I have to admit, I love their new direction, songs like Old School, Magic Disk all the way through, and now this one, it's definitely a lot more polished than their old stuff and I can see some people not liking that, but the new direction their taking is one I'm predisposed to I guess, it has a kind of generic indie rock sound but they do it well, and I love it.

Finally doing a run through with their new album. I stand by my opinion that I really like the new direction they are on. Overall, I'm still only on like track 4 or 5, but nothing since All Right part2 has hit me in an amazing way, but there are bits and pieces of each song I really dig. Hopefully there will be another WOWer. I dug the chorus to (I believe it was) AtoZ a lot.

EDIT: After a second run through, the first half is really awesome, but after Machine Gun to Keiyoushi it starts to fade. I wouldn't be missing anything if I didn't hear any songs from the second half of the album again, bar Railroad, which is more than listenable.

I think you guys are little off target here. Yes, they do sound cleaner and smoother than the old days obviously, and that has both hurt and helped them. But Landmark is way better than Magic Disk in my opinion. I've listened to the albums everal times, and Tidus, you should listen to the second half. To say the second half is unlistenable is ridiculous, especially since the closing track, Anemone no Saku Haru Ni is the best song on the album. I love the melodies going on there, and Gotoh's voice sounds spot on.

The first single was actually pretty good too, nothing wrong with that. 1980 was another pretty good song, and Ia gree, Railroad is a stand out. I thought A to Z though was pretty lame, and N2 was originally a b-side for a reason. But the album as a whole is pretty good. AKFG keeps on rolling. They haven't bottomed out, kind of like how Straightener has. They still play it a bit too safe sometimes, but they definitely take chances musically still (i.e. Marching Band) and are still finding unique melodies to put on their records.

[quote="Son Goshin"]Straightener has bottomed out.[/quote]

I'll have two of what he's smoking, please.

I was a little quick there, the only song I unchecked from my iTunes (thus don't want it on my iPod) was N2. The rest are all very good, I've listened to the album multiple times on my walks to class...Anemone no is a great song, one of my favorites out of them all, but overall, no. It is surpassed in my eyes by both All Right (even though you could DQ that since it was released earlier than the rest. Out of new songs on this album, my favorite would have to be AtoZ or Kakato de..., but really, all of them are so great. I like this album a lot a lot and really dig the use of effects in a lot of the songs...Gotoh's voice will always be a standout for me, even on their early raw-er stuff I've loved his voice, now that it's smoothed out, it shows a different side of him musically that I also really enjoy.

I didn't mean to say that the newer stuff is different and better, I just meant that it IS different, but I still love it.

I'm actually not a fan of the songs in the style of AtoZ, shit's boring and repetitive to me. It's "interesting," but it misses on all of the areas that make Ajikan a strong band in my personal tastes.

And yeah, I really wish they'd go back to a more raw sound, but I've given up expecting many bands to not stick with the bland squeaky clean production that's all the rage nowadays. Thank god Art-School's latest album had balls.

What are those areas? Because I think that AtoZ is actually representative of a common Ajikan sound, heavy drum track, delayed guitar, heavy reverb...similar to Mugen Glider and countless other songs. I love the chorus, it has a real otherworldy feel, don't take that at the surface, I just mean that the heavy reverb and drum combo transports me, I can close my eyes and feel at ease and drift off...similar to The Sun That Will Not Rise.

[quote="MyFoot"]Mugen Glider[/quote]
Mmmmmm. Now there's a quality AKFG song. Haven't listened to that in forever.

[quote="MyFoot"]What are those areas?[/quote]

Powerful vocals (AtoZ lacks this)
Intricate drumming (AtoZ has pretty boring, repetitive drumming compared to Ajikan's better work)
"That Rock Feel" from awesome guitars (this whole album pretty much lacks this, though I blame the production for the most part)

Sorry man, but AtoZ is an outlier; Ajikan's mellow sound is far better represented by songs like Mugen Glider and Blue Train rather than this "almost-hip-hop" stuff.

I respectfully disagree, the vocal melody is strong, a mix of the new (verse "almost hip-hop" as you put it) that we can see in songs like Shinseki no Lovesong, and the old classic Masafumi with the strained falsetto in the chorus.

The drumming, Ijichi has always been one of my favorites and he can lay down a mean backbeat, but there's not always a need for flashy. As I said before, I think the drums mix with the guitar really well in the chorus.

The rock feel I'll give to you, but when I think of that, I think of their first 3 albums. It's not like they failed to achieve rock and roll here, they are just using more than octave chords and power chords all the time. Its a step in a new direction, playing with texture and dynamics, a necessary step in the progression of music in my opinion.

[quote="Lesser_Hamster"][quote="MyFoot"]Mugen Glider[/quote]
Mmmmmm. Now there's a quality AKFG song. Haven't listened to that in forever. [/quote]

Sol-fa in my opinion is a perfect album, one of those few albums in music that I can listen through without stopping and be in love at every song.
EDIT: thought MG was on Sol-Fa but it was on 5M, whoops

[quote="MyFoot"]I respectfully disagree, the vocal melody is strong[/quote]

I said nothing about the melody, I said "powerful vocals." That awesome, emotionally-strained singing that verges on shouting. As for the rest of it, you can like what you like, but to call the style of instrumentation in that song "representative of a common AKG" sound when it's only on a very few outlying tracks is just plain silly.

[quote="MyFoot"][quote]Mugen Glider[/quote]

Sol-fa in my opinion is a perfect album, one of those few albums in music that I can listen through without stopping and be in love at every song.[/quote]

Mugen Glider is on Kimi Tsunagi 5 M.

[quote="Marekenshin"][quote="MyFoot"]I respectfully disagree, the vocal melody is strong[/quote]

I said nothing about the melody, I said "powerful vocals." That awesome, emotionally-strained singing that verges on shouting. As for the rest of it, you can like what you like, but to call the style of instrumentation in that song "representative of a common AKG" sound when it's only on a very few outlying tracks is just plain silly.

[quote="MyFoot"][quote]Mugen Glider[/quote]

Sol-fa in my opinion is a perfect album, one of those few albums in music that I can listen through without stopping and be in love at every song.[/quote]

Mugen Glider is on Kimi Tsunagi 5 M. [/quote]

See edit
That came to mind too, as what you described is definitely an awesome aspect of AKFGs early stuff, but I think if you follow their discography through the years, you'll see a marked movement from that style, culminating in this most recent album, on which AtoZ has many factors that represent aspects of that shift. But yeah, to each their own

Just because it's been stuck in my head and it came to mind when I said this:
Their indie albums were especially raw and had the "powerful vocals". I think of Hold Me Tight as an example, heavy guitar action and the lots of shouting. Hokai Amplifier had many raw songs as well. With 5M we can see the start of a shift, with some songs being raw and powerful while others, such as Mugen Glider were more laid back and smooth. Blahblahblah and so on...

AtoZ simply doesn't have a lot of factors of their shift in style. It's an outlying track, stylistically. The majority of the songs on the recent few albums, which have the same rock style as their older work but with a "cleaned-up" sound, DO represent their shift in style. Like the track all you want, but it's just not representative. Period.

I said it was[i] representative [/i]of their shift, as in a culmination, not that it is like most of their discography. If you follow the shift that I'm referring to you'd see it, but I'm having a hard time trying to convey it through words. It's simply [b]not[/b] what you claim...it's not a surprise, there are no surprising elements to it that make it completely different, it sounds like an AKFG song...a present day AKFG song. Not an early AKFG song, not a golden-age AKFG song, but where they are at in this day and age, it sounds like something they would write stylistically.

I'm not even talking about it as being an outlier for their discography, I'm talking about it being an outlier for for the most recent albums. It can't be representative of their shift in sound or a "culmination" if almost no songs have that feel to them. I don't think that word means what you're thinking it means, mang.

Also, when did I say it was a "surprise"? You're arguing against points I never made while ignoring my extremely valid point (which I just made in the above paragraph for like, the third time). I understand you like that song, but it's like saying that "Nobody Knows What Blooms" is an example of some culmination of the "new pillows" sound...it was a one-shot track with interesting things going on (that also had some similar parts to a FEW other recent songs such as Foxes; similarly to how AtoZ has a feel that is similar to a select FEW new Ajikan songs). You should probably reconsider your word choice here or abandon your argument altogether.