Yuki Kajiura's Soundtracks [pre 2008]

Quick review for Noir OST 1 since i set it to play while working out and some thoughts came to mind :

Les soldats: I always loves that track, sincei find it very amusing, its like a parody of the overly serious church masses, since it makes to my mind an image of the priest starting to dance and then all they church gradually dancing too while they chant or play instruments haha

Snow: Amazingly touching, i can imagine a person walking sad while its snowing and seeing animals hiding in warm places.
Canta per me: I always loves the violin and the guitars here, and also Kaida's otherwordly chorus. I cant stand the Fiction version with accordion, just doesnt match with my ears. This song being the name of the website i have come to love, has a special place in my heart :)

Corsican corridor: Wow from the first time i heard this one in Youtube even before meaning Kerahana and thus CPM, i was instantly transfered to Corsica :D i cant imaging a boat saying with tropical lslands around and the hot sun on top

Solitude by the window: Everytime i hear this the scenes of the anime where Mireille is on the window come to mind, lovely sweet and rare combination of accordion and piano

Romance: This is so much spanish style, i love it :)

Silent pain: I never understood what the sfx in this one are supposed to be, sounds creepy though and i love the deep piano that's rare in Yuki's OSTs and songs in general

Lullaby: I like the english ver more because Yuriko doesnt scream those high notes like in the japanese.
violin <3

Melody: The part after the music box-only is just so amazing, i have heard it thousands of times,

Chloe: in this one, i can imagine a girl walking in the ocean bottom, as first she's naive and then meets some monster :), not sure how it fits to chloe character though.

Whispering Hills: Creepy and so awesome, the flute is otherworldly, and the voices make it seem like ghosts wander a valley full of mist

Zero hour: Very touching, the title doesnt really fit though.

Liar you lie: This gives the impression of a chase of some asian mafia.

Sorrow: This is like some more recent cello tracks but with more feeling put in the melody

Salva Nos: The perfect combo of electronic and classical music in Yuki's discography :)I love the troumpets at the beginning, the crazy violin, the multi layer bridge and of course the badass - e,guitar at the end while IMO is closer to metal genre

Do you think that the non-soprano voice in the climax is also Yuriko, since it doesnt really seem to be her to me, maybe its Yuki ?
 
I won't do a full review; but I really love Noir's ost. I listened to it in 2011, and I could easily see how this soundtrack brought Kajiura to prominence. While the music is simple, every track is really well thought out and features memorable melodies; on top of that, the sfx in this ost actually complement the music rather than replace it, so nearly every track is worth a listen.

The thing about this soundtrack that really strikes me in comparison to Kajiura's recent work is the sheer amount of diversity in sounds she used. In addition to the now standard strings, piano, flute, and drums, we have sax, bagpipes, xylophone, accordion, marimba, organ, and synth (that isn't just fx), I mean there's just so much variety in instruments I really have to wonder why Kajiura just spams strings these days.

While the ost hasn't really aged very well-some of that synth is just really janky sounding, I still adore this ost and put in my top 5 Kajiura works.
 
True, i was about to say that too, in the old soundtracks like that the sfx are combined with the musics while in the post-knk ones they appear mostly standalone, which is bad because they get boring. Why doesnt see relisten to her old works to remember these things ?
 
Well, time to review Noir:

This OST is what ignited my passion and love for Yuki 15 years ago, it was the first anime soundtrack i've ever heard. It stills fascinates me with its diversity of eclectic sounds, it's intertwined with the story, the characters, the setting...

One thing i've realized is the second OST is like an acquired taste, whether the first one is quite enjoyable for the casual listener, the second is harder to swallow unless you give the anime a chance and inmerse yourself in the plot, it's sad and gloomy at times, so i found myself quite pleasured with it around my thirties and my depressive soul tbh. I can't pick a favourite, since i love the whole thing xD (the only one i've never liked is whispering hills just because those weird chants, they make me feel uncomfortable).

Blanc dans Noir should've been a vocal album and the outtracks collection silly 8cm CD a standalone third OST with all the beautiful UBGMs :listen:. The anime was even released as BD in 2014, so why not re-releasing the soundtrack in a special edition? The OST is legendary in the otaku scene worldwide, such a wasted oportunity :stupidtable:.
 
So long story short, I reuploaded the 3 gamerips with altered reverbs. Double Cast in particular is worth checking out I think, as the difference on that one feels most significant on my foobar psf plugin. New archives have -rev in their filenames.

Slightly longer story:
I listened to the old Double Cast rip two days ago or so and hated how the reverb distorted audio data. I always thought it was like that because I didn't use the original game driver as I couldn't figure shit out when I first did the rip. I tried working on using that again and, to my excitement, I managed to figure it out (side note: it was really dumb why it did not work last year).

It sounded great at first but after a few minutes I realized what a can of worms it all was with what I presume were glitches and other stuff (not going to bore anyone with details). I went back to the generic driver but tried editing reverb settings. Sounds much better now on my foobar.

After finishing Double Cast, I redid Meguri Aishite (new filenames on this one, sry; they are still not original filenames though, unlike on Double Cast and BLOOD) and BLOOD from scratch too.

Unfortunately I still could not figure out how to use the original modules on BLOOD so there's not really any noticable difference between the old rip and this. I still don't know how accurate it is to the original PSX presentation either (since the PSP port seems botched).
 
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Did you updated the original posts with the new uploads? Not sure if I'm downloading the same thing hue.
 
Yea, I did. They should have -rev in archive filenames. BLOOD really isn't worth getting again IMHO (especially considering 100MB is the same lossless files that I had there before lol) but let me know if the first two sound better to you.

If you're using something else than foobar with foo_psf, it would be lovely if you could send me a conversion (mp3 would suffice) of M01 or M04 from Double Cast.
 
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don't laugh but

Boogiepop Image Soundtrack Review

daphne: an all-time fav! simply wonderful jazzy piece of music.

sad bird: a very calming song, I find the synth strings a bit weird though.

nepenthe 1 & 2 : talk about versatility. great tracks.

egotism: see daphne.

forget-me-not: ah see daphne again.

criss-cross: too beatsy for me but I can see how people might enjoy this.

embrace: see daphne. a wonderful calming jazzy piano piece. again so many layers of music in three minutes. and all work so well. Kajiura does the wind bells.

and then there is Wagner. what music. arranged by Yoshihisa Hirano. of course I love it to bits.

what an album.
 
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