Ōban Star-Racers

[EarltheSneak]

Holy CHRIST. That's....the worst thing I've ever heard out of Kanno. A piece of my soul will die if I have to buy a CD with that junk on it.

[misssakura]

Holy CHRIST. That's....the worst thing I've ever heard out of Kanno. A piece of my soul will die if I have to buy a CD with that junk on it.

Its not great but then again you never know what the producers asked her to make...

Actually its weird, re-listening, the song reminds me of Honey Comb by Maaya Sakamoto XD

[djsilt]

the second part sung in french is the french opening (very much shorter than the japanese one), they mixed the two versions for this trailer.

[misssakura]

Its a well made transition then 

[seba_boi]

That opening sounds great!... Hope to hear the full version!...

[gaburincho]

Holy CHRIST. That's....the worst thing I've ever heard out of Kanno. A piece of my soul will die if I have to buy a CD with that junk on it.

well, I really really appreciate EarltheSneak point of view. Tough the way he has to express it it's very direct...

Yes, there is no Kanno's magic touch in it...

I prefere the trailer made by the other young japanese composer, Taku something. (what do you think, Earl?...)

Maybe not enough time to do it properly?... Maybe for the French market, so far from the audience she really care to hit?...

[Jeral]

I think it's a fun little number. Though you can hear YK only in a few little details, and probably only if you know that she's composed it. I guess it has been produced to be very mainstream. It's for a European release after all.

On a side note: Anybody notice that none of these people have a nose...?

(How do they smell, you ask? - Awful, from the looks of it.

Sorry for the pun. I couldn't help it...  )

[John Mora]

I think it's catchy.

[TenAJs]

Holy CHRIST. That's....the worst thing I've ever heard out of Kanno. A piece of my soul will die if I have to buy a CD with that junk on it.

Your response is many degrees harsher than mine, but I agree with your distaste of it.

I don't fully buy the theory that YK complied with the producer's choice of music. She's known to go about her own way, hasn't she?

[misssakura]

Yeah but a good composer should be able to fulfil a brief, not go off on their own tangent just because they feel like it....

[gaburincho]

that is the point.
aiming the director's request but adding (or at least not losing) your personal music touch.

[EarltheSneak]

I have no doubt that Kanno was requested to produce a song that sounds like it fell out of the Oricon top 10 chart of mindless pap. The shame is that a composer of Kanno's stature and talent actually agreed to sink so low. I would have thought she had higher standards than to create something so artless, even by the barrel-bottom standards of her previous Akino songs. God, it's even got the mid-90's techno orchestra keyboard hits and the 80's jpop style voice doubling chimes. This is like Angelo Badalamenti writing a song for Hillary Duff. Awful.

I haven't seen the other trailer, but apparently it was done by Taku Iwasaki, so it doesn't surprise me if it's good. He's a great composer.

[seba_boi]

"How could Yoko Kanno sink so low"?... Man, you talk as if she's your best friend who just betrayed you...  : There's lots of bushwa in the field of entertainment... What they do is up to them...

[Crispain]

I think it's bad habit to judge the quality of a composer (specially the size of YK) only by your own taste (or a bunch of people)

My point is that Yoko is the composer who can or have fulfilled the taste of everyone along her career.

[John Mora]

I have no doubt that Kanno was requested to produce a song that sounds like it fell out of the Oricon top 10 chart of mindless pap. The shame is that a composer of Kanno's stature and talent actually agreed to sink so low. I would have thought she had higher standards than to create something so artless, even by the barrel-bottom standards of her previous Akino songs. God, it's even got the mid-90's techno orchestra keyboard hits and the 80's jpop style voice doubling chimes. This is like Angelo Badalamenti writing a song for Hillary Duff. Awful.

I think this might be overreacting to a 90 second song. 

[EarltheSneak]

"How could Yoko Kanno sink so low"?... Man, you talk as if she's your best friend who just betrayed you... 

Your comment doesn't follow from mine. I do not talk as if she's my best friend who just betrayed me. I talk as if she's an artist of great ability who's produced cheap hack work that's far beneath her. It's always disappointing when this happens.

I think this might be overreacting to a 90 second song.

Why? Short runtime is no preclusion against an odious banality of ideas.

[misssakura]

that is the point.
aiming the director's request but adding (or at least not losing) your personal music touch.

Does she really have a 'touch'? I mean, she has produced thousands of songs, I don't think she always has a sense of style. She has produced some godawful songs over her career too it isn't like this is the first. I was expecting something far better but then again, her agreeing to do the songs in the first place seemed odd to me. It didn't seem like the sort of show she would affiliate herself with.

[roger343]

It's not her best song, I agree in this point. But there are music producers only produced worse songs that this. If one of these producers would have written this song, people would say that it was "great". But everybody expects more from Kanno Yôko-sama, so lot of people don't like the song.

[djsilt]

that sure is not her best track ...  but i don't think it is SO bad, it fits quite well the opening animation and the atmosphere of Oban

[roger343]

It's not her fault, it's because of the animation 
I agree with you djsilt

[Goliath]

I don`t know what you guys have against it o.O... it just fits the show.... 

[seba_boi]

Your comment doesn't follow from mine. I do not talk as if she's my best friend who just betrayed me. I talk as if she's an artist of great ability who's produced cheap hack work that's far beneath her. It's always disappointing when this happens.
 

Uh-huh...... And am I to assume you know what's best for Kanno?...

[EarltheSneak]

Uh-huh...... And am I to assume you know what's best for Kanno?...

What does "what's best for Kanno" have to do with anything I've said in this thread?

[John Mora]

Uh-huh...... And am I to assume you know what's best for Kanno?...

What does "what's best for Kanno" have to do with anything I've said in this thread?

It's just that comments like this:

I talk as if she's an artist of great ability who's produced cheap hack work that's far beneath her.

You sort of assert your opinion as fact and make it seem like you know this was a bad song and she shouldn't have done it, which sounds like you know what she should and shouldn't compose for. At least, that's how it appeared to me.

[mike_s_6]

I have another complaint. The video from the site doesn't buffer right for me. *ugh*

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hRx5tHU0bpk&search=oban%20star

The guy sitting to my right said that he liked the SONG. Asked me about the animation and I don't know a thing :p It can't be that bad then Although I would have to say I'd like it a bit more if the synth was toned down.

I don`t know what you guys have against it o.O... it just fits the show.... 

Me too. *scratches head* Is it too cute or something?

[EarltheSneak]

It's just that comments like this:

I talk as if she's an artist of great ability who's produced cheap hack work that's far beneath her.

You sort of assert your opinion as fact and make it seem like you know this was a bad song and she shouldn't have done it, which sounds like you know what she should and shouldn't compose for. At least, that's how it appeared to me.

Well I should hope I made it seem like I know it's a bad song, since I do in fact know it's a bad song, and conveying this was the thrust of my post. I consider it a shame Kanno wasted her effort on it.  As for "knowing what Kanno should and shouldn't compose for", I don't remember bringing my magic divination ball in to the thread (it's $20 if you want a reading), I don't remember saying anything about Oban Star Racers itself, and in any case, I don't remember staking an interest in the kind of show she writes for. All I care is whether she writes good music or not. This time, she didn't.

[mike_s_6]

EarltheSneak: please define "bad song". If the song was so surprisingly beautiful but didn't fit the animation at all, what would that amount to? A jobless composer, I suppose.

[misssakura]

I don`t know what you guys have against it o.O... it just fits the show.... 

Me too. *scratches head* Is it too cute or something?

I think its more the fact that she hasn't created anything remotely new, even the instruments and synths used are so boringly predictable, she might as well not have bothered. I don't know, if you commission Kanno for an animation, it is because you want something special. I don't understand it, there are a billion other composers who compose this sort of music, music that fits the animation but isn't particularly creative or original.

I think they chose Kanno because her name sells the animation. Kanno most likely accepted because she loves France and since it is a French anime it is something quite special. But it just seems that they could have used an existing piece of generic J-Pop or gotten somebody else who specialises in that field to create the music, not Kanno. It does seem a little bit of a gratuitous use of Kanno. I don't hate the song it just wasn't what I was expecting from her at all.

[EarltheSneak]

I don't know, if you commission Kanno for an animation, it is because you want something special. I don't understand it, there are a billion other composers who compose this sort of music, music that fits the animation but isn't particularly creative or original.

This is exactly correct. This song is an assembly line job that sounds just like thousands of other disposable bits of fluff infesting the anime and Jpop charts, and could have been churned out by any number of middling producers. The chord structure is phoned in and painfully predictable with rote diatonic harmonies and well-traveled progressions, the melody teflon vapid, the sounds plucked from a mail order catalogue (as I already pointed out, techno orchestra keyboard hits? Those were already awful in 1992), and the rhythm is a mindless eurobeat loop. All of that spells "bad song".
Personally, I also find Akino to be an obnoxious and untalented singer. I'll allow this criticism is more in the realm of sentiment than judgment.

Mike, your post indicates that you seem to think Kanno's only two options were: "Amazingly beautitul song that doesn't fit the animation" or "Freeze dried vending machine junk". I assure you there was a third choice.

[Jeral]

Here's my collected thoughts on this topic (sorry, it got a bit out of hand once I started, please bear with me ):

I really don't think that it is worth getting so worked up over.

@Earl: I guess I can speak for everyone here that we understood that it really doesn't match your taste and that it is not what you expected from YK. But then again, in my experience she has never done anything the way I've remotely expected it (I'd have expected more electronics and less rock/jazz from Stand Alone Complex; just ONE example). But that's what I love about her. The musical surprises. But she will not be able to surprise you all the time. It will wear off after a while anyhow.

We all know that she CAN do better (more complex, more surprising, more innovative, more experimental, in composition AND arrangement). Though this one's really not a bad song (if you like it or not; but that will be just YOUR taste - I mean, heck, there's millions of people out there who LOVE music I personally don't like; if you face it there's surely more music out there you DON'T like than you DO like and tons of people who still spend their hard earned money on the stuff day in day out...). This song is just VERY straight forward and mainstreamy. But there's some nice modulations and transitions in it that have a certain YK taste. For me these little "bonuses" pep up the very conventional rest and make it a very sweet, slightly above average, energetic, good vibe pop tune. Like others have said: it fits the animation perfectly.

I believe that it is exactly what the producers wanted. And let's face it: YK has said herself that she sees her work exactly as that: her work. We know she's an artist in her own right, but she doesn't compose music for the music's sake, but always composes it to fit some kind of program (and the tastes of producers). That doesn't make her less talented. On the contrary. In my experience it's harder to compose and arrange according to someone else's taste than to your own.

You have to keep in mind that it's a European release after all. And even though YK might like France, I believe that she indeed might not have put as much effort into it, because it's not Japan. Europe may be all nice and dandy, but it's nothing you need to go out of your way for. That's just the Japanese way of thinking (if there's any Japanese present: This is NOT meant as an offense! It's perfectly alright.).

So in my opinion it's not a bad song, but "merely" a routine work. And there's nothing wrong with routine works, if it works for the show (and for the masses). A quarter base drum loop doesn't make a song bad, and predictability must not neccessarily be bad either. On the contrary: it makes the song more likely to be liked by many many many people. I know from (sad) experience that I can't share my love for YK's stuff (in all its diversity) with many people around me. The reason being that it sometimes takes repeated listening sessions to hear the ingenious properties of the stranger stuff (and be flashed by it  ). Most people don't take the time and cannot listen to but only HEAR music...