Suikoden Tierkreis: Tears in the Sky – Satomi Takasugi

	Album Title: Suikoden Tierkreis: Tears in the Sky – Satomi Takasugi
	Record Label: Rhythm Zone
	Catalog No.: RZCD-46083
	Release Date: December 17, 2008
	Purchase: Buy at CDJapan

Overview

“Tears in the Sky” is the vocal single for Suikoden Tierkreis. This is the first time in the series that there was produced an official theme song together with its single release. The disc features a total of five tracks with performance by Satomi Takasugi, an artist from the record label Rhythm Zone. “Tears in the Sky” marks her seventh single up to date.

Body

“Tears in the Sky” is used as Suikoden Tierkreis‘ opening theme. Takasugi aspirates the lyrics in a clean and aesthetic way which harmonizes quite well with the musical arrangement of percussion, strings and guitars. The addition of an fiddle is very neat and adds an ethnic feeling to the overall song. It took a while that this track grew on me, but now I can say that this song is absolutely worthy of the game’s musical legacy and fits the context very well as both vocalist and arrangement were chosen wisely and carefully.

The ending theme “Tierkreis ~Door of Hope~” is more melancholy and slow in its nature by using soft piano and string melodies together with Takasugi’s perfectly fitting voice. I like the simple structure of this piece as it captures the charm very nicely without beeing too powerful or clichéd. By the way, the first twenty seconds should call some memories from you as they’re used as introduction to Tierkreis’ official homepage.

The last three tracks are not really special to mention. They offer the opening theme in its shortened opening edit and both instrumental versions. They’re nice for the completeness of this disc.

Summary

In the end, this single is a worthy addition to Suikoden’s musical universe. Both themes are performed and arranged excellently and fit their context very well almost without any clichés. Satomi Takasugi makes once again use of her aesthetic and clean voice while Norikazu Miura shows his talent of writing and composing and beautiful theme with “Tierkreis ~Door of Hope~”. After some scepticism I’m pretty pleased with this release.

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