Listening: Bandcamp
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So a funky thing about composers for veteran game developer Nihon Falcom is that, when they leave the company, they rarely continue writing music under that name; either they vanish without a trace or they use a pseudonym from then on, an old one that they were using already or a new one created for this purpose. Saki Momiyama is one of the exceptions: after leaving the company after getting married in 2014, she took a three-year hiatus before returning to composing freelance, and since then she’s released a few game soundtracks and original music under the same name. So assuming they have some sort of policy governing future music releases that’s somehow legally valid, it seems like it’s not consistently enforced? Or maybe Momiyama gets a pass because it’s her maiden name and so technically not her legal name any more. Who can say.
I don’t really know much about her as a composer, but while I was adding this album to VGMdb I checked the preview and I really liked one of the tracks, so I gave the whole thing a spin. The music is self-described as ambient and easy listening, which means that 2/3 of the tracks are sparse piano mixed with light synth sounds and optionally some environmental noises. There’s not a lot going on in these so aside from one track they’re pretty simple compositionally (the exception naturally being my favorite piece), though the synth design occasionally has a little more of a sinister edge to it than you’d expect this kind of music to have, combining with the otherwise comfort-zone instrumentation to give it an interesting feel.
The remaining third of the album is a lot… more—more instruments, more active partwriting, more development, just broadly more. If that previous 2/3 was ambient foremost and easy listening second, these are easy listening foremost and ambient second. I liked them on average more than the sparse piano tracks, they reward active listening a bit more by virtue of being more active.
Recommended tracks:
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“Quietly nestled wind and blue” is easily the best piece on the album, due largely to its piano chords; things start getting weird and dissonant about 3 minutes in
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“Silent meteor shower” is my pick from the active side of the album with some nice tuned percussion, some of that sinister sound design (I love the stutter-chirping at 3:25), and most importantly: hard panned piano noodling
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