On my world, it means hope.

I do have a playlist for my comic script, but lately I've been trying to pull together a playlist of the most energetic, GET WORK DONE NOW music I have in my library, in preparation for the long slog this month.

Funnily enough, one of the songs that ended up there was the Gym Leader battle theme from Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen. I don't know why, but every time I hear that song I feel a sense of urgent GOTTA DO SOMETHING NOW. Maybe it's because I played both Yellow and LeafGreen, so the song is seared into my memory. Or maybe it's because I battled the Elite Four in LeafGreen so many times that I associated it with heart-pounding, stressful, GOTTA WIN GOTTA WIN GOTTA WIN feelings. XD

It is a pretty intense song, though. I love the Gym Leader battle theme from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, too, but it's a lot more chill (like, "Don't worry, just a Gym Leader battle, nothing to stress about").

Gustav Holst's The Planets.

Oh my God.

Why have I never heard of it until now????

Mars, the Bringer of War

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity

First, I have to say: I love LJ's new header.

Secondly: Yay, a snow day today! Just what I needed...to catch up on all my work...

Okay, so The Last Story's soundtrack. I'm listening to the Premium Soundtrack (dunno why it's called that, it only has seven tracks) and typing my impressions as we go.

Overall: I'm really torn on this soundtrack. I love Nobuo Uematsu (meeting him at Anime Boston last year was totally wild), but this soundtrack has a downscaled feel to it in terms of quality--the instruments don't really sound orchestrated, more artificial/synth-like, which is disappointing. In terms of composition, I feel that a lot of the composition is nice to listen to, but also kind of bland and uninteresting. (By the way, I should mention that I haven't really listened to Uematsu's latest work. I tried listening to Lost Odyssey's soundtrack, but I really didn't like it.)

Track 1: Theme of The Last Story - Whoa, this song is all over the place. There's very little compositional unity; it feels very jerky and kind of random.

Track 5: Bonds - I thought this piece was kind of boring. It's more or less the same strain of violin repeating over and over again for the first half of the song, before finally changing a little bit. (I also have to confess, though, that I'm not very fond of overtly "happy" songs that are really cheerful and calm and never change mood.)

Track 7: The Flying One - Funny, this song is up on Youtube, but titled "Kanan's Theme." The beginning sounds almost exactly like the theme song on the website after a certain point, but the flute (...is that a flute?) is painfully artificial-sounding. Oh, wait--after the halfway point, it IS the song from the website. My bad. (At least the violin playing the melody sounds better than the flute at the beginning....) The melody is quite nice to listen to, I must say.

Battle songs (Tracks 2 & 6: Order and Chaos & Evil Beasts, respectively) - Quite intense and dynamic, pretty mood-setting. I think they work well as battle songs, though I can't see myself listening to these for fun.

On Youtube, I liked "Ariel's Tavern," an ambient piece (like the city theme), and "Seiren's Theme," which is funky jazz--a nice change of pace.

...I'm still hoping The Last Story gets localized. T_T (And what the heck happened to Xenoblade?? TT____TT)

Because I spent half my life some time listening to it. OTL

So, the music quality is absolutely a treat. How many other video game OSTs out there are over 90% orchestrated? The instruments make the songs sound incredibly rich and vibrant, and the Chopin piano pieces are also amazing.

That being said, the one major drawback of the OST is in terms of composition. Many of the songs don't have a clear, strong melody throughout, instead having the different instruments interweaving. Which works very well in some pieces, but some of the others blend together and are rather forgettable.

Even so, I have a handful of tracks that I just absolutely love:
- "Pyroxene of the Heart"
- All of the Chopin piano pieces (I've now become a Chopin fan, haha)
- Most of the battle themes
- "Dive into the vast expanse of plains"
- "Breeze the conductor"
- "Scrap and build ourselves -from Revolution-" (a totally awesome epic remix of Chopin's Revolutionary Étude)
- "Kyoutenka/Heaven's Mirror" (the Italian version--yes, I prefer it to the Japanese)


Random trivia: The Eternal Sonata OST has some funky track titles. After checking out the official (?) English track titles, I realized that it was a case of strange Engrish. For example, "Breeze the conductor" is actually "Conduct the Breeze," which makes a lot more semantic sense. I do, however, like some of the more poetic Japanese title translations; "Pyroxene of the heart" is a lot more attention-catching than "Jewel of the Heart" (even if no one knows what the heck pyroxene is).

It occurred to me recently that "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield is the greatest writer's song ever (even though I know that it's probably supposed to be a metaphor for life in general).

( Follow the cut if you're interested... )