Today’s sentence generated by Mad Libs is: “[Hakushi Hasegawa] and [Arthur Verocai] collaborated on a [character song] for an [upcoming IDOLM@STER mobile spinoff]”
Song by Hiro Shinosawa (VA. Reina Kawamura)
Lyric written, Composed, Arranged by Hakushi Hasegawa
Strings and Horn Arrangements: Arthur Verocai
full performer & technical credits:
ARRANGEMENTS, PROGRAM & KEY : Hakushi Hasegawa
VIOLINS : Ana de Oliveira / Angélica Alves / Caroline Santa Rosa / Clóvis Pereira Filho / Daniel Passuni / Gabriela Queiroz / Joyce Veiga / Luisa de Castro / Michel Bessler / Nikolay Sapoundjiev / Ubiratã Rodrigues / William Isaac
VIOLAS : Bernardo Fantini / Diego Silva / Ivan Zandonade / Victor Botene
CELLOS : Alceu Reis / Emilia / Glenda Carvalho / Lisiane de Los Santos
TRUMPETS : José Arimatéa / Diogo Gomes
ALTO SAX : Idriss Boudrouia
TENOR SAX and PICCOLO : Edu Neves
TROMBONE : Aldivas Ayres
ORCHESTRA FIXER : Paulo Guimarães
RECORDING ENGINEER : William Luna at studio Cia dos Técnicos (RJ)
RJ RECORDING COORDINATORS : Tamara Emy / Nick Dwyer / Ayano Kondo
PANDEIRO : Leo Nanjo
CO-DIRECTION : Go Yamazaki
MIX ENGINEER : Masashi Uramoto at Soi Studio
So running through those blanks in the sentence:
Hakushi Hasegawa: Cool singer-songwriter whose music is often a weird mix of glitched pop and nu jazz. Last year they joined music label Brainfeeder, which will become relevant when I talk about…
Arthur Verocai: Brazilian bossa/samba/jazz composer who released an album in the ’70s that flopped and then switched to writing music commercially, before he was rediscovered in this century. He’s previously collaborated a couple of times with other artists on Brainfeeder, so them hooking up on this song is actually not out of left field.
Upcoming IDOLM@STER mobile spinoff: This is for Gakuen IDOLM@STER, which seemingly doesn’t have an official release date beyond “spring 2024” so Soon™ I guess. In IM@S games you pick a prospective idol and, as their producer, you pick activities in their schedule to train them, manage their wellbeing, etc. in order to make them a success. There are also rhythm minigames, though it seems like this installment might not have those? Also instead of being a corporate employee, in this game you’re a classmate of these idols for some reason.
Character song: While each game has general songs that aren’t associated with specific characters, a ton of IM@S songs are in written for specific idols (which doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t be performed by other characters, just that they may be in tune with that character’s personality and give them a stat boost when they sing it). This is a song for Hiro Shinosawa, who is apparently a nerd.
“Koukei” starts off reasonably normal in the first half, alternating between some classy string arrangements and more boisterous, festival music for strings and brass during the intro and chorus. Some Hasegawa synths make occasional appearances but there’s nothing particularly weird until 2:33, when a lot of things happen all at once for about 20 seconds until the song gets back to business. Unsurprisingly, that’s my favorite part of the song. Overall it’s fun though!
A digital single release of “Koukei” is coming out on May 16th.
Leave a Reply