LogFAQs > #937618131

Kaine ~ Salvation
Battle! Giratina
To the Distant Sky

Kaine ~ Salvation is my 100th favorite in the contest! as i say every time it comes up in the past few years now, nier music's grown on me a ton. I used to HATe it, i changed to "slightly like" it, now I LOVE it. This isn't my favorite song from it at all, not even close, but it does have some of the traits i look for in its music. piano chords are the big thick complexish chords with 4+ notes in them that i like the thick chill sound of~! Some really powerful unexpected chord changes too, some nier music my frustration is the obviousness of the path of where it's going to go but I have that problem 0 here. I also like the vocal layer...i normally do not focus very much on like, what's being said in lyrics, or even that much on vocal style outside of specific circumstances, but I actively like this vocal style a lot for whatever reason, but even more specific, I actively like the sound of specific syllables/words said in the lyrics. One of my favorite words in the english language is "chimera" for lots of reasons, but partially because I love how the word sounds. This has parts that sound similar to that being said (I know that is not what is being said) and I love LOVE those parts of the vocal line (1:05 / 1:21 / etc) because the way it sounds is COOL. this isn't as full of cool metallic percussion as Kaine~Escape and i definitely prefer that version's instrumentation, though the slower pace of this relative to Escape is kinda interesting, actually never realized until now, rhythmically comparing them how different they feel. Escape is like bouncy 3+3 6/8 while this is straighter 2+2+2 3/4, at least as the feel that's most prominent to my ears, both have both. I actually like the more 2+2+2 focused rhythmic feel of this one more for whatever reason, even if I like the greater variety of timbres in escape more.

Level 5: Main Theme is my 108th favorite in the contest! This is an extremely "me" song at surface level. If the whole thing was as weird as the first 20 seconds this would among my favorites. but i have A LOT of problems with the composition of this song as much as i like the "type" of song it is. I REally do not like drums that have snare on 2&4 "too fast" i complain about that toomuch i do not want to listen to a "banger" i want to listen to a boring piano song instead. 1:09 is a cool natural bouncy 7/8 but blues scale in the bass comes across as cheesy to me, honestly reminds me a ton of Tim Follin music that is in 7/8 and i like how it's in 7/8 but don't like how blues scale focused it is(there's like, at least 5 examples of this exact thing in his music if not 20). The tonality of this track fluctuates between stuff i LOVE and hate simultaneously, the blues scale in the odd time part's the lowest point, but there's tons of very high points. obviously i love the complete atonal chaos of the first 20 seconds, wish the whole thing had that level of chaos, but I also love the weirdness of the chord changes at the more normal parts, :23-:38 where it's alternating between chords a tritone apart from each other (just like BANJO KAZOOIE except I actually like this), occasionally transposing down one chromatic, and the melodies weaving this ridiculous weird case of chord planing movement. JUICY. but then :45 and like :52-53 hgappens and then i go EW it sounds like one of the falcom songs i don't like it sounds like rich people would listen to this song in umineko, the direction is too guided where it's about to go in a way that really destroys what i'd otherwise like for me. Also I like amiga sound format yeah that's cool ok. So yea very mixed VERY mixed, some of both my absolute favorite moments of any song in the contest, alongside absolute least favorites.

Feel kinda bad since the hoi track feels like it's made to appeal to my tastes more than most of the rest of the board, but in the end the result isn't quite there for me as much as it is on paper. i definitely confidently prefer kaine no matter how close it is for me, but i kinda wish i didn't. this match would feel less awkward to me if it were Kaine ~ Escape which I DO handily prefer no questions asked. both "cool but i like other things similar to them more", and i don't mind too much which wins, close match, but i have a clear preference.

||||||||||||||||||||

Jena Anderson is my 83rd favorite in the contest! Fun Big Chanting song. I love the general style of Astral Chain's ost, rhythmically complex guitar/drum stuff mathematically deconstructing the more straightforward Epic Orchestra Choir song it sits beneath. Combining disparate genre traits I like. very DJENTy, some songs sound more like Animals as Leaders than this one does. This is more a "I like this because i like the style of this ost" enjoyment than liking this specific example, but it's still great. 1:03's guitar rhythms have a bunch of 2+3 "5/16" subgrouped stuff and that's kinda my literal favorite rhythmic sound. 1:32 - 1:50 is one of my favorite portions of any song in the entire contest actually. LOTS Of fast 2+3 groupings in 16ths beats in that pattern, and I like how the movement of the notes doesn't line up with the rhythms. The strings/choir/etc are a looping group of 3 notes, but the rhythms that loop of cycling 3 notes is being played on doesn't line up, so the position of the 3 notes get heard at different parts of the pattern and it's SO GOOD animal as leaders(tesseract) i really want to know how much prog metal the vide ogame music composer Jena Anderson listened to when writing the astral chain soundtrack........

Battle! Giratina is my 14th favorite in the contest! my 'houndoom' playlist on youtube used to be called GIRATINA. this is practically the defining track of an entire category of my music taste, though only more in the sense that it's a popular and well known example of "distorted reality music". Junichi Masuda's a very hit or miss composer to me compared to the other gamefreak composers. I tend to dislike when his music sounds like it could actually be music, but when he writes things like this, no one would write this but him. Nothing in the world even sounds close to this. This absolutely fits with the kind of being that Giratina is, incomprehensible to the average living entity, ANTIMATTER exiled to alternate reality so that the entire world does not explode when you exist. but this song makes you explode because it is so CRAZY. fun pokemon song to look at sequence data of, I know i said that with Colress but it's true here too, Game Freak is REALLY GOOD AT NINtendo DS sequenced music creativity!!!!!!! So much packed into ~11 channels, watching panning and pitch bend data go crazy and patches changing every 2 seconds is fun lol. I LOVE REVERSED SOUNDS ITS ALMOST LIKE SOMETIMES PEOPLE CA