j1m0ne's blog

First full-length album in 3 years!

Track-by-track:

1. Vento is a nice Kanno-ish mostly-instrumental piece contributed by Kubota Mina. It’s not a very good indication of the 13 tracks to follow though.

2. Triangler still sounds as terrible as it did the first time I heard it.

3. What is Kazemachi Jet, a 2 1/2 year old song doing here… I don’t like the new arrangement, sounds limp compared to the original. The amplified (is it just me?) background vocals in the chorus are an unwelcome annoyance.

4. Remedy is very, very pretty. Simple melody, simple arrangement, simple vocal – works very well. I like.

5. Ame ga Furu is also very pretty.

6. Get No Satisfaction! is an interesting collaboration with ROUND TABLE’s Kitagawa Katsutoshi – a very happy song that definitely sounds like single material. I like Kono Shin’s upbeat arrangement.

7. Cover of Ao no Ether is excellent. Much prefer this stripped-down version.

8. Ooh, bossa nova….whoops, the chorus is back to pop. Hmmm. Ex-Superfly member Tabo Koichi’s Shitsuren Cafe is an interesting song with contrasting styles, and Maaya does well on both.

9. I must admit I was doing a little dance of joy when I learnt that SONIC BOOM was Maaya working with Ichikawa Yuichi from the Indigo, one of those groups I am thoroughly enamoured with. The song is a little more ‘rock’ than I expected, but it’s not bad. You can definitely hear shades of the Indigo in the song.

10. Oh lord, I had a feeling this wouldn’t work. BARGAINS are a not-very-active Jpop duo who wrote a lot of songs I didn’t like, and Peanuts unsurprisingly turned out to be a mess. The verses are sloppy, semi-rapped mumbo-jumbo lyrics, the chorus ill-fitting and just… Oh god, SKIP SKIP SKIP.

11. I like Saigo no Kajitsu a lot more now than I did when it first came out.

12. COLORS was one of the songs I was most looking forward to – surely a combination of ACO and Tim Jensen can’t be anything but win? Well… it’s not win. It’s just dull – I was actually expecting something a little more soulful like Lady Soul but I got a lullaby instead. Zzzzz.

13. Yokota Haruna’s Kazamidori is an unremarkable piano ballad, which is a shame because she can write better stuff than this.

14. Gitahiki ni naritai na is a nice way to end the album. All I know of Kanda Tomoki is that he works with Kahimi Karie, and I think it pretty much shows here.

・ I think the people still pining for the good ‘ol days of Maaya with Kanno will be disappointed with Kazeyomi – if you hate 30minutes night flight, there’s no way you’ll like this. It’s obvious that Maaya is continuing down the light pop style that she’s favoured in recent years, the choice of contemporary Jpop collaborators pretty much set the tone for the album.

・ The music does stand up well against the Kumaki Anris, Shibata Juns and Takeuchi Mariyas of the Jpop world, and certainly ups Maaya’s appeal to the mainstream record-buying public than Mizuki Nana or Hirano Aya. She’ll need to rely on casual purchases much more than those two, lacking the crazed otaku fanbase they have.

・ Personally, I was a bit apprehensive about how Kazeyomi would turn out, the snippets provided on her website prior to its release did not inspire much confidence. But like they say, don’t judge a song by 30-second samples! Overall, I’d give Kazeyomi a 6 out of 10 – while there aren’t any songs so horrible that I want to smash the stereo, there aren’t any real standouts either. I’m still willing to bet that Kazeyomi will end up being one of my top 3 fave seiyuu albums of 2009.

・ It’s nice to see that fans turned out in droves to buy Kazeyomi on its first day of release – index figure for day 1 (9,255) was the highest for a seiyuu release so far this century, though it had halved by day 2. Let’s hope people buy enough copies to keep it in the No.2 spot for the weekly chart.