New official SoM "arranged" album

[bastian]

Hiroki Kikuta was involved in this interesting idea which seems to take some of the best loved songs and give them slightly different arrangements.
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/music/sem/ ... ken2_somg/

[Kassidy]

About bloody time. I've been keeping an eye just about every day for something to surface on this. I'm somewhat disappointed that it's only SoM and not SD3 too, but oh well.

Also if the samples that play on the page are anything to go by, it's not terribly inspiring. I mean, it's good that the tracks are getting rearranged, but I was hoping for something a bit bolder than a reinstrumentation of the same base tracks. They let Ito have his way with every game he touched the soundtrack for, Kikuta gets to remaster instrumentation for one game. What the heck ever.

Tracklist with the original titles next to them:

1. Genesis: Angel's Fear (title screen)
2. Fantasies: Tell a Strange Tale (Empire towns theme)
3. Friends: Always Together (Overworld for waterfall)
4. Wilderness: The Boy Aims for Wild Fields (Overworld around Pandora area)
5. Memories: Colour of the Summer Sky (happy town theme)
6. Fairies: The Fairy Child (Salamando's / Happy Kakkara theme)
7. Mystics: What the Forest Taught Me (Upperland forest)
8. Avengers: Danger! (boss theme)
9. Winds: The Orphan of the Storm (you beat a boss)
10. Gremlins: Flight Bound for the Unknown (Flammie theme 1)
11. Prophecies: Premonition (Flammie theme 3)
12. Machineries: Steel and Traps (Undergruond City, Scorpion Army, and such)
13. Secrets: Give Love it’s Rightful Time (Mana Fortress inside)
14. Ballads: Pure Night (Pureland)
15. Mass: The Prayer of the Arctic Circle (Boss Battle v Mana Beast)
16. Truth: The Second Truth from the End (Ending theme 2)

[Kassidy]

From his Twitter, I guess that's all he intended to do.

While attempts to cherish the atmosphere of the original song, refining the sound that make up the sound more beautiful. I think was a difficult challenge, and finished in good works.

[Dr. Sheexy]

Man, those iPhone remake sprites look really good I need to get something to play that on somtime.

I like how the thunder sounds are in the premonition remix just like in the game, but yeah, all of it just sounds weird to me. It's all like, just the same stuff a bit less SNES audio format. Really wish he would have done like Kenji Ito did with the other stuff.

[bastian]

What I can gather from Google Translate on the main page for the album is that all he intended to do was alter a few basic things to make it a bit more fresh, but ultimately leave it pretty close to the original and then remaster it. And in that he's definitely succeeded. But, of course, I--like many of you--would probably have preferred brand new arrangements with real instruments or something instead of almost-exactly-the-same-but-not-quite arrangements. Still I'll take what I can get and will download this as soon as it is available.

[Zergrinch]

Is this related in some way to the 20th Anniversary Album talked about in this picture?



If so, I'm disappointed with the lack of Seiken Densetsu 3, when SD3 is clearly visible in the scan

[Kassidy]

I'm hoping that this isn't the only Arrange album Kikuta is involved in, and that there will be a second one per that flyer.

Someone uploaded the album to YouTube and it's definitely a nice clean version of the songs, but still wanted more from the album.

Best price I've found so far is here: http://www.yesasia.com/global/secret-of ... /info.html
Well, if you want the physical copy, that is. If you want it digitally, iTunes will work out less.