I prefer this version of another morning

As Lesser Hamster said, this is a LOT for a Buster to process. This truly does change how we should think about the band. Who knows how many unreleased songs there are now, and who knows how many songs Sawao has resurrected, rearranged, and changed lyrics too. This really makes me feel like a fly on the wall during the sessions for Kool Spice, and that's the one thing I've been missing from this band. When you look at all the other deluxe packages that Western bands have, this is a welcome addition to the discography.

What's crazy, is that we can see how Sawao was kind of split here. Some of the songs sound like they'd fit in the first movement. Others have the jazzier feel of the second movement. It sounds like we have (at least) two distinct sessions here. The guitar tone in songs like Another Morning and Hello Friend sound very very similar, and the quality is the same. Beautiful Picture and Another Slow Night also sound similar in quality. I feel like Sawao didn't know which direction to go in after Kenji left and the third album could very well have been completely different from Kool Spice, and who knows where the band would be today if he hadn't gone in that direction and experimented with those sounds.

As for the songs themselves, I was blown away by quite a few of these. First off... why the FUCK was Flash Candy left off Kool Spice? There is so much going on in that song. Sawao's voice sounds golden. The bass line is thumping and Kashima sounds like a man on a mission. The guitar is great, and all the different elements from the horns to the piano to Sawao's "doo-doo-YEAs" all mesh together into the epitome of what Kool Spice is and was. Plus, TWO awesome guitar solos and an extremely beautiful and melodic chorus. Flash Candy is gold and is the lost holy grail we've all been waiting for. I definitely think it's better than Future, that is, at least the re-recorded version we have.

Cooper Poster was also a really fun song, and that solo sounds great. Another Slow Night was really chill, definitely was digging that.

[quote="Marekenshin"]In particular, the lyrical changes for Another Morning and Kanojo wa Kyou strike me, because these changes follow the pattern of a theory that I've held for quite some time now, and one of the big puzzle pieces that I hope going through interviews and lyrics more thoroughly will reveal. Sawao changed how he sang about the girl in these songs, just like he changed how he sang about love as time passed and they went into the Living Field and Lostman era. Early songs are hopeful love songs, talking of time spent together, all sorts of romantic stuff, but there's eventually a turning point in his love songs where it starts to be first songs of farewell and sorrow about loss. Later on he moves onto songs about falling in love again and being surprised about it (I think Tokyo Bambi was one) as well as songs about someone not being there but still being an inspiration to him, but basically, from his lyrics Sawao has had a pretty rough time, romantically.[/quote]

Thank you for all this analysis. This is (obviously) a side of the band I wish I understood more in depth, but do to the language barrier, I always have to look at the translation after the fact instead of comprehending it while I'm listening. The emotion is still there, but this here really helps to understand it more. I've always had an inkling about what you described above. It's like Sawao has felt rejected much more since the third movement started, like it's obvious there's not always a happy ending to the two people involved. So I think your theory is valid. Now I don't think we have many translations for the last two albums posted anywhere. Are the songs still in this same vein even today, where the subject of the song/Sawao still feels all this sorrow and loss? Maybe we can make a thread we can discuss these lyrics more and what he adds to it in interviews. This subject fascinates me and it's really cool that we get to see first hand how Sawao's lyrics changed (drastically, even) in just four years.

Getting into that sort of in-depth analysis is exactly what I'm aiming to start doing. I just got ahold of this:
http://www.busters-shop.com/?pid=55348644
and will be getting some more materials soon.

Yea. Buddy.

I'd have been all over that when it came out if I had only taken more than one semester of Japanese...

I'm ripping .WAVs for this now. Feel free to compress it to whatevs later dudes. I'll post a link later. Trying to do this before my laptop dies. I left my charger in 'Muricah.

I figure most people prefer FLAC or MP3 of some sort, but who am I to complain, lol.

[quote="Marekenshin"]
Also, check track number 8's title: Cooper no Poster. I was trying to figure out why that sounded familiar, and it's actually in the first line of Sick Vibration's second verse ("Cooper no Poster hatte"). Sawao got all meta on us or something, I'm excited as fuck to hear these.[/quote]

Is it just me or does this song share the same bass line to Over Amp aswell? Seems like the whole THR single is just meta in some way.

Throw 'em up as WAV and I'll get them encoded to FLAC and 320Kbps MP3.

Thanks Tidus and chgu! I'd love MP3s

WAVs

[url]https://mega.co.nz/#!EZExUaKD!kp8abKG_TObdOKKMNDkRl5Kyhj-GKWsSqtthGMX9m8E[/url]

So far I like another morning and flash candy the best.

Downloading them now. I'll edit and put the new link with encodes soon.

MP3:
https://mega.co.nz/#!VEcRCB6I!fUO1o7qn_ ... qnnlgdgI-I

FLAC:
https://mega.co.nz/#!odMnUCRI!IQWCLM1Da ... Z6IFw01vQg

Thanks, friend!

So after listening through on my way to and from school today, I really enjoyed it. It was fun listening to early versions of songs we know so differently now, but for the most part, I prefer the studio vresins we are familiar with. However, a few unreleased songs were really awesome, and I wish they fleshed them out into full releases. My favorites were Flash Candy, Singers a go! Go!, Cooper Poster, and Mona Lisa All My Own, in that order I believe.

I've been listening to this pretty much non-stop since I got my hands on it. Literally, to the exclusion of everything else in my library.

God-tier: Flash Candy, Hello Friend, Swingers a Go! Go!, Another Morning

Very Good-tier: Beautiful Picture, Cooper Poster, Kanojo wa Kyou, Another Slow Night, Boku de Irareru you ni, Boku Dake Mona Lisa

Meh-tier: Naked Shuffle