LogFAQs > #963177254

57nd
Game: Steins;Gate 0
Title: Messenger
Composer: Takeshi Abo
Nominator: @OrangeCrush980
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u1137bco5c

when this topic had started i wasn't into steins;gate (actual series) yet, at this point i am, and...i don't think i would be even close to as into it if the music weren't this good! the music is a core component to the really distinct mood it has. Takeshi Abo's someone i always sorta liked but the more time goes on, the more i realize he's among my favorites somewhere.

I love time travel stories, very consistently get excited about them. I just wasted a half hour dazing off into half-asleep daydreams about the topic. Takeshi Abo has a PERFECT style for this. I'd say even outside of science;adventure his music feels so much like "clockwork". I haven't watched/read 0 yet tho and from my understanding its far less time travel centric. Still it feels fitting even just for "science" so it works pretty well

Takeshi abo just has this wonderful taste in synth sounds. In this case you mostly hear it as those cool analog plucks. but also the higher constant 8th plinks. Their very short prickly feeling just screams SCIENCE to me. And maybe a particularly "traumatized by events of previous steins;gate" angle of that. Takeshi Abo's early music days consist of a lot of exquisite fm synth sound design in PC98 games. And to this day, he still shows a maintained interest in such a thing. Maintaining his site with custom FM patches he designed for use with old game soundchips, and often posting pictures on social media of his old hardware synths (some he may even be buying newly? really clearly passionate about a cool era of this stuff, and embraces the "synthesizer sound design" element of his work more than most composers who use synthesizer). His synth sound design style is often incredibly plucky and percussive. Short or fast attacks and just a generally cool choice in timbre on any sound he goes for. This tune certainly exudes all this I love about him, even if the mood might be a slower melancholic emotional thing with orchestra layers: i love that element too and it works great mixed with the computer sounds. . . . !

I'm known maybe for an incessant constant talking about odd time signatures---automatically liking songs for even the slightest edge-case off odd time. This is less of a factor in my taste these days, tho it very much was still a centerpiece of it in 2018 when I ranked these.

The way this is in odd time is mostly stubborn 7/4 all the way thru, this is a type of odd time I liked in 2018 but these days might react that it actually feels too rigid and almost more mechanical and simple than if it was a more normal timesig. songs "in 7/4 all the way thru" these days don't tend to get the automatic 8.x status for me they used to. ...except this song today in 2022 I'd still rate pretty much where I placed it in 2018! What makes it work for me in this track?.

I think some of it is literally just the context, not even the context I have from actually knowing more about steins;gate than I used to, I just mean ...the imagery the piece evokes to me. It evokes numbers, machines, calculator LED patterns, flasks with bubbling liquid and connecting tubes, wires and circuit boards. It is SCIENCE MUSIC.

I think the unbalanced nature of this incarnation of 7/4, calls a lot more attention the the barlines dividing it. This is something I might actually often complain about these days--the irony of odd time actually making something easier to follow rather than harder, but what i like about it here is that it just...amplifies everything about the imagery I like about this song. Other (4/4) versions in the same game don't do anything for me and I think that's a big part of why. The melancholic depressing computer scientist theme song needs to have an in-your-face mathematical element to feel as much like 1s and 0s as this does. i LOVE this song and composer i can't wait to eventually experience steins;gate 0 with how much i loved steins;gate (normal)