piano. Bass has such a FANTASTIC swing to it. Very nice comping from the rhythm section all over the place, and when the music repeats the varied comping keeps it nice and fresh! It's all simply JAZZ in its basic goodness. Oh, yeah, and the strings make a nice addition... I like their fast scales. I just have one minor complaint: 3:20 has such a nice feeling of "finality" to it. I wish the track ended with THAT idea. Not that the ending is bad or anyrthing.

Hinagiku:
I came into the match expecting to vote for this one actually. But after listening to Beyond the Darkness again, it sounded as good as it's ever sounded to me, which is unfortunate for Hinagiku, because I LOVE this track to death. At one point I thought this might even be my #1 in the entire bracket. (maybe it still ultimately could) This is like Steve Reich or Philip Glass, but even better! The instrumentation is just FANTASTIC....I don't quite how to describe it, but it sounds like like toy organs. That may sound silly, but it sounds so GOOD! As for the composition, so full of POLYRHYHMS YAYYYYYYYYYY. It sounds like a 4/8+3/8+2/8 at the start. Then it becomes obviously 6/8 (repeated six times in a phrase), but it's so fun to listen to it all outside of the 6/8. The singing is perfect with how relaxed it is. The BEST part, is when the bells come in at 1:00... wow, it gives me the chills every time. Their sound is just AMAZING. The meter starts sounding mixed up again here, 4.5/8 among other things. I guess I'll let Mycro describe it all. =p


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