I first encountered Gabriele Roberto over the net, and he seemed like a light-hearted, fun-loving guy. But I seriously thought that he was joking about having been contacted by Grand Funk. I wouldn’t believe it until his profile was posted in the Grand Funk website… and soon worked with Yoko Kanno, and the rest is history.

(no, he’s not Gabriela Robin )

Taking an excerpt from his biography at his official website

After his Diploma in Composition achieved in Italy in Alessandria Conservatoire he completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Composition at the Royal College of Music in London studying with Joseph Horovitz and Julian Anderson.

…

Since November 2005 Gabriele began to work for GrandFunk Inc., leader Japanese music production company. He scored the orchestral soundtrack for the last movie by Director Tetsuya Nakashima titled “Kiraware Matsuko No Isshou” (Memories of Matsuko) . The music has been recorded at Victor Studios and conducted by Mr. Yasuaki Itakura, director of the Tokyo Sinfonietta.

Since then he continues to live and work as a composer in Tokyo, writing music for tv commercials and orchestral arrangements for JPop artists (M-flo, Bonnie Pink, Chara, Yukawa Shione) published by Warner Music, Universal and Toshiba Emi.

Now, Gabriele’s newest work is for the soundtrack of the Devil May Cry anime, from which the composer is named as “rungran”. The name is a collective for all the composers who wrote for the anime, and somehow resembles the name of the studio. Rungran, Grandfunk. Say it out loud.

Mai: How did you get involved in making the soundtrack for Devil May Cry?
Gabriele: Grandfunk is my agent now, and they are the producer for the music of Devil May Cry, so the step was easy…

Mai: How many songs did you make for the series?
Gabriele: I wrote nine songs and five or six of them, I guess, are in the OST’s cd.

Mai: How did you go about composing the music? (more…)

The lyrics section has been updated to have additional Ghost in the Shell: SAC lyrics for Replica and Take a Little Hand as submitted by Virgilius Sade. His lyrics are characterized by English words that fit the lyrics best, sounding as close as possible to the original sang lyrics which remain unpublished.

Read Virgilius’ newest transcriptions in these pages:

Replica
Take a Little Hand

The next update is for the Ragnarok 2 lyrics, collectively submitted by roxfan, Pulseczar, and yours truly.

Read the lyrics to Intro Theme here:

Intro Theme

The Works section (Gabriela’s Discography) has also been updated with a Ragnarok 2 entry.

(more…)

Anime News Network has announced that Yoko Kanno will be scoring part of the music for the new Macross TV series.

Here is a snippet of the news:

At the Macross 25th Anniversary Live: Minmay meets Fire Bomber concert in Tokyo Saturday night, co-creator Shoji Kawamori (Escaflowne, Aquarion) and voice actor Sho Hayami (Max of the first Macross series) announced that Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, Macross Plus) will co-compose the music for the new Macross television series and that the heroine Ranka Lee will be played by Megumi Nakajima (pictured right), an 18-year-old newcomer selected by a nationwide singing and acting audition in Japan.

Read more at the ANN page.

There is no news on whether there is another official composer for the animation, so my hunch is that there isn’t another major composer - however, there will be a good number of songs that are not written by Kanno. Let’s wait for further news to find out more about this series.

And yes, I am excited!!!

(more…)

Hi everyone, there are three new trailers/CMs in the Aquarion official website. I need another set of ears to verify that I am hearing a new version of Sousei no Aquarion in the second and third trailers. It sounds like another voice is singing in unison with the original melody… could it be Bless 4?

click the image to go directly to the movie player

(more…)

First of all, many thanks to roxfan for the contribution We now present an official set of lyrics to Intro Theme from Ragnarok. A corresponding page in the Lyrics section will be created soon.

Ragnarok: Intro Theme
Vocals: Yoon Hyeon Soo
Lyrics: Gabriela Robin

nie bla nie je
nie zai pan ma nie
na pa gi nas ti ka to nami
les ta le yo
pis ta ni kul pra ze ilu dumina

shutr ka shutr ka
nash ti ka piensa
poz ni no il brah lo ti raru
i ban ma nie
i vush ka na nie ju da yu

leska nozna mie
ka na mi
leska nozna mie
ke do zhe

lalalala…..

piennali piennali
ragnarok
poshtoke poshtoke
ragnarok

Japanese “Translation” of the lyrics:

まだ来ぬ　まだ見ぬ
手にしたと思うと逃げる
小指の爪ほどの大き 綿毛、花
明日にはそこにあった気配もない

丸く丸く
幸せなせかい
どうしたらここにとどめられるの
ここでない遠くで
きのう確かに歌を聴いた気がするのに

小さな

から見ている
小さな窓から呼んでる

はるか昔のラグナロク

Romanization: (more…)