LogFAQs > #954729523

Catabolism
Bound Together
Natural Life A

-(oh man now i'm in the "idm" cole; these pseudo-microtonal and Actual Microtonal chords that are just slightly detuned feel so cool and feel so much like "Monkey Target" from Super Monkey Ball and the part at 2:45 in the song "Tijuanic" by Alan Parsons. Just take a look:
https://youtu.be/7tgajoOGW98?t=164
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with how unusual the workings of the track are, the erratic drums, nonstandard tuning, i'm amazed that all these things never feel "in your face" to me, and that's what i want when it comes to these things. the technical oddities don't get in the way of bits that feel like Epic Grand Moment or anything, the dissonant elements don't feel grating at all, they're like...beautiful?! It's insane how cohesive the sound is as this unified whole with how viciously opposed extreme elements are being merged together.
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I really underrate how cool Shohei Tsuchiya is because when i think of zuntata i think of "Yasuhisa WAtanabe" and E.G.G/Cosio and of course big names like Ogura, and i forget that one of their most creative members is right in front of my eyes...! )-

-[some cool harmonies in the synth chords which is nice. the trance-y zone of this appeals to me. this song sounds like it is making fun of itself but knoow one would know what i mean...it's a jokester. ]-

-{oh}-

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-(rip akihiko mori ; you are good at voicing big jazz chords on an snes)-

-[i already did a really long writeup for bound together in my ranking topic. and that was a very LONG writeup so i will just link it here rather than inflating the size of this post with an obnoxiously long wall of text: https://pastebin.com/eRQzsetn
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this track has grown on me a great deal since i made that ranking topic, and like it was already a "high 7" in that. so yeah i love this track, i dunno if i have much more to say about it newly, but i guess i like the same ways i already liked it that i said in my ranking topic even more than when i made that post. on top of that, acoustic guitar and folk-aligned stuff really has been an amplified element of my tastes lately so that's boosting this too]-

-{boing}-

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-(Natural Life A is the epitome of all achievements[those who fiercely bathe their soul with "quintals" and "quartals" and whole step modulation-based tonality ascension]LISTEN TO THAT ACOUSTIC BASS BEING SO COOL. AHHHHHHH! These moments like :54 of extreme melodic simplicity contrasted so seamlessly with the moments right after like 1:11 where it is "not simple" but it's in the same song so smoothly. and then the fuSING metric modulation at 1:26?!!? contrasting these groups of 3 notes vs 4 notes streched/squashed to be in the same space as each other and it feels so FUNKY like the jaws of the honking the(THESE SMOOTH PADS OF ETHEREAL LIGHT BEAMS) AND THAT ACOUSTIC BASS IS STILL BEING EPIC. this song is probably tonally my favorite song in the contest (i am going to say that about some other song later: warning)tHIS SONG feels like "one song" but it's actually 5 songs, and i don't notice it? one thing abe's songs do the most in his basiscape era; these textural uses of rhythms, it's not like "precise polymeter" or "wat ever" that i would get with "prog music that i like", instead it's those same techniques but to create a landscape of DREAMS and NEW FUTUre(past) ideas. It's "complex" but it doesn't feel like it's trying to teach me that, it feels like it's trying to take me OUT OF THIS WORLD. these conflicting rhythms functioning like "ocean waves sound effect" equivalent rather than "you have to think aboout the exact notes" but you CAN if you WANT TO just like thread of fate/ this is the least generic song in the world and it makes me want to drink a lot of beer, but i have never had that before because i am a dangerous one. Kimihiro Abe's sense of tonality came from when his fingers are too big for the small toy keyboard so then you play all the notes at the same time and realize that sounds cooler than triads and thats my life story. I have noticed that a lot of my favorite songs now have a lot of focus on extremely overt 4/4 elements (such as the part at :50 here, or the chord sequence at 1:26) but with a ton of other layers interacting with them totally outside that container. I guess it's because it works as such a good perspective shifter. If you have all these crazy rhythms but there's still like one really constant 1---2---3---4--- steady element, it generates the cauldron of bronze plastic for emptying one's fluids into when there's so much gravy from your leg muscles that you extract using a scalpel in anatomy. but lets not think about that.....that's too hard core. i'm more focused on how much i want to play this game and i now have it but i need to finish either coded soul or mmbn3 or something first and i've been too busy to play games because i have been listening repeatedly to all the vgmc songs to make sure i list the proper loop points but I HAVE FINISHED THAT TODAY so now i have time to play video games again!! I'm not sure where this ranks in my favorite soundtracks, but Muramasa SOMETIMES feelslike itis my "5th favorite soundtrack" following the PSO2->Sonic Shuffle->Opoona->Coded Soul top 4, but i do not speak with assertion on that, because i have listened to muramasa significantly less times than those 4 or most of my other "favorite soundtracks", maybe i will intentionally save listening to it again for...getting to experience it in the context of the game!!! I'm so excited for that opportunity!! I love music that is in both the future and past at once!! EVERY CHORD IN THIS SONG IS CREATION OF GENIUS MONOLITHS' GATE, I CANT HANDLE THIS SONG, i am going to die, i am going to lose the ability to breathe air, but when I listen to this song i remember why i don't want to do that. every note is piercing my flesh with new information: i'm in the flood of ocean FUCK YOU dreams and TOO FAST. THIS SO(NG and (it's that acoustic bass again. the echoy birds...the!! EVERY CHORD IS GOOD. This song is so full in a way i can not describe with my eyes, there's no dull space and that's why it's fresh botany. why is this soundtrack so perfect. I love almost every song in muramasa but especially this one, it is the one i like the most. oh yeah and it's on the japan instruments i like those. i appreciate okami and muramasa for taking the elements i like most about traditional japanese music and combining them with far more interesting composition than is legal (more using all 12 pitch classes, transposition-y, not rigidly pentatonic)...this is the OPPOSITE of what a lot of other "fake japan music" does that i wind up disliking (i will rant about this on a later song in the contest if i remember), so i'm extremely thankful that okami and muramasa are the GOOD version of this to me. this is my favorite okami song. actually it's probably just literally my favorite kimihiro abe song, and kimihiro abe is my favorite composer, so this is a big deal (well i might like opoona-rock castle more eventually if i listen to that enough times, not sure, very close).)-

-[i like the parts of Unfinished Business that are like 1:11-1:13 3:02-3:08 and stuff like that because they sound like "Natural Life A"]-

-{OH NO ITS the "Transposing Fourths-Based Harmony" SFF match it's going to destroy my favorite song ;-;}-

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Natural Life A (1st/166)
Catabolism (9th/166)
Bound Together (43rd/166)
Unfinished Business (111th/166)
Battle (122nd/166)
Ancient Land (128th/166)

i LOVE the three songs that i am voting for!!!!!!
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