Previews for 5TEARS vol. 2 available on Eiko's official site (
http://www.eiko-shimamiya.com/)! Go take a listen!
EDIT: My stream-of-consciousness style thoughts on the previews.
This mini-album sounds very happy. Not like the first one wasn't, but this second volume is even more cheery and more upbeat. The first track already seems to hint at that direction. I love it! It reminds me of a Perfect World song (think Haruzora or Sunny Place), but done in a more interesting way (I really liked Sunny Place though!). Only Lipica sounds somewhat more... serious. Maybe Jade no Ryu too... Actually, the second time I'm hearing it, wow, I love Jade no Ryu's preview. It might turn out to be what Nichijou was to the original 5TEARS. Umi Torihata's voice sounds interesting... not sure if I'm going to love it... I noticed yesterday that she had set up a Twitter account, btw. SHIHO's track is totally different than I was expecting, lol. I really like her vocals though. Aoi Tada's song, on the other hand, sounds EXACTLY like I expected. It's maybe somewhat like Carnation on the previous volume. Furiru no Kaze sounds like very run-of-the-mill stuff. And wow, talk about saving the best for the last. Lia's vocals on Infini are... radiant! That's what comes to my mind. It's like I had forgotten she sounds so beautiful. This might be the best song she's done in years (which is not saying much considering how active she's been lately...)! The arrangement sounds amazing and the melody interesting. It's not the trancy blast I was hoping for (like, say, JUPITER), but it mightbe even better than that track would have been. This sounds so great.
I ****ing love Tomohisa Furushima. How are his arrangements so GOOD?! I need to hear more stat.
I don't think this volume will turn out to be as good as the first one... but the more I listen, the more I'm starting to like pretty much everything. Seriously contemplating buying this...
While I ponder 5TEARS2's quality, have some more previews! These are for MAKO's mini album:
http://ive.mu/news/121208.html.
EDIT vol. 2: I really like MAKO's singing on this album. Her older songs suffer from sounding really samey and I don't think she got to have any versality. This problem was starting to get fixed on her later songs and that trend continues. She's not going from one extreme to another like KOTOKO has done, but she's not singing the same old song with the same old vocals so much anymore.
Moving on, I'm pretty sure the track previews are in the wrong order on the preview file we get. Because everything about the first song sounds SO MUCH like Nakazawa (now that I think about it, it sounds a lot like the song Nakazawa did for Yanaginagi, Vidro Moyou (if you haven't heard that one yet, you need to hear it now, it's such a lovely song!)) and then the second preview sound EXACTLY like inner child there's NO WAY that is not Takase's work listen to those synth strings! The third snippet also sounds very Takase-ish (kinda similar to the original LEVEL OCTAVE actually) and the fourth one is DEFINITELY the unplugged mix of LEVEL OCTAVE but that's supposed to come last! And so I have no idea what song the last preview is from but it sounds kinda dull I'm gonna go ahead and say this preview is from Precious because that's a boring enough track title to deserve something that sounds like this. This really reminds me of MAKO's older songs so nostalgia factor yay? I think this song will need that redeeming quality because it doesn't sound very interesting.
And so, uhm, the song I THINK is snow flake sounds very good, the unplugged LEVEL OCTAVE sounds awfully interesting and at least one of the remaining three Takase tracks sounded kinda nice! ... I think. Ugh, WHY couldn't they just put separate previews under the song titles?! Or have a player similar to the one on Eiko's site? Or... something. This is just confusing.
Also, a new Outer single will be released at KOTOKO's Countdown Live concert. The titular song, RISE-UP!, sounds terribly tame. If interested in finding out more, go here:
http://outer.ive.mu/.