tangotreats
12-13-2010, 10:43 PM
A production of the Orchestral Action Music Thread...
JOE HISAISHI
Ni No Kuni - Shikkoku no Madōshi
The Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
orchestrated and conducted by Joe Hisaishi
Download JH-NNK.rar from Mirrorcreator - Upload files to multiple file sharing sites (http://www.mirrorcreator.com/files/UNH18RNL/JH-NNK.rar_links)
Tech notes: My direct rip from Nintendo DS cartridge; LAME -V0 3.98.4. No track titles as I have not played the game and therefore haven't the foggiest idea what is going on or even what it's about
Tracks retain their original cue numbers as they were laid out on the DS Cartridge. Original source audio was in a bizzare 4-bit uncompressed PCM format at 32728khz (yes, I know) and whilst it sounds beautiful, it has a certain harshness about it (common to 4-bit audio) and a minor background hiss that is not in the slightest bit distracting. This is as good as it gets until the soundtrack album or the PS3 version turn up - and it will be at least February before either... so, for the time being, enjoy. Note that tracks 11 and 12 were in a different format and yielded a slightly poorer quality result. Again, not my fault. It's an absolutely wonderful miracle that a game on a handheld console has sound quality as good as this.
This is not a complete game rip; there is a bit more music in the game that is synthesised - and 99% of it is mainly variations on the themes heard herein. This rip includes all tracks performed by live musicians. If this isn't good enough, I'm sure some enterprising person will produce a full every-single-note, every belch, every scrape, every tick, every pop release in due course. Believe me, you're not missing anything. The recordings with the Tokyo Philharmonic total 51 minutes; a very satisfying length on its own and would be somewhat disrupted by the inclusion of every single fragment of sequenced music... so it isn't here. Also, I have dropped the first cue as it was a shortened version of the main theme - I assume that it is perhaps the menu theme - same recording, but edited; serving no purpose and containing no new music, it has been dropped.
Looping: All tracks are designed to loop in the game, but most of them had actual proper endings that were included in the raw audio on the cartridge. This has been preserved wherever possible. Only a handful of tracks are looped; only where a natural finish was missing - these tracks loop and fade out ten seconds into the repeated section. I see so many gigantic game rips that you download and think "Wow, cool, hours of music!" and then you find out that some enterprising idiot has looped each track a three or four times so all those great cues that you think are five or six minutes long, are in fact 90 seconds. I have consciously avoided this; my rip is 51 minutes long, and that's 51 minutes of music. No waste, no repetition - just Hisaishi's score as he intended it.
Oh, my God, where to begin with this one? I genuinely don't think I can find the words - any words for that matter - that would do this instant classic any justice at all. From start to finish, it's purely mesmerising. I wax lyrical about various things from time to time, and you probably think I'm off on one of my flights of fancy again... but really, this is one of those special scores - as Masterocho observed, it captures your attention fully and doesn't return it until the last note has subsided into silence. There's so much to talk about - the breathtakingly beautiful main theme, the breathtakingly beautiful other main theme(!), the glorious action cues, the sumptuously lush orchestration, take your pick... Actually, it seems rather unfair to praise the themes, because effectively the score is one long theme; Hisaishi has never written a note of filler in his life, and that enviable record remains unbroken here. I really can say very little more; other than get yourself a big cup of tea, turn off the lights, and listen to this - like you've never listened before.
:)
JOE HISAISHI
Ni No Kuni - Shikkoku no Madōshi
The Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
orchestrated and conducted by Joe Hisaishi
Download JH-NNK.rar from Mirrorcreator - Upload files to multiple file sharing sites (http://www.mirrorcreator.com/files/UNH18RNL/JH-NNK.rar_links)
Tech notes: My direct rip from Nintendo DS cartridge; LAME -V0 3.98.4. No track titles as I have not played the game and therefore haven't the foggiest idea what is going on or even what it's about
Tracks retain their original cue numbers as they were laid out on the DS Cartridge. Original source audio was in a bizzare 4-bit uncompressed PCM format at 32728khz (yes, I know) and whilst it sounds beautiful, it has a certain harshness about it (common to 4-bit audio) and a minor background hiss that is not in the slightest bit distracting. This is as good as it gets until the soundtrack album or the PS3 version turn up - and it will be at least February before either... so, for the time being, enjoy. Note that tracks 11 and 12 were in a different format and yielded a slightly poorer quality result. Again, not my fault. It's an absolutely wonderful miracle that a game on a handheld console has sound quality as good as this.
This is not a complete game rip; there is a bit more music in the game that is synthesised - and 99% of it is mainly variations on the themes heard herein. This rip includes all tracks performed by live musicians. If this isn't good enough, I'm sure some enterprising person will produce a full every-single-note, every belch, every scrape, every tick, every pop release in due course. Believe me, you're not missing anything. The recordings with the Tokyo Philharmonic total 51 minutes; a very satisfying length on its own and would be somewhat disrupted by the inclusion of every single fragment of sequenced music... so it isn't here. Also, I have dropped the first cue as it was a shortened version of the main theme - I assume that it is perhaps the menu theme - same recording, but edited; serving no purpose and containing no new music, it has been dropped.
Looping: All tracks are designed to loop in the game, but most of them had actual proper endings that were included in the raw audio on the cartridge. This has been preserved wherever possible. Only a handful of tracks are looped; only where a natural finish was missing - these tracks loop and fade out ten seconds into the repeated section. I see so many gigantic game rips that you download and think "Wow, cool, hours of music!" and then you find out that some enterprising idiot has looped each track a three or four times so all those great cues that you think are five or six minutes long, are in fact 90 seconds. I have consciously avoided this; my rip is 51 minutes long, and that's 51 minutes of music. No waste, no repetition - just Hisaishi's score as he intended it.
Oh, my God, where to begin with this one? I genuinely don't think I can find the words - any words for that matter - that would do this instant classic any justice at all. From start to finish, it's purely mesmerising. I wax lyrical about various things from time to time, and you probably think I'm off on one of my flights of fancy again... but really, this is one of those special scores - as Masterocho observed, it captures your attention fully and doesn't return it until the last note has subsided into silence. There's so much to talk about - the breathtakingly beautiful main theme, the breathtakingly beautiful other main theme(!), the glorious action cues, the sumptuously lush orchestration, take your pick... Actually, it seems rather unfair to praise the themes, because effectively the score is one long theme; Hisaishi has never written a note of filler in his life, and that enviable record remains unbroken here. I really can say very little more; other than get yourself a big cup of tea, turn off the lights, and listen to this - like you've never listened before.
:)