"Concerto" just arrived from Amazon.co.jp today, and with 2 listens here's a good summary:

It's an Orchestral blend of trademark Kikuta + FF Tactics style Sakimoto. 

First half has a lot of beautiful and calming tracks, so I thought it might be all relaxing stuff, but then the Second half brought in lots of Military Marches and snare drums for Sakimoto style battles.

Sound is of much higher caliber than Lost Files/Alphabet Planet, but since the booklet doesn't mention specific live performers, I'll assume it's very high quality orchestral samples.

Here's a 20 MB sample pack of mp3s so you can check it out:
www.sendspace.com/file/xp7jni
Kikuta's Concerto CD Samples.rar

Oh yeah, ordering is at this URL:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/CONCERTO/dp/B0014JDFD0/

Thanks for the sample. The ostinato-based style is more reminiscent of Iwata, to me. Btw, Kikuta says he bought the EWQLSO libraries which many composers seem to use today.

That is an amazing library.  The Gold Version is over 14GB.

So is "Concerto" an album for the game Concerto Gate?

Yes, but the first and last tracks are original.

13 tracks of Concerto Gate, and 2 originals by Kikuta, and since they're somewhat similar it suggests they were "Image tracks" for the game concept.

Thanks for the samples, Carl. It just bumped this album up near the top of my buy-list.

Wait, what? I thought image tracks was a term for vocal songs based on game or anime characters. Was I wrong?

(Does VGM have it's own fan dictionary yet?)

1) if VGM doesn't have a fan dictionary yet, we ought to write it. I'd say that we, the STC boards, are experts on the subject.

2) "Image" track/song usually refers to a vocal piece related to a character, but an image track is technically anything written by a composer for the game but is never used in-game ... only somewhere OTHER than the game. So, a character vocal album is a common possibility. However, instrumental arrangements for online trailers etc. can also be considered "image" music. I put together this understanding of the word "image" based on what the Japanese write in kana on CDs and website.

Ramza

I'm under the assumption that "Image Track" is fairly interchangeable with "Early development version" or "Initial concept version"

Now the booklet doesn't say anything to this effect at all, just that those 2 tracks are still (c) Norstrilla/Kikuta, so this is all merely speculation on my part.   Considering that the subtitle of the album is "The extraordinary world of Concerto Gate" though, it's a high probability they are related/unused material.

Yeah, this's definitely on my list, along with a number of other things:

-Black Mages 3 (03/19)
-Drammatica (03/26)
-Lux-Pain (04/02)
-Soma Bringer (04/02)

When March and April collide, there's gonna be some good tunes.

An image track is like an image illustration (e.g. Yoshitaka Amano's for FF).  Something made to be used in promotion and/or to inspire the developers and establish what atmosphere the game should have.

This is a pleasant album. Nothing sticks out in my mind, but it's definitely an album to relax with. Few beautiful pieces and some nice battle themes, but nothing mindblowing, in my opinion.

There's a new VIDEO Interview with Kikuta up on Youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suId6Enhzyk

Anyone with Japanese skillz, does he mention anything which we might not have read in print before?