Board 8 > [VGMC] d8: Ai[UE]OON vs Blooming Villain, Kanata vs Suite Photoconductivity

(+) Yeah! (+)

Posting a couple minutes early so I don't forget again. Reminder: yesterday's topic is open until 10:19.

Welcome to today's topic for Video Game Music Contest 14, a tournament of the best tracks from games, as decided upon by you, the voters.

Links:
Contest info - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss/edit#gid=320804650
Bracket - http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=473292
Discussion and results thread - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78524521
Bracket playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1REnVI_W6yELaDP6Zac8b0Wq
ToC playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RE-TQMj19D0k5nm-0zeH12J
VGMC compability sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lpX4faqnn_geI0y4i6MrZ2AXpV6SWXoWrIA6_eyx-yM/edit

Rules:
<cite>azuarc posted [p:936855809] in [VGMC] d8:... [t:78547571]...</cite> <quote> Who will you vote for in the second wild card match? Waterworks Area SEISMIQ (caps) Don't Worry King Noah MA*DA*RA (caps) Return to Oblivion loser of Scourge/Tonitrud loser of Apostle's Maraud/Colress loser of TIGAR/World of Spirit crazybusisgood Vote View Results Who will you vote for in the second wild card match? - Results (0 votes) Waterworks Area % (0 votes) 0 SEISMIQ (caps) % (0 votes) 0 Don't Worry % (0 votes) 0 King Noah % (0 votes) 0 MA*DA*RA (caps) % (0 votes) 0 Return to Oblivion % (0 votes) 0 loser of Scourge/Tonitrud % (0 votes) 0 loser of Apostle's Maraud/Colress % (0 votes) 0 loser of TIGAR/World of Spirit % (0 votes) 0 crazybusisgood % (0 votes) 0 Show Voting Form Posting a couple minutes early so I don't forget again. Reminder: yesterday's topic is open until 10:19. Welcome to today's topic for Video Game Music Contest 14, a tournament of the best tracks from games, as decided upon by you, the voters. Links: Contest info - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss/edit#gid=320804650 Bracket - http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=473292 Discussion and results thread - https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78524521 Bracket playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1REnVI_W6yELaDP6Zac8b0Wq ToC playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RE-TQMj19D0k5nm-0zeH12J VGMC compability sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lpX4faqnn_geI0y4i6MrZ2AXpV6SWXoWrIA6_eyx-yM/edit Rules:</quote>

Blooming Villain
Kanata no Rafflesia
Strike the Earth

AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

Persona 5 - Blooming Villain
REFLEC BEAT The Reflesia of Eternity - Kanata no Rafflesia
Shovel Knight - Strike the Earth

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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

AEIOU (and sometimes Y) is pretty good stuff! Exactly what I want from a fun rhythm game track <3. I thought I disliked Blooming Villain since I'm not a fan of most of the non-vocal P5 songs, but it's actually pretty good? Better than the P4 boss music anyway. I like it when it sounds darker more though. The chorus isn't as good.

I feel like I shouldn't have been so excited to get Rafflesia in, but I do still like it a lot! All that DJ Totto goodness. Photoconductivity is actually not bad, though it goes on a bit long.

I don't like any Shovel Knight songs, really. StE isn't great, but it's not good. I&E is fabulous. Very cool buildup.

Kanata no Rafflesia > AI[UE]OON > Innocence and Emptiness > Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ > Blooming Villain > Strike the Earth
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AI[UE]OON
Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

VOWELS has a lot of cool things going on! I wish it didn't have quite so many rhythm game bits, slow the tempo down a hair, let the parts I like breathe a bit more, but I can still appreciate it for what it is.

Blooming Villain sounds like a modern Persona boss track! It's a mid-tier Persona track IMO, doesn't do any of the things that I love in the OSTs, but it's still solid overall.

Rafflesia is a track that I am almost a 10/10 on but it has the painful rhythm game base drum push at the end of the chorus but I listened to it like a hundred times during noms and wound up falling in love with it anyways. i posted lyrics then too! you should go to some sort of log site and read them.

Photoconductivity is super eh for the first two minutes and then suddenly ultra intense. Still never really grabs me though.

Innocence and Emptiness is so cool I love the slow start it feels so weighty and religious with the jingle bells jingling, and then ti becomes this creepy thing but you still got the bells like a ritual's gone wrong and we get the original melody back too but faster and slightly out of tune with the creepy stuff and then CHANTING this song knows the way to my heart. Also, let's stop and talk about that art. Who designed those costumes? What person possibly thought it was remotely appropriate to put boob windows in people's shirts? like it literally looks like their boobs are exploding it's so bizarre. MEANWHILE IN THE MUSIC intensity has OVERFLOWED and we are at the second half of the track which feels like a counterattack against the creepy tension from the first half and then the flute feels like something out of a rhythm game the rhythm feel's a bit too powerful at this point maybe but I still like it. 1st half > 2nd by far. But that bit of piano near the very end is perfect my goodness.

Strike the Earth has an underlying problem, which is to say, it isn't that. it sounds like mega man music and I don't like most mega man music sorry >_>
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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

Man AI[UE]OON sounds like a YTPMV to me for some reason
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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

This day is... not all that impressive to me sorry. Aiueoon's my favorite of the day and I might still take Blooming Villain over the other four, though it feels less "memorable" to me or something, and Strike the Earth is kind of growing on me. Match 2 both songs involve stuff not my kind of thing but Suite Photocon incorporates stuff that also is so it can be kind of cool. Toc is Really close for me but like I said earlier, Strike the earth is kind of growing on me, and also I sort of feel like the 7:22 timer for Innocemptiness works against it for me, given the kind of song that it is.

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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

missed two days now ffs

REFLEC BEAT The Reflesia of Eternity - Kanata no Rafflesia
Baldr Heart - Innocence and Emptiness
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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth
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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Strike the Earth

Vowel song has an interesting mix of instruments and is unapologetically rhythm game. Pretty neat! Blooming Villain is fine but never stood out to me much.
totto. how is Kanata no Rafflesia so happy aaaaaaa
Remember when I supported I&E last contest and then never voted for it because it kept facing things I really liked? That was fun. Incidentally I really like Strike the Earth

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Blooming Villain
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Innocence and Emptiness

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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

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Blooming Villain
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

AI[UE]OON vs Blooming Villain: YOOOOOOOOOOOOO MYUKKE BANGERS. This is the usual MYUKKE flavor track but man its still always super cool to hear this type of stuff. The glitchy vocal switch ups get me everytime. Anyway whats the other song for toda- YOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BLOOMING VILLAIN. Blooming Villain is probably one of my top 3 P5 tracks so yeah going with this feels like a no brainer. I love the grungy opening feel that continues for the whole song until it explodes at the one minute mark with that dope guitar. This is another one of those cases where even if the song I voted for loses I'd still be alright with it.

Kanata no Rafflesia vs Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~: Kanata feels extremely empty to me until that breakdown at 0:45, where the song really starts picking up for a few seconds and then goes back to that emptiness. A bit of a sleeper. Suite Photoconductivity is also a bit of a sleeper but not in the same way as Kanata. I've described Suite Photoconductivity before as waiting for a drop that never happens. The song keeps building up and has been waiting for it to really start getting good but all it does is just keep building up. Regardless, the constant build up is still pretty good but man this song would be so much better if it just released all this energy at some point. Oh and also bonus points for the cool chanting.

Innocence and Emptiness vs Strike the Earth: At first I was wondering if the beginning ambiance would be the entire song for Innocence and Emptiness. Then at around the 2 minute mark it starts getting serious. A lot of good stuff going on at this point in the song. And then all that tension its got blows up at 4:30 and Im like YOOOOOOOoooo... oh, was that really it? A bit of a disappointing finish for something that seemed to really be building up to something good. And then we got Strike the Earth which is alright. Its just doing its thing and I respect that hustle. Its a pretty inoffensive track and is a bit catchy at times. Despite how Strike the Earth is really "just alright", i feel like i gotta give the vote to it still. Sometimes even the simplest tracks can be the biggest bangers.

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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

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Persona 5 - Blooming Villain
REFLEC BEAT The Reflesia of Eternity - Kanata no Rafflesia
Baldr Heart - Innocence and Emptiness

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Arcaea - AI[UE]OON
Dariusburst Another Chronicle - Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Baldr Heart - Innocence and Emptiness

Match 1: aeiou aeiou aeiou aeiou john madden (This accordion is very excited, I like very much.) P5 has some really good stuff in it, but this one I'm not feeling. It kinda reminds me of the hard rock guitar loops they'd always throw in PS2 motorsports games.

Match 2: Thank you, a full version of a rhythm game song finally. Your work has not gone unappreciated. Cool artsy music with artsy vocals, this is really just pleasant to listen to. SP~3T:B&S is one of those slow-burn songs that starts out kinda whatever but then gets really good sometime after the 3 minute mark. It's a lot like that Innocence & Emptiness retiree from last year, man that was a good song I wish it could come back. But yeah, this match is pretty close.

ToC: Oh hi speak of the devil. Yeah this song kicks major ass. StE is pretty great too, tough draw though.

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AI[UE]OON (68th) vs Blooming Villain (87th)
Kanata no Reflesia (124th) vs Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ (17th)
Innocence and Nothingness [30th] vs Strike the Earth! [14th]

AI[UE]OON is such a BIZZARE EXISTENCE its like.... rhythm game hi-tech with bagpipes and also chiptune and also ytpmv sampling??? it is very very good and very fun and I don't even have a lot to say about it except that this blend just... works somehow?? I really feel like it should not BUT IT DOES and it's glorious. Blooming Villain is pretty damn cool too, definitely subverts your expectation of a "Persona boss song" for a bit before it begins to peel back from the heavy rock and THE WALLS ARE GROANING AND MELTING AWAY and then oh hello there's meguro bass and electric guitar okay yep this is persona. it's a pretty cool song!! but not quite enough to edge out VOWELSN

Oh DJ TOTTO... I love you, I really do. But you've made much better, much more inspired music than this!! Kanata no Reflesia is kinda a worse-vocalist more-generic version of Simurgh no Mezame, which makes me really, really sad because Simurgh was also nominated and didn't get the attention it should've because this song was also there! (sorry i couldn't support simurgh........ i feel like i can't really complain here cause i didnt really help it out lmfao) ANYWAY it's still pretty damn good lmfao. Like... yeah it's damn good. Like I said, it's fuckin' TOTTO! But it's opponent is one of the best Dariusburst has to offer soooooooo oops! Bolt and Sword immediately within the first 15 seconds hits you with that very subtle very slow accelerando and you KNOW stuff is gonna happen soon. And it teases you too by adding one layer and then another and then another... and then finally at 1:52 THERES THE BOSS SECTION yup this does exactly what The world of spirit does by combining the stage theme into the boss theme and just SLAPPIN YOU with sound when the boss finally comes in. Once it does it just rushes you constantly with this frantic vocalizing and gives you a little time to breathe before it goes 10 to 100 in an instant at 3:18 and rapidly pulls back and forth and back and forth with the energy for the rest of the song god damn this song is just so good. Pretty strong match but definitely weighed in one song's favor for me.

OOF THIS MATCH IS SO GOOD UGGGH. I don't think I voted for Innocence and Nothingness a single time during VGMC13... (okay I checked bracket and I did actually vote for it in the retirement match versus Vesuvius but the other five matches with it i did not lol) but I really like it a lot!! It does kinda suffer a bit from the length; I like the intro until like 0:54 where it then drags on all the way until 2:03 where it starts to REALLY show its colors! The build up is pretty good as well but once the loop proper hits at 4:11... hot DAMN it gets REALLY good!! The main melody at 4:47 IS SOOOOOO GOOD HOLY MOLEY i forgot how much i fuckin loved this part oiashagjk holy suiyrh WHY CAN I NEVER VOTE FOR THIS SONG BECAUSE I ALSO LOVE STRIKE THE EARTH TOO MUCH nes expansion chips make me fly off my handlebars especially when its VRC6, I know I said I appreciated authentic VRC6 with MA-DA-RA but like I also really appreciate how Jake "did a DoDonPachi OST once "virt"" Kaufman can bend the chip over his balcony and make it his BITCH BLOOOoop. BLOOOoop. BLOOOoop. BLOOOoop. this match is even stronger than I thought when I started writing up fml. I'm sticking to my guns but I won't be happy about it!!!

Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ > Strike the Earth! > AI[UE]OON > Innocence and Nothingness > Blooming Villain > Kanata no Reflesia

Blooming Villain
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

Blooming Villain
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
-

Blooming Villain
Kanata no Rafflesia
Strike the Earth

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EAU NOO I
Raffle
Earth
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oops i forgot i hadn't voted yesterday

i might as well mention them so i can decide what to pick for favs bracket purposes
exec z and flightless are two... well-dressed songs that i have basically a non-reaction to. which is to say they're very underwhelming while curoiously still having good things in them. flightless is not a song that i think is very good like at all but it has acceptable aspects. exec z just wastes the sound design and general goodwill it has as the specific song it is in an ar tonelico game with exec in its name. unhype. a tough decision albeit not since i know i'd just vote the pso2 song over it even though it accidentally sounds like a fire emblem song instead oops. also somnom too very easily. i'd really take a lot of things over the songs in the first match actually. also, i still love bad midi karma oops i mean meaning of birth but i still wouldn't have voted for it lol.

ANYWAY, MOVING ON

i'm of the opinion that there was a lot of room for improvement when it came to the rhythm game songs that got in this time (rip all the really good cytus/deemo songs that didn't even come close to making it) but aiueoon is an exception it is quite okay. and quite okay is more than enough to get a vote from me with a persona song with so little to talk about

so anyway going back to the rhythm game point, i also don't mind rafflesia but i also don't feel strongly about rafflesia. i still do not feel as strongly about dj totto as a pretty decent number of other bemani folk and think that stuff like this is merely good. but at least it's something. that said, i'm sure you can predict by now where the direction of this sentence is going yes, merely good is not enough to get a vote from me with its opponent. there's a lot of nice little things in its rather understated shmup package

and here's the part where listening to stuff like bolt and sword and flightless in the same sitting may be getting to me. thank goodness i&e is the type of song it is because i was feeling even more negative about the first 4 mins of it than usual. credit to it for getting me back on board though i'm still not as big on it as i feel i should be. anyway, i like what the shovel knight soundtrack goes for and it definitely works. that said, megaman is just a flavour it's not a thing i want to look for all the time in videogame music. a very sometimes food. almost today but not quite, maybe i'll go look for it when i go shopping tomorrow

AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Innocence and Emptiness

Blooming Villain
Suite Photoconductivity
Strike the Earth

AI[UE]OON
Kanata No Rafflesia
Strike The Earth

AI[UE]OON

other people were def right with the 'ytpmv style sampling'. also has COOL ROBOTIC STYLE VOCALS earlier on. and bagpipes whattt!!! i love bagpipes thank you. it's like world music dubstep very good. deo really is right there's not a lot you can say about it it just kinda feels like it exists to jam out to. 'gamer music'

Blooming Villain

WOAH LOOK AT THESE SHADOW THE H[EDGE]HOG SYNTHS i feel like i am a robot living on the depths of the earth who lives to get rid of garbage. then a minute in it starts going all 'persona 4' i am my true self i will rebel against the man persona 5 is ok but it is not my favorite persona soundtrack. if we are talking main games it is p3. if we are talking side games it's probably like. p4arena or p4ultimax.

Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~

there's a bit of context to this song not a lot of people have mentioned, probably because it's not all that relevant to the song itself. in rtvgm it got a whole lot of 10s. people apparently love this song - or at least it's very good. i love the first minute and then it turns into eight minutes of orchestra dnb. i don't mind it but i don't particularly love the mass of this song either.

Kanata no Rafflesia

aw man the soft flung about by wind rhythms here i love them. they work really well with the soft violins/guitars/mallets and it just makes me want to chill and relax and mellow happily. i love how there's this countermelody to the vocals at points it adds to the rhythm of the rest of the song and lets me vibe in with my general 'laying on my back on a hill next to a tree' mental image even more.

Innocence and Emptiness

i really don't like the first half of this song lol. could best describe it as 'orchestra anime' i guess. as the song progresses it gets trance-y at points. eventually in the second half of the song it gets a umineko mixed with gust vibe that allows me to enjoy it a lot more. mental image for the first half of the song: i am staring at a blank sheet of paper. second half of the song: the paper suddenly folds into an origami crane and starts dancing in front of me.

Strike the Earth

The past couple VGMCs we've had tracks that don't really appeal to why I love virt - but here's a good one that shows off why I love his style. In chiptune, his more modern stuff [non-gbc - his stuff like Drymouth is a lot more reminiscent of Flowerguy's Pool Party than what i'm talking about] is very 'prog-folkky' it feels like the entire song is clipped to a rail in a good way. probably the heavy use of syncopated percussion that's something i love in music and it blends with the arps here to create a cool rhythm.

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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Strike the Earth

AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

Kind of a meh day, except Suite Photoconductivity got on my nerves for some reason.

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Blooming Villain
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

Blooming Villain
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness
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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Strike the Earth

Blooming Villain
Third Tune
Strike the Earth!

Rhythm game music continues to suck, as usual. The sad part is that Rafflesia could've been a really nice tune had it not been obligated to have obnoxious staccato elements because "ALL HAIL OUR BPM OVERLORDS."

At least the ToC match was great.

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Ai[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

What the heck did I just listen to? When I saw that it was only 2:22, I decided I'd listen to the whole thing even though I hated it immediately. I couldn't do it.

But ugh! I almost ended up listening to as much of Blooming Villain just in the short time it took ro write that up. Then I went back and finished up Ai[UE]OON, because why not at this point?

Oh good, there's actually something good in here so I can properly express my disgust for the first match. My phone is under the mistaken belief that "express" is a word that always needs to be capitalized. It does that with "male", too. It's also started doing that with "top", but that might be because of how frequently I do capitalize it (in discussions on sports boards).

And we've got another low-key good song. Maybe? It's a little frenetic, right after I called it "low-key". Also, there's a lot more of it so I have something to listen to if I need more time.

But I won't, because we've got Innocence and Emptiness to listen to! I forgot how long this song took to really get started. Or was I confusing it with something else from the same game? Nope, there it goes. Awful song for someone like me who often doesn't have the patience to let songs play out, but holy crap is the payout worth it! ...Wait, I think this is the song I was actually thinking about when trying to remember my opinions of TIGAR from last year. That's not even the same game! But it definitely feels like an "all phase mix" with the way it keeps doing new things. The only question is if this is going to be another 1-3-5 day or if Strike the Earth can get down into third or even fourth place. (It won't get up to first or down to fifth, I can assure you of that.)

Well, uh...that definitely didn't challenge to get second. I was right about it not being able to get below Ai[UE]OON...but that gave me doubts about if I was making the right choice, because I had to go back and listen to Blooming Villain again to make sure that I liked that less than this! I did. But it looks like it's a 1/2/5 day, except the gap between 3 and 4 is gigantic.

Innocence and Emptiness >>>>>>> Kanata no Rafflesia >>> Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Strike the Earth! > Ai[UE]OON >> Blooming Villain

I wouldn't actually say the gap between Ai[UE]OON and Blooming Villain is twice that of it and Strike the Earth!; I just wanted each gap to have a different spacing. I might say that the gap between the two songs in the second match is triple the Ai[UE]OON-StE gap, though. Still, there's a clear #1 and an even clearer delineation between top 3 and bottom 3. Yech, what a horrible day even with such a great song.

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Blooming Villain
Kanata no Rafflesia
Strike the Earth

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azuarc posted...

Posting a couple minutes early so I don't forget again. Reminder: yesterday's topic is open until 10:19.

W-what?!

Darn it

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Blooming Villain
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~

Advokaiser posted...

W-what?!

Darn it

It started late. This one started early. I will close the topic at 10:00:00, however.

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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

I almost took the anti-ASS vote, but I still have the "A".

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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Innocence and Emptiness

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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Innocence and Emptiness

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Arcaea - AI[UE]OON
REFLEC BEAT The Reflesia of Eternity - Kanata no Rafflesia

Baldr Heart - Innocence and Emptiness
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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

AI[UE]OON is my 148th favorite in the contest! I love accordions! I love bagpipes! and I like cool electronic sounds in the mix! if i was judging this based on solely instrumentation this would be a track I'm very excited about, but composition-wise I think I have a similar issue here to what I have with some of the mozell stuff. it just lingers too much on only pentatonic scale notes, like the most "neutral" feeling ones, uses them all too often/quickly for any exploration within that limitation to really be effective in any way to me past the first 2 seconds. like you might as well replace every single note in the song with the same exact note on the keyboard and it would feel about the same to me. Lots of "soloistic" layers don't feel imaginative or impactful at all, and honestly feel extremely cheesy because it keeps returning to the same 5 notes that have already played 900 times in the song already. So yeah i like the general style of this song but it does nothing for me in terms of composition.

Blooming Villain is my 177th favorite in the contest! I was expecting to like this more when I first heard it. I tend to at least slightly like persona music and this starts off in a very "edgy shadow the hedgehog" way which i also appreciate but, it just has too many large areas of emptiness for me to get into it. The first :56 has little dips into chromatic deviations from the tonic/4th/octave plainness to make it juust edgy enough to feel like an edgy song and i like that. but just man if some of these parts had more than one thing going on i could be very into the tone this sets, but the emptiness just leaves me wanting more. Like the contrast between :56-1:10's emptiness to the very melodic portion that shows up right after IS powerful, but i'd rather the contrast to be like...not whatever's happening at :56 and be some other thing. When the melodic section comes in finally though after a whole track of very neutral/tense/empty stuff, it's very striking and I do appreciate that about it.

Don't really feel very strongly here but my preference is pretty clear. Don't actually dislike either, but neither stand out to me. two tracks that feel very "neutral" that i'd love if they just did sliiightly different things than they do.

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Kanata no Rafflesia is my 86th favorite in the contest! Rhythm game music continues to be awesome, as usual! The happy part is that this track's already a really nice tune, but it's improved a ton by exciting staccato elements because "ALL"\\\\\\\3\\ this song makes me so happy : ) all of the alternating between major/minor/etc makes this one pretty effective emotionally for me. This is pretty contrasting with my complaints about AI[UE]OON because it's changing what scales are used in the song like every 2 seconds and the melodic line highlights every single one of those changes. It's the same sorta reason I'm so obsessed with G-O-S-U and many of my other favorites, though less extreme about it since the tonal center remains the same the whole time. It never feels like it's failing to explore options and I value it for how 'dynamic' that makes the melody and chords and everything else backing this, never feels like it's 'trapped' in a limited range and explores from its center just enough to feel alive and for every note to have a chance to feel effective. Paints a picture in my head of the environment in the background art in the youtube video and that's a pretty environment so I am happy that it paints that imagery to me. All around solid, only complaint is i find the way it ends with that triplet stuff really cheesy but luckily that is only like 2 seconds out of the entire thing

Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~ is my 39th favorite in the contest!!! This reminds me a lot of Neotokyo, particularly the elements I like most...has the same mix of artificial and organic instrumentation and very similar pace&flow. I love the echoy rhodes keyboard sound I LOVE DELaY ECHOES and rhodes keyboard is an instrument I usually like, I also really appreciate the impact the delay echoes have on tonality...they make normally consonant sets of note dissonant because of the previous note overlapping with one that's like a 2nd away from another, things like that. I like the sound of that a LOT, and as a result my favorite portion is definitely the first 2 minutes. The gradual oscillation between "tense dissonance" and "chill lounge chords" all in this echoy spacey setting really touches a bunch of my strongest areas of interest. Overall, throughout, the breakbeat stuff's neat and the choir enhances a ton for me too. I'm basically just "listing the elements in this song" because I like them all lol. It's hard to talk about this one because it's so easy to just get lost in it, so much of the appeal is abstract broad large-scale things rather than specific moments and i find it harder to talk about that kind of thing. the big brass BRWWWaahs are powerful even if they're pretty cyclical and simple just walls of sound recurring on the downbeat every few bars. The hypnoticness of those repetitive sections is undeniable because I find it hard to actually "pay attention" to them. Yet sometimes they DO imply actual chord changes, and are intense once they do so, but because of how much i've been lost in a mental abyss by the parts prior to them, they're actually not even like conscious? It's like i can't even think about "wow emotionally intense progression" it just happens. These looping choir parts are really mesmerizing. man this even has these long sustained violin notes held out just like neotoIMBRIUMkyo...during when all the breakbeat chaos is happening too. Dissonant repeating organ chords like 5:23 are amazing and remind me of N Decisive Battle from pokemon b/w. Actually in a lot of ways this track feels like a "polished" version of much of the stuff Junichi Masuda tends to go for, but realized in a much more full way. I LOVE stuttery drilling sounds in BREAKBEAT STUFf dariusburst has a sound i consistently like and this is no exception.

auuueoeoeou

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Innocence and Emptiness is my 37th/56 favorite ToC entrant!! Oh yeah I have actually ranked all these now so now they'll have a ranking number. Kind feel the way I do about this that I do about blooming villain and aeiueoon, i like the "style" it is but it's too musically plain to actually interest me beyond like "oh i like the kind of song that it is", and in this case it's not doing it any favors that it is 7 minutes long that doesn't really feel like it pays off for me. I don't feel like talking about any details about this one really because I've done it

[...continued from above]

Strike the Earth is my 24th/56 favorite ToC entrant! Shovel knight's ost does a bunch of things I like. Jake Kaufman's style appeals to me pretty consistently and I think he's actually (unlike a lot of artists) more inclined to focus on elements I like when limiting himself to limited sound formats like this too. Just melodically fun and cool little vrc6/2a03 sound design tricks all over the place. Cool thick harmonies show up in just the right places for me to feel like this is "cool" whenever that kind of thing happens. Fun appregios all over the place threading lots of moments together and keeping this busy so i'm never bored, always at least more than one thing to focus on if i decide i'm uninterested in one element or another. I used to like this song more than I do but there's definitely other Shovel Knight music I prefer, like both An Underlying Problem and The Alchemist's Haven which have both been in before I prefer to this at this point. oh well! this is still a cool song thank you song.

aeeuiiieiuuiiu
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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Innocence and Emptiness

Hard ones to choose from today!

AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

Definitely prefer the vocal tracks from P5; the last note of aeiou is anticlimactic, but for Blooming Villain it's like the entire song
Rafflesia feels like it's constantly trying to go somewhere but just never gets there, the sounds are nice enough though
I think the earth has enough to deal with right now mr. shovel knight

Apparently I can not fully focus on the songs while eating food (which messed me up yesterday) so I will not do that anymore

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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Strike the Earth

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AI[UE]OON
Suite Photoconductivity ~Third Tune: Bolt and Sword~
Innocence and Emptiness

Innocence and Emptiness was far better than I expected it to be

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AI[UE]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

Not a huge fan of the weirdly titled rhythm game song. I don't like any of the vocal samples or whatever, and it tries to do so many different things in such a way that none of it sticks. Some of the accordion parts are cool, but not enough to save the song. Blooming Villain I've always felt was underwhelming but it is definitely a cohesive song. The Shoji Meguro guitars are pretty neat, but I've never been of a fan of the very long parts when it's just bass and percussion. ...y'know what on second thought I think I actually will vote the rhythm game song, but I don't really like either here.

Kanata no Rafflesia has nice vocals. I don't really have anything else to say but I do like it. Suite Photoonductivity is 8 minutes long and while it does do things, none of them are thing that are particularly interesting to me, and it also has a tendency to repeat the same uninteresting held notes a lot of times in a row. This might be better in context while actually playing a game but I don't know. I will say the last 30 seconds are really cool but it was too little too late.
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AI[EU]OON
Kanata no Rafflesia
Innocence and Emptiness

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