Naoshi Mizuta’s ever compelling spread of music for Final Fantasy XI continues with it’s latest expansion pack “Final Fantasy XI ~Altana No Shinpei~ (roughly meaning crusaders of Altana) getting its soundtrack release at the end of April. More folksy gentle tracks with eastern tinges and epic battle tracks I hope then Naoshi!
Archive for February 27, 2008
A New Final Fantasy XI CD!
The Black Mages – New Album
The Black Mages release their 3rd album on March 19th entitled “The Black Mages III: Darkness & Starlight”. The rock group take tracks from Final Fantasy games and arrange them into big rock out anthems with some mental guitar solo’s thrown in for good measure. 10 tracks will be on the disc including “Opening~ Bombing Mission” from Final Fantasy VII, “Assault of the Silver Dragons” from Final Fantasy IX and “Momoro de la S^tono” from Final Fantasy X. Apparently the men themselves will sing on one of the songs too. We shall wait and see!
Imogen Heap: iBlog
Imogen Heap while waiting to go for album 3 (or 4 if you include Frou Frou) has a really random video blog detailing her week in action from the building of her recording studio, what she did during the week and just general babbling, all of which are very entertaining and shows her warm personality and good humour in the wake of disaster. It appears she’s also in talks over doing another song for the next Narnia film as well which would be fantastic as “Can’t Take It In” is a great song. Keep up to date by going here ans subscribing!
The curse of the one hit wonder!
Poor Vanessa Carlton. Tipped for dizzy heights back when “A Thousand Miles”, when her second album “Harmonium” was released in the USA no one seemed to pick it up. The first album deemed too pop for alternative fans and too alternative for the casual pop fans once you got passed the singles. As a result I had no idea at all that she’d even released a third album entitled “Heroes and Thieves” late last year! I had to hunt for “Harmonium” on import and now thankfully I’m fully internet shopped out I can find it with relative ease but what a shame that people who can clear shift records is again not promoted and faded out to survive on hearsay alone like so many others. I’ve just ordered the latest album so expect a review soon.
Akira Yamaoka – Silent Hill Zero OST Review
Akira Yamaoka continues to raise his profile with his latest Silent Hill soundtrack, this time for PSP game “Silent Hill Zero”, a prequel to the series. Here there are 26 tracks ranging from rock anthemic vocal pieces to ambient noise pulsating horror shows – more of the same then but it still feels unique as nothing else is quite like it and although the music has constantly swung slightly more and more mainstream and melodic with each offering, that’s not necessarily a totally bad thing.
Mary Elizabeth McGlynn is back on-board for the third time as vocalist. She opens the soundtrack “Shot In Flames” a chugging painfilled grungy track in similar vein to the SH4 vocal songs. “O.R.T.” is much more trip-hop ambient which harks back to more early 90′s music where as “Blow Back” bridges the two in an empty song that works much better much only bare bug being the sudden stop at the end. Finally there’s “Hole in the Sky” perhaps the best vocal track which drips emotion and ranks up there with the best of the vocal tracks.
Of the rest, Yamaoka brings a mix of ambient noises that will haunt you forever to looping drums that plod and plug along which disillusioned guitar plucks. “Meltdown” slowly envelopes you in mystery while “Evil Appetite” is a creepy minimal piano piece. “Wrong Is Right” harks back to the SH2 days of swirling ambient trip-hop while the Silent Hill complete freakouts are present with “No Tomorrow 3 & 4″ continuing on from the originals 1 and 2. “Monster Daddy” uses warped guitar wails to great effect and “Don’t Abuse Me” gives us warped flamenco like “The Last Marachi” in SH4. Other standout’s include “A Million Miles” with its eerie stop/start drums and chewed up noises, the electronic “Battle Drums”, the oriental sounding “The Wicked End”, the harsh percussive “Drowning”, the ethereal “Theme of Sabre Dance” and the dead church sounding “The Healer”.
Once again Akira Yamaoka delivers a fantastic soundtrack. It’s ambience transcends mood music and genre really, and it works best when listened to as a whole just like his other albums and you should do it with all the lights off for maximum effect. Superb
