Anime: Last Exile (w/ sound!)

This week I’ve been watching Last Exile. Originally, I ran across it via an AMV I saw at NYAF 2008 and finally I got around to raising it in my Netflix queue.

In my opinion, the story started out slow. It’s about two vanship partners. A vanship is a sort of airplane. Claus is the pilot and Lavie, his best friend from forever, is the navigator. We follow them around learning about the world they live in. It is science fiction fantasy and steampunk-ish. The art is beautiful, but the story doesn’t really pick up until the team encounters the Silvana, a non-Guild ship roaming the skies, and its Captain, Alex Rowe. The two get pulled in the war that is happening in the skies.

After a while it feels like a World War II anime, though it is obviously not. If the fuel called “Claudia” didn’t give it away, or the fact that there are no props on the ‘planes’ didn’t hint at it, they are in fact on a different planet than the one we know. Where our heroes have been living, they have to live on filthy water and any amount of clean water is extremely valuable. As a matter of fact, at one point they go to a floating tavern at one point and try to buy a pint of water and nearly fall over at the cost of the freshest and cleanest in the world.

Lady Delphine, the Maestro of the Guild, the people who control almost all flight in the world, lowers herself to chase down her brother, who all this time has been hiding on the Silvana because of his obsession with Claus’ flying ability. By the time we are finally brought into Lady Delphine’s world, we are well aware of the difficulties of being a land dweller, and the unique problems of being land dwellers who desire to fly. When she brings her brother ‘home’, she invites Claus and he learns how she and the Guild live.

I have been thinking about it and the theme song keeps playing in my head, so I thought I would share. For those who can’t or won’t play the widget, one of the first things you hear on this is the sound of bagpipes, and then it goes into song, mostly Japanese but with English thrown in off course. The TV version is shorter, but I think I like this version better.

Tags: Last Exile, music, soundtrack

Video Game: Guitar Hero Metallica

All right, I have heard that people didn’t like the Metallica Guitar Hero, but I was making a concerted effort to try as many Guitar Hero games as possible while I was with GameFly. I have discovered a few things: Guitar Hero improved considerably since its first inception, I really like GH2 and 80s as well as GH3, Guitar Hero Metallica is AWESOME!

Yes, you heard me. I really like Guitar Hero Metallica for PS2…. except the fact that it doesn’t recognise my songstar microphones.

Read more…

Tags: games, Guitar Hero, Metallica, music, ps2

Music: Listening to Students

I attend a Japanese Language School run at Tenri Cultural Center in New York City. The center hosts a few different kinds of events, the most typical are art galleries and concerts. Even these simple statements cover a diverse amount of topics. In the art exhibit I have seen intricately cut paper making elusive designs, objects glued and sealed into sculpture and photography that blows the mind away or simple states something. The concerts have covered traditional, classical and indescribable. These aren’t all only Asian artist covering Asian topics, they are diverse and prolific.

While I have attended shakuhachi and shamisen concerts, last night I attended a chamber concert performed by some NYU students. While the concert was delightful and something I don’t regret attending at all, I am reminded how wonderful it is to attend student concerts. It provides a reference for just how much better professional musicians are in contrast. For many of the artists, I couldn’t fault their form or their playing.

However, it seemed that several groups never performed or practiced together much before the concert. There was a total of four piano/stringed instruments duet and a trio performance which lasted the longest. Of these, it seemed like three of the four duets didn’t practice together much and one seemed to never have performed together at all. The performance wasn’t bad. In fact it was the opposite. It just seemed as if each was playing their own instruments at the same time as the other person and both were using a slightly different tempo. It was merely distracting and didn’t effect the overall. One of the more distracting had the duet occasionally syncing up for segments while playing off-beat from each other at other times.

Perhaps I was tired while listening. Perhaps it was some kind of trick of the acoustics and I am willing to concede this point. However, the trio was fantastic. Violin, Cello and Piano played off each other as if they had practiced often and well. It was a joy listening to them play and I would not have minded hearing more from them. They didn’t sound professional by any stretch of the imagination, but I did get the feeling they were on the right track. I hope they continue performing and quash all those small telltales. I would love to find them performing sometime in the near future in a paid professional venue.

Despite the issues, it seemed like I could tell the ones who were doing music not for the love and intense need to study, but for credits. They weren’t as polished in their skills and seemed to not really care that they weren’t. It wasn’t something said or talked about, it was only their stage presence that felt that way. Some seemed to be almost frustrated to have to share the stage with the other and while their playing showed through, it had a bit of an uncomfortable annoyed air about it. Perhaps their normal duet partner couldn’t make it? Then there were the ones who are on the intense track to become well-known professionals. Simply wonderful and I will have to watch for those names to appear at Carnegie in a few years.

Get out there and listen to students. Go appreciate how far those professionals we hear in symphonies and soundtracks have come.

Do you play an instrument? Do you know what I am talking about? What concerts have you heard recently that my post reminds you of?

Tags: concerts, music, stringed instruments