Yo,

we got some tropical climate since last week and since I'm already sweating my ass off while doing nothing, I'm keeping this very brief.

Preorders:
FFCT-0037 | Ciel nosurge Genometric Concert Vol.2 ~Soukai no Uta~ (wonder when they release the second OST volume?)

Interesting:
N/A | The Music of KILLER IS DEAD (I except something similar in style to Shadows of the Damned)
VTCL-60352 | Blood Lad Original Soundtrack I (show looked like a bad Soul Eater rip-off, and that one was already atrocious to begin with...)
LACA-9303~4 | Karneval Original Soundtrack (another sucky show, but again with some great composer to compensate)

Rest:
ZSCM-13422 | MIND≒0 Original Soundtrack (music by ZIZZ, hopefully we can get a composer breakdown)
SQEX-20012 | Before Meteor:FINAL FANTASY XIV Original Soundtrack (does with contain both the old and the new music?)
SVWC-7954~5 | Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai. the Movie Original Soundtrack (I enjoyed the series, the music was so-so)
N/A | Little Witch Academia Original Soundtrack (very much enjoyed LWA, not so much because of the music though)

- lq

PER-ORDERED

Karneval (TV Anime) Original Soundtrack
LACA-9303 |

GATCHAMAN Crowds (TV Anime) Original Soundtrack (Taku Iwasaki)
VPCG-84945 |

Summer Nude (TV Series) Original Soundtrack (Music by Taisei Iwasaki, Yuu Takami)
PCCR-568 |

Woman (TV Drama) Original Soundtrack (Music by Kazunori Miyake)
VPCD-81774 |

Saito-san 2 (TV Drama) Original Soundtrack (Music by Yoshihiro Ike)
VPCD-81775 |

NHK Drama 10 Gekiryu Original Soundtrack (Akira Senju)
DAKASCDD-3 |

Kamen Rider Wizard In Magic Land Original Soundtrack
AVCA-62858

FFV Remaster OST and Before Meteor FFXIV, plus i'm also picking up the PS3 CE FFXIV ARR which has the "Sounds of Eorzea" special disc included.

August is Comiket time, so I'm also adding a bunch of C84 releases:

DENG-0008 | The shepherd girl and the judgment day (TENMON)
N/A | Jinrou Bansou Ongakushuu (Hiroki Kikuta)
N/A | Dungeon Travelers 2 Original Soundtrack (AQUAPLUS sound team)
CANO-0003 | canoue II ~Saihate no Tou~ (MANYO x Haruka Shimotsuki)
N/A | Kanojo to Ore to Koibito to. Soundtrack "Our Happy Living Room" (PULLTOP sound team)

Releases that stand out for the month:

Official:
- Nobunaga's Ambition Online 10th Anniversary Soundtrack  (Kenji Kawai)
- Final Fantasy V Original Soundtrack Remaster Version
- Falcom Field Zanmai  (Comic Market 84 first release)
- Final Fantasy XIV OST ~Before Meteor~  (Blu-ray only)
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition Soundtrack

Fan:
- Chrono Trigger Symphony: Vol. 1  (Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra) [home page]

Pack-ins & Bonuses:
- Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara OST "Reborn" Tracks  (Jpn limited edition pack-in) [YouTube]
- The Year of Luigi Sound Selection  (Jpn Club Nintendo)

TAMUSIC's FF V Violin is also out this month too from Comiket.
http://vgmdb.net/album/40625

More C84 stuff, just added to the DB:
N/A | Feedback 2nd / Michiko Naruke

Thinking about getting this as well. Vol. 1 was already delicious.

i have this on pre-order. that's all i get this month.

Chrono Trigger Symphony Volume 1 is now available.  I'm sorry to say that I strongly dislike what I've heard.  It's all rather flat and homogeneous.  And I find it jarring that the orchestrations hew so closely to the original compositions without appearing to match in tempo.

Agreed. It's not much better than the  resynths of the CT'99 OST. The brass notes bothered me a bit but unsure of how to describe it.

Also OT, I hate how Loudr does not allow full streaming. Unfortunately it's trending toward becoming the Facebook v. MySpace situation of audio streaming.

If everyone could try to post their actual impressions of released albums in separate threads I'd appreciate it.  Let's keep these soundtrack release threads dedicated to upcoming releases.

As for Chrono Trigger Symphony, I'm curious have either of you heard the whole album?  I have and I've been very pleasantly surprised.  Between this and the Playstation Chrono Trigger arrangements there's no contest - these new arrangements are a significant step up both in sample quality and arrangement.  I'll post a review in the future but it gets a solid four stars from me, and to any Chrono Trigger fans who aren't exceedingly picky about sampled orchestra I highly recommend the $8 download.

I did notice the sustain on the brass samples seems short in two or three tracks like "Chrono Trigger" and "Battle".  Only in those few tracks though.  Very few complaints with the sample quality otherwise.

Loudr being Facebook and Bandcamp being MySpace?  I would never compare anything favorably to MySpace but Bandcamp's full album streaming is certainly ideal.

It's hard for me to articulate my issue with this album.  Honestly, I don't have the vocabulary to discuss music intelligently, so I usually don't.  I'm just surprised that I have had such a strongly negative reaction to these orchestrations.  Listening to tracks like Battle and Millennial Fair actually make me feel unwell.

I don't mean to demean the artist at all here.  I think that this is an uncanny valley problem for me, not a problem of performance.  The orchestrations are so close to the original compositions -- which I have been listening to for almost 20 years now -- as to be off-putting.

I listened to the few samples from the RPGFan review, but despite the author praising the shit out of it, and going on about how much love went into the rearrangements, reorchestrations etc. -- I just can't hear this. I just sounds flat out bad to me. Like one of those "remasters" which converted the SPCs to MIDI and then plays it back with a multi-gigabyte sound font.
Sure, the sample quality might be top-notch, but for me the whole is more than the sum of its part. Or at least it's with the original music. But this here is just a dissection with the individual parts then getting an upgrade. It feels lifeless, sterile... synthetic...  guess the artist name is chosen well.

Confession: I was trying to be diplomatic in my last post.  LiquidAcid says what I really feel.

Triple Triad: Booster Pack -- contains not one, but two electronic remixes of Awakening from FFVI.  I approve.

My Ciel nosurge album arrived and I'm pleasantly surprised. Minami Kizuki returns to perform vocals on track 1, again in this Shima-uta singing style. As always, the compositions follow the style of Ar tonelico. Still looking forward to the second volume of the OST.

Also gave Blood Lad a listen, but as I already guessed from the few anime scenes I watched, this isn't for me. In style it's very similar to Hayashi's work for Legal High. In short, I don't like it (except for a few tracks) and will probably skip Vol. 2 entirely.
Also skipped through Little Witch Academia really quickly. The usual boring Oshima.