initiatives
Well, it’s been officially a month or so since I returned from Taiwan. I have one last leg of “Fallback” to cover before I can move on to my Taiwan travels, but I seem to have lost all the schtick I typed up in Taiwan to catch myself up.
Lovely.
So while I am searching, I’m going to leave these three songs for you all to enjoy in the time being. I haven’t written a music post in over a year anyway. Shame on me, really. All three are of of Japanese origin but I promise you that they were randomly selected by my music player. Hope you enjoy!
All files uploaded onto savefile.com. All music is respective property of the artists’ and their company. I don’t any of these. Don’t sue me, please… Buy their CDs and support them!!
——————————————–
+ [Niji] - Kazunari Ninomiya
- While Japanese boy band pop is not exactly my favourite genre of music, I’ve slowly come to admire the group [Arashi]. Unlike many other groups, the members of Arashi seem to have concrete personalities and multiple talents, making them somewhat less easy to toss aside than other groups that have been produced by the ever-entertaining and amusing (though exemplary business empire) [Johnny's Entertainment]. If I had to blame one person for my descent into the fangirl universe, it would be Arashi’s [Kazunari Ninomiya] (affectionately called “Nino.”) A fair actor well known outside of Arashi for his drama roles and even in Hollywood as a soldier in Clint Eastwood’s Letters to Iwo Jima, Nino’s singing has greatly improved over the years. His dancing on the other hand - well, we’ll see. The lyrics for “Niji” were written by Nino himself and in concert performances of the song, he sometimes plays piano. This particular song is one of my personal favourites for its emotional range…and violin solo…
There are many songs I want to recommend by Arashi, but I think I’m just going to make an entirely Arashi post someday instead.
+ [Kane wo Narashite] - Bonnie Pink
- [Bonnie Pink] (original name Asada Kaori) is less famous than she should be. Though she has a successful career, from singing anime songs to multiple collaborations with the insanely popular hip-hop duo [m-flo], there is not much glory or celebrity surrounding her and her unique, talented voice. This song was used as the opening music for the recent video game [Tales of Vesperia] and I can’t stop listening to it.
+ [Brand New Breeze] - Stella Quartet (from La Corda d’Oro)
- This song introduced me to that element of life known as “obsession.” I fell in love with this quintet arrangement of the anime [La Corda d'Oro] opening song “Brand New Breeze” (by [Kanon]) on the airplane en route back from Taiwan, but could not find it anywhere when I got an Internet connection back up. In fact, the CD on which it was originally released (a special St. White’s Day edition OST) seemed to be all sold out too. I can’t recall how I finally found it, but I must have listened to it about twenty times in a row after that - and then started to arrange for myself. This arrangement is a true example of how to arrange music from a standard pop song into a beautiful chamber piece.
A few side notes: The original “Brand New Breeze” was based around Edward Elgar’s “Salut d’Amor,” a ridiculously famous violin solo piece. The fashion in which this piece is integrated into both the pop song and the quintet arrangement is just adorable. Also, I have never seen or played La Corda d’Oro. The first book of the manga was cute, but I’m too busy to keep with it for now…
August 16 2008 09:10 pm | games and music and travels
pocket universe » serious sparking on 17 Aug 2008 at 8:32 pm #
[...] to video game music. When she listened to one of Kazunari Ninomiya’s solo songs (see [previous post]) and said she liked it, I knew I had stumbled on something rare (She also admitted that he was [...]
humane on 17 Aug 2008 at 8:37 pm #
I will listen as soon as I am on the other computer! ^_^