http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=KICA-1445

The description read something like '7 pieces out of these 4 discs will be by Mr. Stanislav Stanislavovich Bunin', and the rest will be by Mr. Sakuraba, I assume.

6 weeks til release. :)

I had a dream last night that I got an email that had a pile of new stuff offered by CDJapan, and there were two Sakuraba scores on there, coming out by November.  I then received in the mail a box full of game OSTs with a note that says "keep what you like, then return the rest for credit."

I have weird dreams.

I'm not die-hard Sakuraba...I have a love/hate thing going with him.

But I have HIGH hopes for Trusty Bell, in every respect. The premise and plot are so intriguing, and so *unlike* anything that's been done before, there's a ton of potential. AND, mixing Chopin-esque romantic era pieces with Sakuraba seems like a very intuitive blend: it makes sense in my mind, somehow.

I doubt I'll preorder it, but assuming you do, Amber, please give us impressions the day you get the album!

Ramza

The music I heard in the demo was _very_ good.  I really like the battle theme.  The whole "orchestral feel with no hard rocking percussion" thing seems to work really well for the game, and the music stands alone very well also.

I probably won't have it on release day or even weeks after... I'm probably going to make it part of a bundle order from amazon.co.jp along with some of the game's guidebooks and stuff after they're all released (should save a few bucks buying things at original yen price, despite the shipping cost)

I'm sure there will be a thread here about it though, and I'll definitely contribute. :)

From what I saw, I don't have an impression that Chopin's music is particularly mixed with in-game music. Nor do I think this game is particularly theming Chopin and his legacy. I mean, in this game, Chopin's music is basically used only at the end or the interlude of each chapter out of context, with a trivia or historical description of Choin's pieces. I'm not saying the entire game goes in this way, but that's what I felt after watching the actual gameplay for the first 10 hours.

It, however, was announced there are some Chopin arrangements and after all, the 'Chopin' theme might have affected Sakuraba. My initiall impression is, it may disappoint his battle-theme fans, but it can be classed as one of the most emotional Sakuraba scores available.

Sakuraba's only draw to me are his prog-rock battle/dungeon themes, so I'm not at all interested in this. If I felt better about his piano/orchestral/acoustic material in all of his previous releases (and I've heard nearly every single one), I'd care, but I don't understand why he'd strip out his most distinct characteristic for an entire OST. For example, 4 discs of VP2 music without his rock themes would have been unbearable and it was merely average WITH them. And do I need to bring up Tales?

Wake me up when he gets back into VP1 mode. Nothing he's done has come close to that.

Zzzzzz....

Yea, I agree Zane, totally predictable comments. Zzzz...

:/

Pffft, you guys... :(

I think I'm the only person in the world who really enjoyed VP2's somber soundtrack.

Well, I think it's that I really enjoyed the game, but I wouldn't have liked it nearly as much without the soundtrack... I think.

This sounds like my kind of thing, as well.

I rather liked the Star Ocean 3 and Valkyrie Profile 2 musics. Tales of the Abyss was also the win, though I know two other composers contributed to that in addition to Sakuraba.

I enjoy Sakuraba's orchestral, acoustic, and piano styles, but I really can't tell the difference between Sakuraba's rock compositions unless I put them back-to-back...but then they really blend together @_@ That's not to say his prog rock style is bad, but I don't think his classical side is bad, either.

Oh yeah, did I ever mention that I also enjoy Chopin? Because I do.

All these interesting releases on the XBOX 360, I would've never anticipated; and here, I always thought they were going for MTVgamer6000.

VP2 was/is powerful stuff ingame combined with the visuals, but I'm not into a large amount of it out of context. In comparison, VP1 was ringing through my head a good six months after I had totally completed the game and still does on occasion (and not just the rock material..."Valhalla" is still one of the sickest Sakuraba pieces ever composed). I'm not sure VP1's soundtrack would have been half as good without being comprised of as much of his rock style as it was (in comparison to this one, where's it's supposedly stripped out entirely). I dunno...Sakuraba just needs a f---ing monster to recapture my interest and this just doesn't even sound like it'll come close.

The game gets released here tomorrow and you KNOW I'm skipping class so I can get it

I'm not expecting Sakuraba's great Rock stuff, but his piano work has been very satisfying for me as well, mostly in the Baten Kaitos series, so I'm expecting a very nice soothing soundtrack. And Chopin isn't bad either

I really liked the tracks in the demo too, and the game concecpt is so fascinating...

And I rarely like Sakuraba, so....yeah.

-Joshua

I know I've said this before, but I'm totally in the camp with the people who prefer Sakuraba's orchestral stuff.  I think he excels at that and is among my favorite game composers for that kind of music.  His prog rock stuff, on the other hand, tends to sound noisy and same-y to me.  I finally listened to the Valkyrie Profile ost in its entirety and after the lovely beginning tracks, very little of it did anything for me.  I'd prefer going for JDK, who at least put strong melodies into that kind of thing.  But yeah, that's just my personal taste.  If this is four discs of what sounds like the strongest stuff from Baten Kaitos (one of my favorite soundtracks of all time), I will be buying it on day one.

Err... crap, I just realized it's being released on the last day of my contract in Japan.  Hopefully I'll stay a few days extra and can grab it on the way out.

Well, for me it's the so far favourite Sakuraba work wrt mixing and instrumentation. I'm looking forward to the TB/ES very much since it's Sakuraba first approach to using just classic instrumentation, while if that were combined with bass and drum kits would be Sakuraba as usual. Besides bass and drums kits I personally don't consider the rock instrumentation typical but overall more like an exception for Sakuraba. Most tracks, even the battle ones, rely on compositions structures played by and perfectly playable with acoustic instruments/choirs if it weren't for the usual high pace he uses. Still I think the progressive/baroque approach to composing shines through is nearly all of his tracks regardless of instrumentation style used, so I don't really see how people can hang up based on typical progressive rock or orchestral instrumentation since I see that mostly as an issue of instrumentation alone. And the resulting "wall of sound" people commonly complain about is exactly what I like (while I consider much of other music monotonously monophonic in comparison).

But I can't say I enjoy stating such opinions here and most other places considering the amount of circle jerking that predictable ensues whenever Sakuraba is mentioned, so I'll likely take another break from that and just keep updating the official site instead. =P

Yeah I just finished the game a couple weeks ago.  The tracks on Vol 2 are amazing.

*ahem*  Baten Kaitos anyone?

That soundtrack got me into Sakuraba, although for the wrong reasons.  There's a couple of his trademark prog-rock compositions in there, but the majority of the ones I like are the town themes and his quieter stuff.  "Gentle Wind" is beyond beautiful.

It'll be nice to see him be constrained a little bit.

Switch that for me...I can name nearly every rock theme of his that comes up on iPod random (only ones I don't have down are a couple VP dungeons and some Tales odds and ends), but nearly all of his acoustic/orchestral work sounds identical to me (the exceptions are tracks I tend to really enjoy, but they're few and far between). Early on, it was more distinct (PS1-era), but it all blends together now with the live instrumentation. Mitsuda's kind of the same way, but at least his melodies are more distinct in that sense, so I can tell them apart more readily. With Sakuraba, it feels like everything is melody on the front end, improv-ish on the back, so it suits his battle music well, but makes my attention wane for his slower stuff. Baten Kaitos 1 was better than, say, SO3's Vol. 1, but it was too boring for me as a whole.

So yeah...Still waiting for that follow-up to VP1.

Of course, it's worth noting...RPG's are generally a miserable place to look for decent rock music. It's just nice having ones that break the mold every now and again.

I don't know about you guys, but I have a hard time getting through such huge soundtracks these days, especially with OSTs for games that I haven't played yet.  They can be really cumbersome to get through, and usually contain lots of filler "bleh" tracks.  I prefer a solid 1 - 2 discer.

- Justin

Absolutely, totally agreed.  Four discs is just too much for me to handle, and most composers have trouble bringing their "A" game for four solid discs.  If an album has more than 60 tracks, there's usually too much filler for me to be comfortable.

I also agree, and think the bad part of the reception of Sakuraba's work is mostly due to people incapable of seeing/hearing the pieces they'd like among the multidisc soundtracks with a dozen² tracks, and then too many of them to care about the more obscure works.

Instead of adding every CD I own to a digital music jukebox, I rotate CDs for my commute.
It's not a daily thing, either... I usually switch CDs out after a week or so. 

So it's harder for me to tire of four-CD soundtracks... since I'm still only listening to one at a time, fully 'taking it in' before moving to the next one.

At least this one's coming out in one big chunk instead of two volumes like Star Ocean 3 and Valkyrie Profile 2 did. :)

Got the game yesterday, but unfortunately I didn't nearly get as much time in as I had planned (only 20 minutes! Damn my busy schedule!), but first impressions are extremely positive.
The battle system is fun, the graphics are very nice, and the music, what little I've heard so far, is very calm, soothing orchestral Sakuraba, which is excellent. If you liked Baten Kaitos's town themes, you'll like this.

The game itself seems rather moody, the opening scenes depicting what looks like a suicide, then moving on to Chopin's Deathbed immediately. I'm liking this more than Blue Dragon already.

I'll second that.  Much better (and cheaper) to get it all at once.  For the record, I'm also in the camp that really liked the music in BK (but not BK2) and VP2.

Yay!!