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First of all, thanks to James P. Wong for sharing the images of the packaging and the wallpapers to us. He is also popular for managing the YKProject Website, which is one of the first few English Yoko Kanno pages ever! Based on the images, the wallpapers are mostly widescreen shots taken directly from the animation. The CD designs have also been changed to minimalistic to match the overall transparent packaging theme.

Now onto a review of OST4-. As reported before, all the songs are mixed into one long song, but the word “mixed” is somewhat a misnomer. The integrity of the music is intact, the overlaps between two songs are minimal.

The following track segmentations of OST4-’s sole track, Smooth in the Shell, and are taken from kacper’s post in YKDB. To find out where they were played, follow his and Ridley44Lev’s posts.

First, a sample of my favorite portion of this album:
[mp3]http://gabrielarobin.com/clips/eargasm.mp3[/mp3]

#01 00:00 This is a very bare piece with percussions, light lead, base guitars and piano. Scott Matthew-like vocals comes in towards the middle and sings in the same fashion as he did in Dear John - a shadow of a voice hovering just behind the instruments.

#02 04:10 A dark piece littered with percussions, with most instruments seemingly echoing across the board and occasional melismatic vocals that give an eerie atmosphere to the song.

#03 06:48 A low, bubbly synth starts this piece off, and gets accentuated with heavier beats as the music progresses. This track is very experimental, with instruments cutting off here and there, and high differentiation in synth dynamics. I could almost hear parts of the synth to Inner Universe in this song.

#04 10:56 This piece contrasts a very low, hovering base and high violins that exude tension.

#05 11:58 Following the former track, this track is very heavy on synth and its energy gives the image of action or hostility.

#06 13:31 Easily my favorite piece of the lot, scathing violins start this piece and has a really sublime trance tone to it. A perfect mix of classical and techno without being cheesy. It also has melismatic, hovering vocals towards the middle. This may be the song that everyone would want to extract from the whole mix, and would be a perfect stand-alone song because it is complete in terms of musical progression which most other tracks miss.

#07 18:45 Just like #04, this track is very short and tense, and has a march alternated with high tinkly beats.

#08 20:10 A very mild electronic track, almost acoustic in nature with its guitars and high tinkly synth.

#09 22:45 This has to be the first, low energy, mysterious track of the lot, almost reminiscent of the melancholic scenes in Escaflowne the movie.

#10 26:18 A smooth, almost jazzy track, but not leaning towards Cowboy Bebop at all. This one you could chill out with at the lounge

#11 30:10 This slow piece evokes a tragic mood. Too short.

#12 31:12 Reminiscent of the synthesized energy of Run Rabbit Junk or Dear John with an orchestra instead of a rapper or singer, this song is very strong and cool, yet very very classy.

#13 34:03 The transition between this song and the one before it is not smooth at all. They just start and end at one point. This has to be another experimental track, starting off with a synthesized echoing voice as a synth accent, and then turns into a rhythmic jazz track. A rap duo interrupts the jazz track, the first of them sounding very much like Mike Shinoda, but probably not I love the brains vs. brawn theme of the lyrics too.

#14 39:30 This track is primarily a flangering rhythm over some synth and then ends with a sublime saxophone.

#15 41:54 Now, for a track that has a “feel” that Kanno regularly uses as a climax song for every anime that she does, only this time, accentuated with synth. Although as the track progresses, I’m quite unsure about the theme of this song as it alternates between soft and energetic.

#16 45:05 This song caps the mix, and just like #15, evokes a certain “end” feel. Kind of sad with its lone piano followed by an orchestra. It also rises up towards the end, like feeling happy after succeeding over a difficult feat and looking back.

Tachikoma USB songs - Well I’m pretty tired from that lengthy review, but to give you an idea of the songs in the USB drive, they are mostly similar in theme to the ones in the Be Human album. The Tachikoma Song at the end of the 2nd gig, which a lot of people are looking for, is also in this set

Related Articles:

• Ghost in the Shell: SAC CD Box Minor Update
• Ghost in the Shell OST 4 - Packaging and Contents
• Ghost in the Shell: SAC... OST 4! (updated)
• Yoko Kanno Production IG Interview Part 2
• Unreleased Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Music

This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Yoko Kanno News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.