LogFAQs > #936521932

Rude Buster
Silver Star Crysta Kaleido
Invitation Flower ~ Autumn

Rude Buster is my 35th favorite in the contest! my reaction to toby fox is pretty all over the place depending on the song, and this contest explores some of my least favorite examples of his work but this is absolutely NOT one of those. I LOVE this, I liked Deltarune as a game (and soundtrack) consistently significantly significantly more than Undertale. There's lots and lots of reasons I could list for that, but one of them was definitely that this was just the normal battle theme. I was always /excited/ to enter a normal battle rather than dreading one, no matter what it was, because I knew this song that I love was going to play. My favorite song in the game and probably top 3-5 toby fox songs overall for me. As a song lots of my interest is simply instrumentation and it's alignment with lots of other existing music I like that isn't it that i like more than it...stuff like the side of Yasui I actually like, stuff like ubiktune/soundshock/etc fm funk adjacent stuff. It's just...really on the nose at being the general zone of a very specific style i'm fond of that's not necesarily easy to find. but beyond the style it is, I can point to specific elements I'm fond of, the FM lead & bass, the really dense 7ths+ chords backing it and unusually clustered harmonies with lots of close together notes crunchily making for a full dense sound. Also I will say this is one of the few songs I can think of where I specifically like the dip into the majV to end the phrase at :34/:40, I really often HATE when music goes in that exact direction just because something about it's really cheesy in an uncomfortable way to me but herE? I LOVE it here. It's effectively dramatic and exciting! its probably just because the chord progression and individual chords of everything are complex&busy enough for it to not feel like i was patronizingly guided to them, and instead just let me feel the drama and tension/release that stuff provides and decide its a satisfying climax on my own. Cool piece of music that represents lots of stuff I feel positive about, adjacent to many things I'm more mixed/negative about but does everything possible to make me love it in this instance instead!

Brain Power is my 165th favorite in the contest! honestly have a hard time coming up with stuff to say about this one beyond "it's fun" and it is! I have fun listening to it and following along with the visual. Musically though there's very little in it for me and in the end my interest is pretty shallow. All the O-o-o-o-o-ooo-OOEEoleallg_---a- dfignh345w345j stuff is my favorite part probably? I've always had a thing for cchopped up vocals that sound like tarzan banging on his chest so hard while he is yelling that it sounds like a computer voice instead. I was always into the english dub Pokemon Season 6 Itnro because of the H-e-e-r-r--o-o-o-o-o autotune eiffel 65 part like I was OBSESSED with that (I still am) and this reminds me a lot of that. Overall it's well produced for sure which i value and the fullness and consistent surprise of things like big thick synth chords that cut off immediately and STUFF like that's cool. Feels like everything's really carefully placed like little puzzle pieces together with tiny de\tails to make it come together like a MUSIC. WOW Music has things in it! What the heck! I think I HATE THIS SONG ITS TOO FUN (this song is fun !!!! yay!)

little really stands a chance against rude buster for me obviously, brain power is like exactly 6.0 for me and it's like doing the bare minimum possible to get me to say i enjoyed the experience of it and that's it. REALLY cool visual though I like strobes and seeing every little thing pointed out

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Silver Star Crysta Kaleido is my 90th favorite in the contest! Its kinda the stereotype of "board 8 music" in my mind because it has girls singing on top of "world music" and is also electronic at the same time. That exact mix is a category I consistently like maybe more than any other these days even if i didn't used to say that, so this is not even close to a complaint! This is brought up above a few similar tracks in the contest for me mostly because of the chords. The piano & string chords are nice and full and they remind me of like the crystal world where someone has butterfly wings "gene" and THEY ARE SO PRETTY CHORDS. just love this instrumentation a ton. like basically every single instrument is one where I hear it and think "that is the timbre that I want to hear with my ears", and they're all used in such a nice way too. I love the breakbeats when they show up because something about them is really "intense" to my body and feels like someone is punching me even though it's actually kind of soft in its presence in the song? Something about the emptiness of the sections that have the breakbeat stuff makes those moments powerful to me somehow, especially with all the playing with filter effects during them. My actual favorite sound in the song though is probably the synthetic bagpipe-esque lead, but much of that's purely how it's used more than the sound itself. All these little quick trills and flourishes in its melodic content work so well for me on that sound in specific. I love this more than this writeup/score makes it look like I do and keep thinking I forgot to say something important to me about it, but I think I caught most of the biggest elements

Love You Love You Love is my 123rd favorite in the contest! honestly my interest here's kinda similar to my interest in the previous track even though the aesthetic is almost the opposite. Jake Kaufman is one of the composers out there who's the most obsessed with Big Dense Full FEeling harmonies which is even is how he self-described himself on his own old website basically, and it's an accurate description! there's not a moment of this where there's not some really thick chord pouring chillness into my soul no matter what's going on. compared to other jake stuff frustratingly though like, the only reason this is "low" (123rd place isn't "low" in a field this strong for me though) is just...honestly generic stuff anyone could say like "it's not really memorable" "other songs in the ost are more catchy", etc, I'd definitely place other stuff from this much higher. Maybe it's just that some parts of this are "too plainly happy" for me, idk. There's soime REALLY GOOD MOMENTS THOUGH like the chord changes from 1:42 - 2:07 hit me in this amazing way that "tee lopes new originally composed sonic mania songs" do...I mean i guess that's just part of the whole "jake kaufman sound" ....! Cool chords, chord changes, sounds/effects, and fun funky stuff going on through the whole thing. !

Both are "7.x" bu