First, I'm now sure that I don't like Elements Garden. Well, it's not a single person, so I guess I shouldn't put it like that, but I didn't like what they did with "Pure, AQUAPLUS Legend of Acoustics" and I don't like this, either.
I feel nothing special from these two songs. Well, Aa sings well as always, but we're now missing Takumi's compositions. Now, those were *special*. These are boring to me.
Boring sound quality only makes it worse. I've never been fond of the euro-beat type bass. I like REAL bass, coming from real instruments. Bass with short attacks, like what you get when you hit a real object with a stick. That's what it's all about. The synthetic bass is just too bloated to provide an exciting beat. I bet it is godsend for the damned record company bastards with no interest in music, because this kind of bloated bass doesn't need to concentrate its dynamics in a short period. It's easier to keep the "boom" even after raising the level of everything else. Real beats have very short temporal existence, so they lose all their energy when mixed with massive dynamic range compression.
At this point, King Records with their DISTORTING level of dynamic range compression (for some of their artists, like Mizuki Nana) is at the bottom of my list. Victor with their BORING constant dynamic range compression takes the next level. Neither companies will get any more direct business from me.
