LogFAQs > #963742904

38st
Game: Blue Reflection
Title: Qualia
Composer: Hayato Asano
Nominator: @xp1337
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsOKTUHM5nQ

This portion of the ranking topic is definitely the zone of songs with lots of layers on top of each other doing rhythmically misaligned things from each other in some way. Which is one of my favorite things of course! Of course I rank stuff like this high but its shocking to myself that I'm mentioning it back-to-back in all these cases

Hayato Asano actually wowed me regarding that type of thing a long time ago, with his unused Ciel Nosurge songs, long before blue reflection. My favorite track by him overall might be this one:

Ciel nosurge - niizhtana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rcNMyzKggs

But its a core element of his style. Even in the mega popular epic hits like the ones named after science words in all caps like "tiger" or "dnf" or wat ever, he sneaks polymeter in there. I think he's just someone where he's made it an 'option' and casually treats the idea of polymeter just like its another color for him to use. No use limiting the idea of an ostinato to something that lines up with the barline when you can make it have its Own barline.. if he wants to add a sequence of even 8th notes there's no reason it has to be a loop of 8 8th notes, he will make it a loop of 9 instead! even if nothing else in the song is 9

I definitely get the most of a kick out of the more subdued Hayato Asano songs. This is not a diss on the louder ones at all, but simply that i think with a quieter serene mood--despite what is typical for people to do--he does not make the composition any simpler or the sound design any less a focus. So its actually kinda this rare wonderful world where serene music can actually be very complex and have really crazy production! It's the opposite of the in-your-face sound i associate with blue reflection, but its one of the most important styles that make the soundtrack even shine to me. Because usually this merging of intricate and calm seem to be at odds. I also just think he sounds nicest and most clean when at this pace

niizhtana is pretty similar to qualia in a few ways
-lots of polymeter
-a quieter approach from asano
-i totally filter layers out because it's so smoothly presented
-it has pretty synth sounds!!!!

To count the actual mathy elements in qualia (i so badly want to do it with niizhtana too but that's not the song i'm supposed 2 be talkin about here...)

1) initial piano ostinato: actually this isn't "in" anything, it's just like, noodling around like a weasel (I LOVE WEASELS), after 4 4/4 bars it loops, but it's very hard to pin the downbeats at all because it is so cool
2) the quiet plucked layer right at the start (this disappears pretty fast): 7+7+6+6+6????(it disappears too fast)
3) the fast bendy sine (this is like really fast 3, groups of 6 sixteenths layered on all the stuff that is not 3)
4) the bendy sine that is slower than the other one (this one is just 4/4, but it feels odder because the pattern has numbers like "5" (that can't even be further broken down) in the grouping early in: 4+5+3+4)
?) there's probably other layers i forgot...it's really easy to miss stuff with how smoothly this segues things into and out of reality, and how much is going on (despite how calm it somehow still feels)

finally actually bothering to break this down, i suppose calling this super polymetric is almost a misnomer. there's technically layers doing some polymeter thingys like that. but it /feels/ more polymetric than songs that are way more centric around the idea, just because this plays so much with groupings of notes that aren't exactly normal. but in the end, most things even out to normal phrased 4/4, but it's very hard to latch onto that without actively trying, and i like that! sorry if this is getting too 'technical' i just like talkin about the rhythm numbers in songs with lots of them in it

OH MY GOD I LOVE That chord hit at :58 and stuff, that exact mallet-like synthesized timbre is just so perfect for what it plays and when it plays. It reminds me a great deal of my favorite moment of the "Lightbringer: The Next Giant Leap for Mankind" (also known as "Cydonia: Mars - The First Manned Mission") soundtrack

(i don't think anyone would make this comparison but me but here it is, my favorite moment of the ost of this random myst-clone soundtrack that i do not expect anyone to care about but me...
https://youtu.be/wDhDh1KyW2Y?t=353

the rest of the ost i would not compare to qualia in the slightest it is just that ONE sound that hits at 5:53 in this cydonia/lightbringer ost video that i have secretly uploaded, also 6:26 / 6:43 / 6:54 / 7:04 / etc. I never really thought of hayato asano as being "90s" at all, he has cool sound design but from completely different reasons from what i like 90s sound design. but that moment at :58 in qualia, the fact that i instantly think of this lightbringer song, it's that crystalline synthetic DREAM that i love being taken into that world)

anyways i love gust; this song represents why a lot better than the majority of the blue reflection ost; it's very tightly what i look for from hayato asano, and very similar to what's probably my favorite track from him, so naturally this gets up there!~ thank you for alerting me to it! (I've heard it before, but didn't remember it being this cool until you nommed it, so might as well call it a discovery in some way)