The logo was first published in the Aquarion Official Blog last July 1, 2007, and bore the words “Aquarion: The Movie”, with no other details in it.

Now we have further confirmation from the Aquarion blog that a movie is indeed going to be released, and a new special Aquarion movie website is published, but only has few details. The title of the movie is officially “Gekijouban Aquarion: Sousei Shinwa Hen & Ichi Hatsu Gyakuten Hen”, roughly translated, “Aquarion The Movie: The Genesis Mythical Chapter and One Departure Reversal Volume”.

Based on the website, the movie will have a roadshow on September 2007, and has a listing of cities, movie houses and contact numbers that would air the movie. Furthermore, the website footnotes also mention that Kanno and Hogari team made the music to the movie.
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That’s a really pretty photo of Kanno, isn’t it? The image could be seen both in Yoko Kanno’s Grand Funk Inc. artist page, and also in Kanno’s recent interview from @nifty regarding her upcoming CD release for Darker Than Black.

View the first part and the second part of the interview at the @nifty website.

For the interview, here is what little I could gather. Director Okamura instructed her to make music that has the feel of an old, 1970’s to 1980’s detective drama.

There are two vocals by Mai Yamane in the OST, one is “No Ones Home”, and the other, “ScatCat”. “No Ones Home” is a song about a man’s death, “ScatCat” is a song for Mao, the talking cat. Apparently, Kanno likes Mao (what do you know, she loves the animal!).

The two songs previously mentioned to have lyrics by James Wendt are also apparently performed by him. They are “Deadly Work” and “Blend In”. She mentions that James came from a Swedish band, and has rough vocals fit for the old-themed music of the anime.

The latter section of the first interview talked mostly about the lead character Hei (more…)

The Darker Than Black OST 1’s tracks have been published in CD Japan. They are as follows:

1. GO Dark
2. HOWLING(TV size) by Abingdon Boys School
3. ハイヒールラナウェイ (High Heel Runaway)
4. Tenderly
5. シド (Shido / Visibility)
6. Was
7. Outside
8. No Ones Home
9. Guy
10. ScatCat
11. ケイヤクシャ (Keiyakusha / Contractor)
12. Shadow
13. クロ (Kuro / Black)
14. Deadly Work lyrics by James Wendt
15. テンタイカンソク (Tentaikansoku / Astronomical Observation)
16. BlueCat
17. ツキアカリ (Tsukiakari / Moonlight) TV size ver. by Rie fu
18. Water Forest
19. Blend in lyrics by James Wendt
20. インのピアノ (In no Piano/Yin’s Piano)

Two of the tracks are not by Yoko Kanno, and they are the intro and ending songs “Howling” and “Tsukiakari” by the Abingdon Boys School and Rie fu respectively. Here are the promotional videos of these two songs:
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click the image to view the 30-second long TV ad

The music of the new Kirin I-Tea advertisement in Japan is composed by Yoko Kanno. Watch the advertisement at 15 second and 30 second lengths. Grand Funk Inc. has already updated their website to contain this CM, but it doesn’t have a music sample as of yet.

Yoko Kanno has previously composed two other music for Kirin CMs, Kirin Fire and Kirin Yoicha, and also arranged the song “So Far Away” by Carole King for Kirin Nama Oolong.

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Fans of Kanno (or game music in general) who live in Germany may be interested in attending the Fifth Annual Symponic Game Music Concert to watch a live performance of some background music from the Ragnarok Online 2 OST. The Fifth Symponic Game Music Concert is a series of annual European concerts of video game music. They are held as official events of the GC (Games Convention), a trading fair for video games in Leipzig, Germany.

It has also been announced that Josef Kruse will be performing in the event. He is a soloist at Prague’s boys choir “Pueri gaudentes”. The choir demonstrated its quality at numerous concerts in the Czech Republic and also on concert tours in many countries abroad. It might be well to assume that he has been invited to perform the Intro Theme, which uses a male soprano for vocals.

The orchestra to perform the music is the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague and choir, a symphonic orchestra dedicated mostly to video game music recording, managed by musical company MUSA, Ltd.

Well-known game music composers such as Nobuo Uematsu attend the concerts, so there might be a chance that Kanno could drop by and sign some autographs. I would assume that she has been invited, but given her busy schedule, she may have had to decline.

Go to ticketonline.de for ticket reservations.

Details:

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