Sakamichi no Apollon plus – more & rare Review
Three major releases from three different shows came out last July 25, 2012 – More Than Words, Love @ New Dimension, and Sakamichi no Apollon plus more & rare. Having watched Sakamichi no Apollon, it was easy to guess what the pieces would be in this release and so, I slacked on listening to it. The OST 1 contained most of the songs that were catchy and memorable in the show, so what did this CD contain?
As the publicity of the album has mentioned, the album contains songs as performed from within the animation, which is different from the OST 1 pieces which were album cuts. Sentarou’s first drum solo, several versions of Moanin’, and some quite unpolished jam sessions are available in this release.
The majority of the pieces however, are those that were used as background to the animation. For those who have not watched it, a good portion of the show displays muted emotions among the characters, and this is precisely reflected in the music selection. Of them all, “Ritsuko no rit.”, with its moderately light-hearted tone, was particularly memorable.
Easily my favorite piece however, is an intricate, lively piano piece “Kira Kira Road”, which stands out from the rest. Even people who have not heard about Sakamichi no Apollon would enjoy this piece! IMO, this is like Highheel Runaway from the Darker than Black OST 1 – it’s that beautiful piece to come back to.
As webmaster of this fan blog, I’ve been constantly getting messages and mail about this or that unreleased piece in this or that show. This CD should be the final nail in the Sakamichi no Apollon OST. It contains not just the background music, the eye catches, the live performances, it has even the pop-rock music that they maligned in-show. Take it to complete your collection 
August 9th, 2012 at 12:54 am
A lot of tracks in this album are from mabanua or Takashi Matsunaga. And Kira Kira Road is not from Yoko Kanno but from Takashi Matsunaga, the album pianist.
But I agree it’s a great music.
I also like kumori with its inverse piano keys
August 9th, 2012 at 2:33 am
It bears mentioning that many of these tracks, including “Kira Kira Road” and those awful 60′s pop songs, were not composed or arranged by Kanno.
I rather liked the remix of “YURIKA”, easily my favorite piece from the first soundtrack album.
August 18th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
my favorite piece of BGM from the series has yet to be released
i’m wondering if there will be another CD, as there is at least one song that still hasn’t been put out (episode 12: after kaoru tells ritsuko he’s going to college in tokyo, the teapot begins to boil. next kaoru is shown running away from the house while a song with pieces of “Blue in Green” chopped/sampled into it is playing in the background. favorite bgm piece!).
*sigh* i feel like this is “counting stars” or “jin in the rain” fiasco pt. 2. sounds like a mabanua piece maybe? hopefully someone can find it one day