Tuesday, February 24, 2009

»» Ayumi Hamasaki - Rule / Sparkle

Tracklist:
01. Rule (Original mix)
02. Sparkle (Original mix)
03. Days (8-bits of tears YMCK remix) (Versão A)
03. GREEN (CMJK Spring Storm mix) (Versão B)
04. Days (Acoustic Orchestra version) (Versão A)
04. GREEN (Acoustic Orchestra version) (Versão B)
05. Rule (80kidz's "No More Rule" mix)
06. Rule (Remo-con "tech dance" remix)
07. Rule (Original mix -Instrumental-)
08. Sparkle (Original mix -Instrumental-)

Ayumi's new single is out! Yay! I've been a fan of Ayu for quite a long time now, but I've loved her a lot more in the past. Now she's more like... another artist I follow. She's the artist whose releases I own the most hard copies of, though. Or is it BoA? I should recount.

This new single had previews and PVs out a long time ago, but I didn't care to check them out. I guess I preferred to wait 'til HQ versions were out, so I could have create an opinion based on fine quality work.

Rule is a rock song. However, it's different from almost all other rock songs Ayumi has put out. It sounds like it has cushions all over it. Older songs like talkin' 2 myself and About You were heavy and fierce, and not afraid of being a rock song. This one sounds like she's still deciding whether she wants it to be a rock song or a pop song, and that can't be good.

Sparkle, on the other hand, is kind of an electropop song. It's not J-Tek, but it's a bit far from J-Pop, and that was a smart choice. The song sounds different from everything else we've been hearing these days, staying strong as an electronic song, but also getting a bit rockish on the chorus. Very good, Ayu, very good...

Ever since Free & Easy, Ayu had never put this many remixes in a single. Before that, they used to be packed with lots of remixes. I own a copy of vogue, and it has like 7 remixes and an unreleased track. It's quite nice to have so many tracks on a single, though many of the remixes are crap. Days (8-bits of tears YMCK remix) sounds like an 8-bit video game song. As the title suggested. Days is a great song, and this remix does it justice. It's quite good and sounds very cute. I love the 8-bits version of the main riff.

Days (Acoustic Orchestra version), as anyone would've guessed, it an orchestral version os Days. Now, the original Days was absolutely awesome, can you imagine how awesome would an orchestral version of that be? Wait, you don't have to! It's right here! It's beautiful, you gotta love the violins...

GREEN (CMJK Spring Storm mix) deserves to be called a remix. GREEN sounds as different from the original song as it can possibly get, and still manages to be very enjoyable. I'm not very good at describing remixes, but this one is electronic, with lot of... electronic noises, and gets a bit faster on the chorus.

GREEN (Acoustic Orchestra version) is a beautiful orchestral version of GREEN. It doesn't go very far from the original, but is much more mellow and sounds a lot more epic. I think I'd have liked GREEN better if I had listened to this version before I listened to the original song. You gotta love the violins.

Rule (80kidz's "No More Rule" mix) is a great electronic remix. Her vocals are a very drowned by the crazy electronic instrumental through the whole song, but I think that's what they were going for anyway.

Rule (Remo-con "tech dance" remix) takes forever to really begin. Almost 2 minutes into the song, the vocals kick in, she sings 2 lines and it starts repeating the same sound over and over again for a long time. I think they call this kind of remix a 'Dub' remix. Those totally suck. Oh, a change of pace, and clean vocals. This is unexpected. New instrumental pattern... interesting. Ok, it's enjoyable, but the other 80kids remix is much better.

Ok, it's a great single. However, it's been a while since Ayu released a truly ground-breaking single. She hasn't lost any of her consistency, and this is probably going to sell a lot, and extend her #1 strike a bit further, but has she lost her hability to really make us wow? She has just announced a new album a few days ago, it's called NEXT LEVEL, and it's going to be released on March 25th. Let's wait and see how that goes.

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by Sairo!