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Saturday, June 25, 2016

Song of the Week! 25 June 2016


I promise you this week's feature has more genuine reasons to happen today than personal random mind links!

After all, there have been a lot of hints recently: new Game Music tune with red/blue versions, the livestream livestream featuring Red Taiko and Blue Synchronica motifs, the Tenkaichi Otogesai's next iteration being officially confirmed, ...

 Aka no Senritsu (朱の旋律)
Version
Allx4 (182)x7 (295)x8 (496)x10 (902)
 Taiko 0 Mu, Taiko 3DS 3, CD CC-4
 190
 none
 akanos


To prime ourselves towards the next red-oriented arcade firmware, nothing is better than a red-oriented song feature (with the title literally translatable as 'Red Melody'), which also makes for a nice complement to our previous Ao no Sentritsu SotW feature with the addition of brand new details for this curious song couple. While the identity of Aka no Senritsu' singer is still unknown, it's already a known fact that the composer is the nick-named Aile, the same one as Taiko Portable Deluxe's Ao no Senritsu.

Often self-titled in all caps, this is the art name of Japanese independent composer/lyricist Shota Tani (谷正太), whose synth-oriented music production ranges from both melodic pieces to Eurobeat-like tracks. Under a friend's suggestion, he started playing the piano at the age of 11 and years later he became accustomed in the lyrics/composition field and guitar-playing skills. Once a member of a band, he began composing music for games under the 'AILE' name (read as 'Isle', as in Island), until in 2013 he decided to change his own born name with AILE. According to his website's profile page, his motto as a composer is to create melodies that stir emotions to the listener, a sentiment that has also been proved with his song introduction on Ao no Senritsu's choice of lyrics, as narrated by AILE himself in a Taiko Team blog entry. Between the two Senritsu songs in Taiko no Tatsujin games, AILE also made one the first songs for Cytus, Rayark's first mobile music game, going under the title of Secret Garden.

Diverging from Ao no Senritsu's path, Aka no Senritsu made its debut as an arcade track, being one of the two Bandai Namco songs that have been made for the second edition of the Tenkaichi Otigesai cross-over tournament. For this one, the main motif is a sad love story from Kyoto's past, as a third-person voice is the narrator of this tale from the Edo period. From the song-composing portion, AILE wanted to make a track suitable for a fierce skill competition, so his modus operandi has been to make something that could put player on the edge of their seats the whole time and that could overheat players if being played multiple times in a row. AILE himself also showed up for the 2nd Tenkaichi's finals to have some fun with the Taiko Team, as this tweet testifies!

Thanks to Aka no Senritsu's release in the Ramune soundtrack album, we also know the identity of the song's singer: the nick-named ENA. In activity since 2007, she is an independent singer/songwriter who is currently not affiliated to any unit/label. Under her bely are credited many lyricist tasks for Momoiro Clover songs, as well as singing for tunes from Anime shows (QUEEN'S BLADE and Is the order a rabbit? among others), as well as novering some works under Tatsh's Touhou-centric TatshMusicCircle label. When the artist is credited as ENA☆, she's the songwriter or a back-singer for a song's chorus, otherwise (like in Aka no Senritsu) she's the main singer.

After Ao no Senritsu's regular Oni, Taiko Team leader Etou steps in for Aka's notecharts, this time around putting a more heavy focus on the red-colored Don notes (as opposed to Ao's Ura Oni Kat majority); for the sake of this requirement, another relentless barrage under a constantly-high BPM value awaits the players trying to best the song's hardest challenge, escalating in the infamous 128-note Don stream that can easily give some troubling Hatsune Miku no Gekishou flashbacks to the most seasoned of Taiko players.