After the fiasco with the 2010 Live BD/DVD/(SA)CD releases, this was almost destined to be the last..., music CD, I purchase. Well, I guess I shouldn't lock myself out like that.
Almost subconsciously, I was hoping this would have horrible sound quality, so it can serve as a nice closure for my fandom life. They disappointed me, but not by much, and certainly not the way I was expecting.
Looking only at dynamic range, and strictly from numerical point of view, the CD layer of this has more dynamic range than the original release (KICA-1384 - 2006-12-27), and the SACD layer has even more. However, that's about all the positive. Well, other than the last track, but I'll come back to that later.
Except for the last track, there are no new recordings, so everything else is just remaster of the recordings they had from four or more years ago. And remastering they did. It appears that the production team has been attending too many live events in Japan, without wearing hearing protection. Either they've lost their hearing, or their studio equipments are in dire need of replacement. I vote for the first. The remaster makes various mid to high frequency sound stand out like throrns on rose bushes. In "seiza" (track 4), they play around with dramatic climax thing, too. Heck, even Suara herself used the phrase "play around" (in Japanese of course) in her blog. And that's another problem with the remastering. They "played around" too much.
So, this CD concludes my media related fandom life. I'm sure I'll continue to pick up random radio CDs here and there, but as far as music media is concerned, I don't think I'll be a "fan"atic about anything ever again.
Oh, almost forgot. The last track has the new song, "amaneuta," which I think I like. I say, "I think" because I only listened to it once. I don't think they "played around" with that track much, so it's actually not a bad mix, either, but I think I just don't care anymore. And that last track continues on with an unplugged studio recording of "seiza" with just the piano background. I think they meant it as a practice, so it's as raw as it gets. I have to admit, it's a neat recording to have. Would I have bought this just for that track? I don't know. But I own this already, so no point in thinking about that.
