So I bought the CD yesterday, and I've only had time so far to listen to the music I actually know (so that's only KH and LoM), but I'm impressed. Definitely one of the best Orchestral arranged soundtracks I've heard in awhile, but then, I think there haven't been that many recently anyway

I have to say though, the KH stuff is kinda hit or miss. I was kinda disappointed in Destati, because I felt it built up too fast when compared to the original.
Twinkle Twinkle Holidays is okay, I wasn't much of a fan of KHIIFM+'s new Christmas theme, but Neverland Sky is a very welcome arrangement indeed.
13th Anthology starts great with the Organization XIII dramatic theme and battle theme, but kinda loses its momentum halfway through when moving into the less interesting battle themes.
The Other Promise is very good though, a beautiful rendition of Roxas's theme.

On the LoM front however......WOW, this stuff is ALL win!

I guess the Title Theme is kinda obvious but still very good.
I have to commend the choice of songs though, these are all some of my, and probably other fans', favorites.
Hometown Domina is as beautiful as you could hope for, and even mixes in the My Home theme for that nostalgic feeling.
Colored Earth is very impressive. I would not have expected them to keep up with the original's pace, but they do a damn fine job at it.
Ruined Sparkling City or whatever the 'official' translation is, well, this was just MADE to be performed live, it almost brought a tear to my eye, beautiful stuff.

Also I listened to Somnus, but be warned, this is NOT the kick-ass orchestral theme that was used in the most recent FFvsXIII trailers, it's an entirely different image song altogether, and frankly, not very interesting.

Still, judging by how good all the LoM and most of the KH stuff was, I'm sure Live a Live, Front Mission and Heroes of Mana fans will be VERY pleased with what they're getting as well.

Here's to the next 20 years, Mrs. Shimomura!

This is a decent effort. Nothing spectacular save for a few tracks (six by my count). The orchestration is superb, but at the same time, a lot of the tracks just breeze right by. Really easy listening.

Perhaps if she chose different tracks, I might have been impressed a bit more.

Nakano was the arranger for FF4DS. 

Anyone have credits for this record?

What's the total playtime of drammatica?

I don't consider Chain of Memories' "Lord of the Castle" to be less interesting. To me, it is the true climax of the track. Simply amazing!

Excellent album overall.

59:40, give or take a few seconds.

I've listened to it once and I think it's pretty good. I'm not a big Shimomura fan but the orchestra shows off her music very well (with the exception of "Destati", where the chorus is annoyingly flat).

I literally got chills while listening to Hometown Domina and Colored Earth for the first time, so good!  Some fiiine arranging here with a nice powerful orchestra.  Highly recommended to any Shimomura fans out there, you will not be disappointed.  Every major VGM composer should do a "best of" orchestra project like this!

-Mike

Funny.  Same two tracks that I enjoyed most.  It's a great album overall, but I think my experience with LOM makes those tracks even better.

Yeah, may well be my new favorite arranged album ever.  There's nothing on it that I don't like.

Does anybody else feel like the FFvsXIII track seems out of place?  Not bad, at all (I quite like it, actually), but it just seems not to mesh with everything else on the disc in some way that I can't put my finger on.  Recorded elsewhere at a different time by different performers, maybe?

this is the first time P-A's let me down. I asked for overnight shipping, and I still don't have it. wtf. I want it SO bad.

Could someone please translate the liner notes and track explanations?
I, as well as many others I reckon, would REALLY appreciate it.

Finally got it from Play-Asia. Resisted the temptation to download it up to this point, am about to start my listen. But first I was doing my packaging scanning (I know packaging scans exist elsewhere, but I like to keep full records of the stuff I buy). And I saw that, indeed...

Absolutely. The whole album was recorded by a specific orchestra in Cologne Germany ... EXCEPT for Somnus. Somnus' recording was done at Sound Inn Studios in Japan, and is probably the exact same recording that we will no doubt see on the Versus XIII OST at the time of its release.

Ramza

What the f--- are you talking about? I finally got through this album, and I was like "wow I wonder what Somnus will be if it's NOT the trailer music."

...............

It is the trailer music, genius. Listen to Somnus, then watch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cWU-M9EpEg

listen for the word "tragedia" ... it's the same song, if the vocalist hadn't given it away.

Were you thinking of the FFXIII trailer with Hamauzu music perchance?

Either way, I want to slap you for calling this song anything but interesting. It totally captivated me.

Ramza

This trailer is quite old now: though we got to watch it in December, it actually dates back to summer 2007. Two new trailers have been unleashed since then, but only in closed theater during the Tokyo Game Show (September) and Jump Festa (December). I guess these new trailers have new music too. At least one of them has an extended version of Somnus, with solo violin.

I'm usually the one to make tonnes of picky criticisms, but this time I feel pretty satisfied. I'm very glad a proper orchestrator was used and I think Natsumi Kaneoka was a great choice as a very diverse colourful musician. I thought that the orchestra did a  fine job here and I think any issues with balance are because Shimomura wanted it like that, not because of bad recording engineers or an attention-seeking percussionist.

BTW Ramza, I just read your review of Drammatica. Nice job and great to see this album getting some praise. However, no Square Enix members really had anything to do with this recording (Shimomura and Kaneoka are freelancers, the producer and orchestra are German). Plus Noriko Matsueda has been retired since 2003 (Takahito Eguchi is still going but as a freelance vocal arranger / orchestrator / anime composer) so next to no chance of an album there.

My understanding was that some of the financial backing was from Square Enix. That Shimomura basically got the same sort of deal that Hamauzu got. I know that Shimomura isn't "stuck" to SE like Hamauzu is (Shimomura's done some anime work right?), but this project couldn't have happened w/o SE. That's all I meant from what I said in the review. But thanks for reading it!

Yeah, it did get financial backing and was published by the record label.

This is great CD and if you need the track info on it i use this website for all Square related music information. http://www.squareenixmusic.com/albums/d … tica.shtml

I just got the drammatica cd. I like most of the material quite a bit.  I thought it was interesting that the FF13 track was recorded in 2006. I wonder if most of the soundtrack has been done for awhile or if it was just recorded ahead of time by itself knowing the trailer would be out first. I hope that a majority of the music in that game is similar and/or orchestral besides just that single track.

I'm almost positive it was just that one recording done in '06 so they could reveal it with a sweet trailer. We've heard *no other* music from vs XIII in two years...if more awesome music existed, they'd drop a couple tracks on us.

And stop calling it FF13. It's FFvs13. DIFFERENCE!