One of our favourite composers here at Seikens, Hiroki Kikuta, has just released over the course of the past couple of months 3 new albums of material:

Nice Life as Wife (OST of Niisuma wa Sailor Fuku)
Love Relaxation (OST of Sakura Relaxation)
In the Sky, on the Water (OST of Sora no Iro, Mizu no Iro)

All of these are music from previously released games, but haven’t been released as albums before. They are music from his days of composing for eroge games (if you don’t know what that means, you probably shouldn’t be looking it up), not too long after his work for Square on the Seiken Densetsu soundtracks. The second track from Love Relaxation sounds remarkably similar to Colour of the Summer Sky.

OK, I know, I’m making this far too much of a habit, but I have been working on stuff, I promise. Anyway, as proof of that very thing, you will find another Doujin album added to our Soundtracks section, entitled Sanctuary of Mana, by project-Delta. An excellent up-beat arrange album that not only revisits the tracks from Seiken Densetsu 2/3 instrumentally, but adds lyrics to them from the hand of Saori, as well as some short Drama lines to some of the tracks.

Not only do we have short samples of every track available for you to listen to on the doujin page, as well as a description of each track (there’s only 4 so it didn’t take that long), but as part of Triple MMM we bring you the whole first track for your acoustic delight. Fear’s Night starts with a rhythm section that evolves into a xylophone and violin rendition of the latter part of Premonition from SD2 and builds up to an upbeat arrangement of Angel’s Fear, with lyrics.

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This weekend has seen a lot of updates, in contrast to our recent slow trundle along, thanks to Sheexy’s massive scanning quest and gallery upheave. Head on over to the gallery to check those out. Deques and Ailise meanwhile have been working behind the scenes to make the site run smoother and cleaner, so expect improvements to hit the site soon enough. From my end of things, I’m still working at getting things together for upcoming content. This is taking longer than anticipated due to work mainly, but also, I confess, as a consequence of Apollo Justice needing some help to sort out his clients. And things are only going to get worse on that front, because with Mugen no Frontier in my hands, and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (remember the one that I promised I wouldn’t play in Japanese so it did’t interfere with covering Heroes of Mana?) about to his the shops, there are only so many hours in the day left!

And thank you for keeping your suggestions coming in with regards to what you want to see. Some of them, funnily enough, are covered in two of the projects that I have running for the site as I type, so hope you enjoy those when they see the light of day.

But, I’ve made a start at least. As part of today’s Mana Music Monday, you’re also getting coverage of some of the more prominent fan-made albums inspired by music from the Seiken Densetsu series. Known as Doujin in Japanese (and not refering to certain manga spin-offs), 5 albums in particular have hit the market in past years that remix or rearrange tracks from the games. Head on over to our Soundtracks section and look under Doujin Albums for tracklists, samples, and where to buy them. I’ll also be elaborating on the reviews a bit more when I get the chance.

And to start you off, this week’s MMM is a complete track from one of those albums; Legend III -Mana- by Lukard, and the track is Battle 1 from Final Fantasy Adventure.

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The Soundtracks section has now been updated with the information on Square’s compilation of the Very Best of Yoko Shimomura’s works, Drammatica. Samples to follow.