LogFAQs > #953940596

Nekozamurai no Gyakushuu
Obstacle
Impossible Worlds

Nekozamurai is "exciting", but not always in a way I find interesting. Nekomata Master's signature compositional style comes out (especially prominently in sections like 2:03, or imagine 1:26 being played with Byakuya Gentou's flute lead) but its expression in electric guitar seems to blunt its effect a bit, or at least my specific appreciation of it. I don't care for the solo at all! The Naoyuki Sato experience is too distinctive not to shine through regardless, but I don't always enjoy the effort of finding it in this track.

Face Shrine is "boring" but it's got some moody elements to it that I think are pretty nice. Here's a small thing-- the chiptune part slowly crescendos, and then actually almost eliminates its decay at 1:02 (which also seems to implicitly reduce the impact of the attack) and this kind of detail (used a few times throughout the track) is a cool touch I can appreciate. It takes a composition that I'm not very engaged by on the surface and gets more out of it.

While I don't know the actual context of Obstacle, I like to imagine it as area exploration music. Kimihiro Abe's unusual chord choices definitely give me a feeling of wandering a zone, along with the high ostinato. The track is cool and distinctive but my takeaway highlight is always 1:15, which expresses almost a flying feel, and reminds me of Abe's ability to make his chord progressions work in the most unpredictable ways.

Ryoshima Coast is a pleasant adventuring track that takes a lot from the Sun Rises motif. The galloping drums in the second half of the track give it some nice momentum, like you're seeing Amaterasu run along the coast. Aside from the obvious charms of Okami music in general-- the instrumentation and aesthetic, the production-- I wish this track did a little more to pop in my mind. I don't encounter the highs (or lows) that would make me find this really striking, which is something I've felt about a few other Okami tracks.

DM DOKURO really going for that epic prog rock feel (and a very game effort at vocals, to boot). It's a fun track! I think the harmonized vocal sections are engaging and there's still plenty of room to showcase some of the cool progressions he writes.

Impossible Worlds, Todd Baker, warm analog synths reminiscent of Boards of Canada, etc. I've talked about this track before in other settings; I love it a lot for its incredibly organic feel despite it being mostly electronic, its really awesome groove, its relaxed but never static feel as it seamlessly introduces new elements to the track, the way specific sounds grow and explode within it. I'll actually take this opportunity instead to talk a bit about something tangentially related.

I nominated this track for NFUN 1000. The last sixteen tracks I nominated for that project were entirely new discoveries for me, like I was trying to construct a new VGMC nomination set, except with some attempt to tailor it to someone else's tastes. This was the first Todd Baker music I ever listened to, specifically to find things to nominate for that project! I wonder if I would seek out Todd Baker music as fervently if I didn't find it then.

This was far from the only artist or soundtrack I experienced for the first time during the search for nominations for that project. Off-Peak and Cosmo D music in general, Dandara, Caravan Stories, Thousand Memories, This is the Police and Ben Matthews, Kevin Penkin-- all of these were things I found for the first time during my search then, even if they didn't all make it to that nom set. (That Metal Saga nomination, I was thinking-- sounds pretty cool, who's the composer, Yoshimi Kudo, that sounds familiar, oh he's from BASISCAPE, that's cool, I'll remember him for later.) The ones I didn't use, I kept and used later-- Dandara, This is the Police, and Kevin Penkin in future guessing games, Caravan Stories and This is the Police in Tox's nom topic. Four of the things I listed were used in my BOST5 nominations! Again it makes me wonder where I would be with my interest in those artists and soundtracks without this pursuit.

To some extent, the same pattern played out for other users that I nominated for in similar topics-- encountering tenfour music while nominating for Tox, finding the Sdorica soundtrack and exploring more of The Gardens Between while nominating for rwlh, digging through more of the Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet soundtrack while nominating for cako, searching through some things I'd noted down earlier to find Tron RUN/r and hackmud tracks for GameBop.

This is sort of the ideal outcome, to me, for these ranking topics-- both the nominators and ranker getting new music to check out and hopefully stick with them, through the nomination process and the list itself, in immediate and predictable ways as well as through more unexpected and slower paths. While it's always nice to do well in the rankings, it's the reward of encountering all this stuff in the first place that's paid off the most, and a vital part of what I appreciate about those topics. (ie the REAL ranking topic win was the music friends we made along the way)

(one other thing I forgot to mention is that searching for music to recommend to somebody else can push you to think about and look for music in ways a bit outside of your own comfort zone, which is also something I grew to appreciate during nominations for these topics)