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Saturday, November 30, 2019

Song of the Week! 30 November 2019


Another November has went and gone, and with that are also the American Thanksgiving day and -more spread to the rest of the world- the consumism-fueled celebration that is the Black Friday.

As a follow-up to such spirits, here's something 'black'-related from us!

 R.I. Yamato x Daisuke Kurosawa (大和 × 黒沢ダイスケ)
Version
Allx5 (195)x7 (280)x8 (585)x10 (925)
 Taiko 0 Y
 190
 none
 ???


With its black-lenient Japanese surname/aliases and its several boss tracks in music gaming under his tally, Daisuke Kurosawa has made a name of its own in Taiko gaming as a musician for the sound company INSPION, with several guitar-lead original compositions to boot. However, as we've already talked about him on the 'no Ran' Song Series Showcase about Infinite Rebellion (link), for this song of inverted initial letters from I.R. we're going to focus on the works of the other talent, in charge for this song's guitar/bass backup as well the overall composing/programming process.

Born March 17th, 1987 and most commonly going by the art name of 'Yamato', Yamato Masaoka (正岡大和) (Twitter; Tumblr) is another Japanese artist with the knack for guitar-lead rock and metal music creation, ranging from independent projects to joint acts such as Dopedown and G5 Project, for which took also part other music game-renowned figures (MintJam's a2c and Godspeed). Among his credited works in the 2000s are included arrangements to several videogames (AliceSoft titles, Touhou Project, Kantai Collection, Octopath Traveler and iDOLM@STER) as well as original works and Anime themes, from isekai-genre shows to Free!. Alongside the aforementioned media outlets Yamato Masaoka has been active in, he also has his own Youtube channel for some of his older works.

The song R.I., read as 'Aru-Ai' (アールアイ, "Eagle Eye") as confirmed by Daisuke Kurosawa through his Twitter feed (link), has premiered as one of Yellow Version's seasonal Rewards Shop newcomers, remaining to this day an arcade-exclusive treat. Much like with other INSPION-produced tracks, the song's game cut recordeing has been filmed and published on the company's Youtube account (link). The song's original-length version can be found on Daisuke Kurosawa's second solo album, BLACK ALBUM 2, with its Taiko cut being featured on Green Version's 10-Dan Dojo Ranking main course later on.

As far as modern 10-stars go, R.I. esily falls on the easier spectrum of the top-dog rating, with plenty of repeating, 1/16-based notechart stanzas and one generous pause section in the middle. The highest combo-breaking risks lie into the final Go-Go Time section, where clusters are longer and more intricate than the rest of the song's average.