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Old 2009.07.04, 06:24 AM   #511
Orenji
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Originally Posted by gekokujyo View Post
Actually, the weekly sales reflected on Oricon are now the actual sales, and not an estimate. It used to be an estimate and then you had to multiply it by some index number to get the actual sales, but they have since changed it. Random trivia you are bound to know if you troll Ayumi Hamasaki forums enough. =p
Hahaha, good, then! At last they changed the system. Thus, SG has sold more than 120.000 copies. Good, no?
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Old 2009.07.04, 11:25 PM   #512
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is that a good first week compared to other big names in jpop? that figure seems kind of low for a top tier entertainer.
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Old 2009.07.05, 12:41 AM   #513
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The whole of Japan is probably saving money to buy Dragon Quest IX next week.
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Old 2009.07.05, 02:15 AM   #514
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thanks to the ability rent cds (along with video games and dvds), most people except hardcore fans skip buying albums unless they are super excited about it. they are pretty shameless about it too, they sell recordable cds and drives right at the counter at rental shops and the cds they carry are usually just regular edition albums (although ocassionally they get sent rental versions which have some sort of copy control, more often than not its just a retail version slapped with a rental tag)
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Old 2009.07.05, 02:03 PM   #515
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Does the second press look like this? (it's not a Japanese release version)

http://cgi.ebay.com/RINGO-SHIINA-SAN...ayphotohosting
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Old 2009.07.05, 05:38 PM   #516
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preview for vogue pv is up

http://www.emimusic.jp/ringo10th/ringo09/


AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME!!!!! RINGO SAIKO
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Old 2009.07.05, 06:22 PM   #517
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TV:

http://pvcheck.jp/pv/page/sid88baca0...b5630c12dc66e0

7/06 11:30~12:00 VMC
7/06 15:00~17:00 SSTV
7/06 19:30~20:30 MTV
7/07 02:00~03:30 SSTV
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Old 2009.07.05, 07:39 PM   #518
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yes yes yes. Ringo run that catwalk
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Old 2009.07.05, 08:43 PM   #519
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Default Sanmon Gossip Review

I will use the English track names, since those are what’s on my Ipod.

Vogue
I love that Ringo always starts an album with a song that gets me excited and in the right frame of mind. This song gets the album off on the right foot and sets up a perfect trinity of opening-middle-closing like Shukyou-Kuki-Soretsu of KZK. For me, these are the three most important songs on a SR or TJ album, and Vogue-Season-Alone come closer to this ideal than either Kyouiku (I prefer the single version of Ringo no Uta) or Adult (I like Tegami, but I feel this role needs to be filled by a Ringo-composed song).

The song has wonderful energy throughout, and I agree with everyone who has mentioned energy as one of the album’s main strengths. I love how the melody falls on “cry.” I also love how Ringo’s vocals are in tension with and power through the harmonic goings on, for instance at 1:57-2:16. Ringo going nuts at 3:10-3:15 gives contrast with the previous choruses and keeps things interesting. The rap is inoffensive because the music doesn’t take the time off. The guitar and piano keep going as if the rap were not there, keeping the song from losing momentum, and they use the last rap section to build up for their duet from 3:46 to the end.

I love this song in much the same way as I love Himitsu, and I will be listening to it a lot.

Blue Collar

I like a lot of what goes on in this song harmonically, and I suppose that’s what makes it work for me, together with the sense of momentum. The song builds so nicely up to things like 49-1:00 and 1:54-2:08, but then doesn’t seem to do enough with it. Why am I such a sucker for when Ringo screams randomly like at 3:15? Considering that this song is a tribute to genres I’m not really familiar with, I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it so far.

Clandestine

It seems like Ringo likes the spy genre. Mayonaka and this make me think of a video someone posted on youtube setting Gamble to the opening credits of Casino Royale with awesome results. I thought the Casino Royale opening was a great video, but adding Gamble made it so much better than the original song. How cool would it be if they had Ringo compose a James Bond theme? And Clandestine makes me think she would take them up on it. What a great way to get her exposed to a broad English-speaking audience that would be.

I love the frenetic pace and the flute line. It’s a very fun song, but one that doesn’t have any emotional impact for me. I have been skipping this song in my playlist, which surprises me. It’s a flawless song. I don’t know whether songs like this and Mayonaka don’t connect with me, or if it is something more serious. I like Mayonaka very much (don’t think that I believe this is all that’s going on. There is no doubt in my mind that Mayonaka is a more important song than Clandestine), but I find I ignore it in favor of Aisaika no Choushoku, which I can listen to all day. But I doubt this is just a genre/personality thing. I think Clandestine lacks the ambition needed to be emotionally arresting. I will talk more about this when I get to Sharp Practice, but for now I will just say that I think Clandestine is a practically perfect expression of what it aspires to, but it doesn’t aspire to express anything I feel compelled to listen to.

Original Intention

Great intro, especially the piano. Two things let me down about this song. It builds wonderfully to 42, and then goes in a different direction from what I expected. I was surprised by the xylophone line from 43-46. I think she could have done better with this, and that a good, interesting contrasting line would have done wonders for the song. It is seldom that Ringo makes a choice that doesn’t make sense to me, and this is one of those times. Also I find the vocals from 1:00-1:08 monotonous, and this not a place where the song can afford to be monotonous. This is a good song because it reminded me off a lot of the zany little things that make Shiina Ringo special, like the piano and the need for the xylophone line and the perfect little flute cameo, but it is flawed. I can’t help feeling this song could be made better. Perhaps it is a good candidate for one of Ringo’s compulsive reinterpretations she keeps making of her past work. Also, the vocal layering starting at 2:30 is nice, but it doesn’t add to the song considerably. It is not at all like the vocal layering in Hatsukoi Shoujo, which is chillingly beautiful in a way that reminded me of Tallis or Byrd. The vocal layering is essential and organic in Hatsukoi Shoujo; in Original Intention it is a pleasant gimmick.

Temporary Virgin

I have nothing against Temporary Virgin. I didn’t have this version before, so now I’m glad to own it. However, I do agree with those who say the Expo version is better. I was surprised at how much I like Temporary Virgin on Expo, and I wonder why. Hopefully it’s not just Ringo wearing short shorts and falling through the stage. I don’t want to believe I choose my music for costume changes and choreography. Also, why did I think “one time, two times” was adorable when Ringo did it on Expo, and offensive when someone else did it here?

The Leading Hitter

I love it. Big, bold, fast, beautiful. Wacky tempos and harmonies. This is why I love her. It’s full of those moments of transition and surprise that make listening to music so fun, like at 38, 1:08, and 1:39. Composers are like football players. Their value isn’t how fast they can run in a straight line, but how quickly they can turn. Ringo has always been great at building up momentum and then turning: changing emotion, or genre, or time, or melody, all in a moment, and setting up a tension between where your mind went and where she went. It’s my favorite emotion listening to music. This song reassured me she still knows about that experience and still wants to give it to us. I certainly identify with those who get angry at Neko bombast, but this song had enough going on and enough momentum not to get bogged down when the bombast threatened to overcome the genuine emotion.

It should not end the way it does, rising through 3:08-3:10.

Season

Beautiful.

Just the Two of Us

Fun. I like it because of the baritone sax line from 1-30, which is funky in the same way as the bass line in Verzage Nicht, O Hauflein Klein from Bach’s Cantata #42. However, the transition at 30 is completely unconvincing, annoying, and destroys the momentum entirely. Apart from this virtue and fault, the song is kind of like a less impressive Clandestine: an unambitious success, pleasant but of no emotional impact.

Fake Fellow

Cool intro. It’s weird, because the accompaniment has plenty of energy, but this is the first song that feels unnecessarily slow. Apart from the piano (which I really like), nothing much happens from 1-1:28. Why does it take so long to set the stage? If the piano’s going so fast, why isn’t the song doing anything? I love the solo from 2:14-2:41. In all, I enjoy this song, but I come for the side dish (S&P Sessions) instead of the entrée (SR).

Sharp Practice

This is the only song I have a truly negative reaction to. The intro and vocals got me hoping for something like Stoicism, and then it felt like it delivered something more like Fukushuu: anger that feels false because it doesn’t have the music to back up the posturing. I probably am misjudging Sharp Practice in this respect. But this is because hearing Sharp Practice revealed the void that had been bothering me all through my first listen of Sanmon Gossip, but which I couldn’t articulate. For a second Sharp Practice had me hoping that it would fill that void: where is Stoicism? If there is one thing that Sanmon Gossip is missing that is essential to Shiina Ringo, it is hubris. Stoicism had it. KZK had it from beginning to end. Tokyo Jihad said that KZK explicitly came out and said “I am interesting!”, and this is exactly right. It was a self-conscious attempt to be interesting and provocative, and as such it was pretentious and egotistical and flawed and stunningly beautiful. My feeling is that KZK was an Icarus attempt to capture something Ringo was unworthy as an artist to capture, and SG simply doesn’t aim as high. Insofar as KZK fails to express what it’s hoping to express, I would far rather listen to a failure like KZK than a success like Clandestine. Hubris is essential to SR’s appeal for me, and SG’s one glaring flaw is its lack of it.

And with that outburst, I don’t even think Sharp Practice succeeds at whatever it’s trying to do.

Excitement

Charming. I actually really like Ringo’s excursions into lounge music/bossa nova. She almost always ends up with something that is chill but energetic, relaxing but emotionally true. I don’t know how to say it, but she often impatiently starts the next line, like at 1:12 or 1:44, when another artist would let the music take a break before starting the next section. This impatience is one of her best qualities as a musician, refusing to let the music take a break, and forcing it to keep up its momentum up to and through its conclusion. This isn’t a life-changing song, but it showcases so much of what I love about Ringo. Her energy, her charm, and the deep joy she takes in music are all tangible here.

Ordinary Ability

I am confused by the intro. I was in suspense through the whole thing; how is she going to use this as her jumping off point? How does she transition from this into the song? And then she doesn’t. She winds it down into 22 and then has to build up her momentum into the song all over again. There is no necessary link between the intro and the song. It’s less an intro than a gratuitous accordion solo.
With that out the way, I love this song. Maybe I’m a closet accordion fan (I’ve already mentioned how I feel about Aisaika no Choushoku). All Ringo’s best qualities are represented here: raw passion, inventiveness, eccentricity, music stripped naked and unashamed. This is why I love Shiina Ringo. It’s revealing that the two songs with the strongest emotional impact are Season and Ordinary Ability. As tempting as tonal lushness and bombast are, the biggest emotional impact is always achieved by cleanness and clarity. I'll say more on this with Alone. The ending few seconds are perfect.

Alone

The intertwining guitars are easily the coolest intro on the album. Vast improvement over the Expo version. Perhaps the greatest difference in quality between two different arrangements of a SR song (although Yattsuke Shigoto and Gamble also come to mind). Tokyo Jihad interprets this as evidence that SR is best when backed by a rock band. I see it differently. I think she would be just as good writing for a harpsichord, string quartet and oboe as for a traditional rock band. But Alone shows that she is not at her best writing for a 68-person orchestra. Rhythmic vitality is absolutely essential to her appeal, and this gets sacrificed when you have that many people trying to play together. For me, the single most offensive Neko-bombast moment I’ve ever suffered is when he gave the harpsichord part from Blackout to the flute section. Flutes! What the hell! And the rhythmic vitality that drove that outro and made it so charming immediately dissolved into late-romantic mushiness. This is all intensely personal, but my feeling is that music, any music, popular or classical, is best when small enough that every line and every note is perfectly clear. Whatever gains in variety of tone and color (and I love that Ringo feels compelled to experiment with color) you get from an orchestra is not worth the sacrifice you make in clarity of rhythm and expression. So I would prefer that Ringo choose what colors she wants to experiment with at the outset, and have the instruments necessary, and only those necessary, represented in the song. Her arrangements, even the wacky ones in KZK, seem to understand the difference between the necessary and the sloppy or bombastic. Saito Neko’s arrangements do not. The only aspect of nu-Shiina (who gets so much bad press in this forum) that worries me is the seeming erosion of this distinction. I have absolutely nothing against her movements away from rock and into jazz, bossa nova, classical, show tunes, or whatever genre differences make “nu-Shiina” different from old Shiina. I welcome the genre schizophrenia, I just hate that she invited an orchestra along. Much better to do it with a jazz trio or a string quartet or any other set of instruments that are necessary.

The background “yeah-e-yeah-e-yeah”s are, of course, hilariously bad, but I can ignore these. What cannot be ignored is the energy and the interplay of the melody with the bass and two guitar lines. The outro is about as good as the intro. A wonderful song, and a great way to close out the album.

Marunouchi Sadistic

I view this solely as a bonus track. The tracks from Vogue-Alone are a perfect, organic, self-contained SR album. I love it when Ringo uses the koto, and I only wish it had been more prominent in the arrangement. I don’t see this arrangement as revealing anything important that wasn’t already implicit in the other versions. I do love the bass. For me this comes down to: would I rather own this version of Marunouchi, or would I rather only have tracks 1-13? I would rather have it. I will always accept more SR. It doesn’t add much to the album, but it takes nothing away and I am glad to have it.

In closing

I get the impression that my response to this album is more positive than most of those who have posted. I am not sure how it compares to her other solo or even TJ work, but right now I don’t really care where it ranks in the canon. (Variety does not count. She didn’t write Variety.) I do worry about whether its melodies are interesting enough to keep me excited about it like her previous work, but so far I am loving listening to it and it shows no signs of getting old. So many songs have those moments that shine with her charm and personality. Some songs, like Vogue, Season, Ordinary Ability, and Alone are already becoming friends I will appreciate long into the future. I can’t possibly evaluate this album’s value relative to MM, SS, KZK, Kyoiku or Adult right now. I am just so grateful to have new Shiina Ringo to listen to.

Last edited by Lustau : 2009.07.05 at 10:43 PM.
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Old 2009.07.05, 09:03 PM   #520
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wtf, fashion runway?
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