Canta per me

Just when I thought that all was lost in the world of Japanese music, I found songs that once again levitated my soul to the divine state known as “addiction”. If you’re wondering ‘where the hell is the philosophy in this’, you’ll be delighted to know that this post has absolutely nothing to do with my usual philosophical ramblings whatsoever. Yes, that’s right, this is the first of a series of occasional posts that I shall dedicate to the wonders of music (mainly J-related stuff). Anyhoo, let’s get started shall we?

Today I’ll be going on about two artists. The 1st being Itou Kanako. Seriously, I was totally addicted to ‘Kimi to Yozora to Sakamichi to’ (Myself;Yourself) when it 1st came out. But I recently searched for more of her music and found a number of songs that I felt were exceptional. Itou Kanako’s songs are usually either upbeat and fastpaced or soft with a low tempo. I prefer the former, though. ’Kimi to…’ had an unusually catchy tune to it, even though it had lots of repeats the flow was consistent and kept the listener (me, really) wanting to come back for more. I also reccomend the following songs, aside from ‘Kimi to…’ (List goes: Song – Anime/Game it comes from (my thoughts)):

• I Bless Thy Life – Angelos Armas (eroge, uh… this song is good but, the Engrish is… well Engrish is never good. Btw, for those who don’t know Engrish is just basically Japanese ppl speaking bad English in a Japanese manner, due to their language. Or as wiki puts it: grammatically incorrect variations of English, often found in East Asian countries.)
• Heartbreaking Romance – Hatenkou Yuugi, aka. Dazzle (this song is rather… weird, but I liked it for some reason, Engrish again though)
• Garasu no Kutsu (Glass Shoes) – Saya no Uta (yes, another eroge)
• Saya no Uta – from, you guessed it, Saya no Uta (this song is creepy~, in a good way though)
• Find the Blue – Chaos;Head (No, I didn’t make a grammar mistake. It actually IS ; followed by Head without spacing. Anyway, yet another eroge)

Her songs mostly come from visual novels (the majority of which are eroge) or anime adaptations of visual novels. I dunno but, songs for eroges (the ones with actual plot) are really good, with nice meaningful lyrics. Maybe its due to the good plots, but then again, I’ve never played an eroge before so I don’t really know…

The 2nd artist of the day is Kajiura Yuki. Her songs have this mysterious and fantasy feel to them, and are supremely addictive. Seriously, you can get high on these songs… ehem… Right, uh, where was I, ah yes. I’ll be looking specifically at Oblivious, which recently came out as the Ending theme to the first Kara no Kyoukai ~ Garden of Sinners movie. This song is composed by Kajiura and performed by the group know as Kalafina. They also did the endings for the 3 following movies (I think they’ll also do the EDs for the last 3 movies as well, 7 movies in total).

Anyway, the song itself is as expected from Kajiura Yuki, overflowing with this mysterious feel to it. The overture starts off with a fantasy-ish feeling, and gets the listener into the mood nicely. The tempo has a nice consistent feel to it. Uh… actually I shouldn’t be getting too technical seeing as how I know almost completely nothing about music theory. The pros out there, please don’t laugh at me if I get stuff wrong or say something stupid -_-’. Uh anyway, the chorus is excellent though, save for the… Engrish… Seriously at first I thought ‘We go further in the destiny’ was some Kajiuran (basically a made up language by Kajiura used in her songs as part of the chorus or the entire song) thing again. It sounded like ‘Hi to fanzer en za distini’, and I’m not gonna even go into the (possible) grammar errors, no offence Kalafina. Anyway, recommendations:

• Ensei – Mai HiME (pretty standard Kajiura Yuki song, but nevertheless, still great)
• Mezame – same as above
• Canta per me – Noir (this song is GOOD, so good I put it as the freaking title, so good I’m listening to it right now! There’s an Italian version and a Japanese version as well as a few remixes, but I definitely prefer the original Italian version)
• A Song of Storm and Fire – Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles (a must have. I was addicted to this for months on end. The song is entirely in Kajiuran, but it just contributes to that mysterious fantasy feeling)
• Sychronicity – Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles ~ Tokyo Relevations (this is sung by Makino Yui, who’s voice I felt didn’t fit this song very much, but meh, I guess main heroine’s seiyuu/voice actor gets priority. Still a kickass song nonetheless)

Well, that’s pretty much it for today. The anime songs can be downloaded from Gendou.com. I keep telling people this but, its free and has THOUSANDS of songs. You just need to register, sheesh. Oh yeah, don’t use download accelerators and the like or you’ll get banned, FAST. Uh, the others songs can be accessed through the all powerful being know as Google. I’ve found them so you should be able to as well…

Zomg, this post has become half as long as the essay I’m supposed to be working on now… Damn… Well don’t be expecting any quotes today. Addio.