Can someone who knows Japanese please translate the following tracklist for me:

http://www.5pb.jp/records/works/2006/0407/VGCD0022.html

It's from the "Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou" soundtrack.

What, no one? I'm surprised that this album has been out for a month, yet there has been no translation of it on GMR Online, Chudah's Corner, or any of the other usual places. I thought it would be a little more popular that that...

For first impressions on the music: If you've thought about buying this album, but haven't already - DON'T! It sucks. Badly. The style is Digital Devil Saga 1 mixed with Jazz and Big Band/Swing music. While this could (in theory) have been an experiment that turned out excellent, it wasn't to be. Listening to it, I can't believe how dull it sounds. Not even dull in a relaxing, soothing Lounge-music type of way, but more in a generic run-at-the-mill-Jazz sort of way. I consider it the weakest and most lukewarm Megami Tensei soundtrack since Shin Megami Tensei 2, and that doesn't say a little. And what the hell is up with the 2-disc deal...? The entire soundtrack is 74 minutes long (disc 1 = 42 minutes, disc 2 = 32 minutes)! It could've easily fit onto one disc. Between the 2CD-price and the low quality of the music, it really feels like I wasted my money on this one. I hope this isn't a bad omen for the upcoming Persona 3 soundtrack. Anyone else have any impressions of the music?

Despite this, it would still be nice to have a tracklist translation. Anyone up for it?

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Translations for ANY vgm album haven't really been flowing these days, people are likely just getting worn-out on working for free on that type of thing...

Not sure, all the info is in Japanese. Some tracks have DDS1-style mellow Shoji Meguro guitar riffing, so I'm positive he's in on at least some of the tracks. I think I sense Kenichi Tsuchiya's presense, too. But I have no idea.

The packaging is all in Japanese, even the booklet is "reversed" (the front is the back from a Western perspective), and the text reads up-to-down, not left-to-right.

A final sour note: the awesome battle theme heard in some of the trailers (which can be downloaded at this page) is missing on the soundtrack! Unbelievably bad style from Five Records after leaving out some of the best tracks on the 4-disc DDS 1&2 OST. I bought the OST mainly on the strength of that one piece, and I didn't get it (in stead I got.... this). Between the shitty packaging of both DDS: Integral and Kuzunoha Raidou, and the omissions of important tracks on sets advertised as "complete", I really hope these limpdicks (Five Records) aren't the ones chosen to release the Persona 3 OST when the time comes for that... Lord knows what they'd do to that.

Ouch. I really could not disagree more. I enjoyed the music in the game a LOT, ESPECIALLY the opening movie music.  It's really the main reason why I finished the game, since the game itself is kind of only 'average' and I had a lot of other games to play at the time.

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tz: Let's agree to disagree, OK? Like I mentioned, those were my "first impressions". I'll definitely not give up on the CD so easily, I'll give it plenty more chances. But me not falling for a Megaten soundtrack the first or second listen through is a very rare thing indeed, and does not promise well. Granted, the style of the music is very different from previous soundtracks in the series, maybe I just need some time to get used to it...

McCall: I have the CD, would love to share if I could, but I'm behind the nastiest old network firewall you've ever seen, I almost never manage to distribute any files no matter how much I mess with the settings. My advice is: put off the potential purchase for a while, it's bound to show up on VGM Central sooner or later. Otherwise, http://www.gamemp3s.net/ said they were gonna release a torrent of it soon. It can't elude you forever.

I liked the ingame music. The intro song is kinda weird, but kind of jazz eventually grew on me. It gets annoying in game, because you end up hearing the same few songs over and over, but they're generally pretty decent. The battle tracks in general rock.

The battle song on HG101 was actually taken directly from the Devil Summoner site, so I wonder why that one was excluded. The other I recorded myself. I have yet to hear the album as a whole.

Well, it won't get you a perfect translation, but you can always put the URL into either of these translators:

Excite webpage translator:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web/
- Paste the URL in the text box and click the SECOND radio button below the box. Then click the orange-bordered button to the right of the text box.

Altavista Babelfish:
http://world.altavista.com/

The only things I can translate in the tracklist without resorting to a dictionary are:

Disc 1:
1. Theme
7. Level up
10. New world
12. Big Tokyo

Disc 2:
15. Ending theme

Here you are:

Disc 1

1, Theme
2, The Army of Ultimate Power
3, The Lazy Detective Agency
4, On the Bridge Back in the Rain
5, Critical Moment for Raidou
6, Formidable Foe
7, Level Up
8, Gold King House
9, Goumaden
10, A New World
11, A Moment's Peace
12, Tokyo Metropolis
13, Yatagarasu's Messenger
14, The Art of Sending Spirits
15, A Strange World
16, A Suspicious Shadow
17, Breaking Through the Wall
18, An Old Foe

Disc 2

1, Go! Raidou
2, The Army of Ultimate Power's Imminent Arrival
3, Kaya's Secret
4, What Was Taken by People
5, Overcoming the Sadness
6, Hiruko Invasion
7, Cornered!
8, And Now, The Decisive Battle
9, Awakening of the Warship of Ultimate Power
10, The Fated Showdown
11, The God of Ultimate Power Appears
12, Shock! The Final Battle
13, Cutting Off the Evil Future
14, On the Bridge Back in the Morning Sun
15, Ending Theme

While DDS2 was half ham-fisted, poorly synthed filler, this is almost ALL filler.  Clearly this game was not a priority for Atlus.

The good news is that means there will probably be more of the consistent and sophisticated Masaki Kurokawa/Kenichi Tsuchiya duo in Persona 3, with Meguro distracted with Devil Summoner.

Plus, besides the first one, Persona has always been their baby.  And they've been neglected as of late.

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It's not that Meguro can't compose good VGM that isn't battle themes, but he seems incredibly inconsistent in tone and intent. Or theme and melody. Or whatever I could say that would indicate that he isn't really sure what the hell he's doing if he's not rocking.

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bishop743: Thank you very much! I am very grateful! *bows*

The only information lacking now for me to tag my mp3s is who composed it. Everyone seems to assume it was Shoji Meguro, which makes sense, since many of the tracks seem very much like him. But I would like to get that confirmed. It is very possible that there were additional composers as well. Alas, the booklet is all in Japanese. Anyone have the composer info?

Both Kurokawa and Tsuchiya are worthy, but I really hope Toshiko Tasaki gets to spearhead Persona 3 (just like she did with both Persona 2s, which I still regard as the series musical high point). We've really heard too little of her these last few years (the last I recall being her tracks for Shin Megami Tensei 3, and those seemed pretty half-hearted).

On the subject of Meguro... Rocking battle themes seem no doubt to be his primary area of expertise, but he can do other stuff good as well. I basically agree with Dais that his quality level can be very inconsistent, but I would say that 3 soundtracks where he has done much great stuff that *isn't* battle-related are Soul Hackers, Maken X, and Digital Devil Saga 2. Most of his dungeon themes for Soul Hackers and DDS2 are excellent, and electronic in nature rather than guitar-driven. His most consistent work, though, I find to be Maken X, which he did almost entirely himself (with a few tracks by Takahito Ogawa), and which features a style very different from what we've come to expect from him... much more hardcore and dynamic, and more focused on electronic music with wisely selected samplings of guitars (versus his newer style, where the guitars seem to almost completely dominate the sound-picture). Of course, one reason for Maken X's music being so different is the nature of the game itself: in stead of being a slow-moving RPG (like the Megami Tenseis), it's an all-out action game, which calls for a different sound. In Maken X, there really weren't that many "battle themes" to focus on, rather the stage themes themselves were very hectic and action-packed. I think this represents the perfect marriage between Meguro's slower "techno dungeon" style and his heavier "rock battle" style, and I would *really* love to see him compose like that again. What attracts me personally in many of the RPG scores I like is the crossing of genres like these (prime examples of this are the better Megami Tenseis and Shadow Hearts), and lately I feel Meguro has separated or "broken apart" these styles too extremely. DDS2 had rock themes that were very conventionally "rock-ish", and dungeon themes that were very heavily "techno-ish", and not much in between. I still liked DDS2's music very much, but I found that it suffered from this fact. Anyway, enough babbling on that matter...

As for the Kuzunoha Raidou music... I still find it considerably lacking and dull. Some tracks are good, but the general impression is that it's one of those soundtracks that tries to experiment and branch out, but that mostly fails at it, and ends up just sounding mediocre (the best "jazzy" music to be found in the series still remains the original Devil Summoner soundtrack from 1996, despite it's primitive sound quality. If you haven't checked it out yet, I really urge you to. Great stuff from Toshiko Tasaki and veteran Tsukasa Masuko, with an accompanying live concert on disc 2, featuring a hilarious death metal song sung in Engrish.). I will surely listen to it more once I've tagged the mp3s properly, but I don't have high hopes that it picks up with me.

I'm eagerly awaiting the Persona 3 soundtrack, I hope it will present a return to late 1990s Megami Tensei music quality (which doesn't necissarily mean that style, but that level of high quality which we got in Persona 1 & 2, Devil Summoner, Soul Hackers, and Maken X).

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For those interested in hearing it, the Kuzunoha Raidou OST is now up at gamemp3s. And it turns out Shoji Meguro was the one and only composer.

Or some random person just decided he was.

umm.. no. Every person who releases albums there has to provide scans for proper composer and tracklist translation. I can assure you that Meguro is the only composer.

As far as the album itself, I purchased it. While there are quite a few tracks that can be considered filler, I am not disappointed or regretful in my purchase. Outside of the excellent battle themes, there are several other songs that are very good. So yeah, I think it was a worthy purchase for me.

In that case I hate to break into this topic by saying that unlike gamemp3s "Tales of the Abyss" encoding the actual OST doesn't credit the composers besides the nine tracks Fujiwara did (the full names by "Saku" and "Tamu" [sic in the liner notes] aren't even mentioned). So not everything seems to be taken from OST scans...

Lol