HBMC-009: Lost Child Original Sound Track from S.S.H Side-B

[layzee]

I found myself browsing the archives of the long defunct tama-soft website (developers of the Lost Child game). That certainly brings up memories.

According to their Lost Child OST Side-B page, track 3 Sledge Hammer and track 5 Relieve were composed by 細井聡司 (Soshi Hosoi) and arranged by S.S.H. Anyone know the full story on that?

In any case, I will assume this is not a mistake (if it was, I'm sure someone back then, whether it's the musicians themselves or not, would've pointed it out) and make the edits accordingly.

[CHz]

Soshi Hosoi did write some BGM for the game too, but I don't know if he actually collaborated with S.S.H. on those songs or if S.S.H. just took his work and rearranged it, if that's the level of detail you're looking for. I poked around Hosoi's site a bit and couldn't find any info about that.

It's interesting that on that page for Side-B you found, the info blurb notes that "Wail of soul" here is an arrangement of Hosoi's vocal theme 魂の慟哭 (because it is), but the tracklist only lists S.S.H. for composition. I'm not sure if that bodes well for the accuracy of the credits for tracks 3 & 5 or not.

[layzee]

From a recent S.S.H. tweet, I would speculate that track 2 "Cyber Space 303" is a reference to "Cyber Space" by Battle Beast, a heavy/power metal band from Finland. Haven't noticed any musical references/borrowings as of yet.

More references if I come across them. I'm almost certain some of S.S.H.'s track titles (not just from this album) is a reference to something else.

[layzee]

A minor issue/annoyance came up today (or serious depending on how you look at things). Today I did a re-rip of this album that I already ripped, just because. Since I'm a bit anal/OCD, I thought I'd compare the rips, even though in theory, they should be the same and they were ripped using the same disc drive and program.

First, I checked the EAC logs of the old and new one. Both of them were accurately ripped but both had different database IDs (see below).

Second, after adding both rips to the playlist, I noticed that each track had a time difference of 1 to 2 seconds (e.g. old track 1 had a time of 3:33, new track 1 was 3:31).

Thirdly, listening to the tracks themselves, there was a sound volume difference (i.e. one was quieter, one was louder).

Fourthly, the total file size of the album was different (i.e. one had a slightly larger total file size).

Fifthly and finally, I checked the inner circle of the discs and mystery solved I guess: one had the HBMC-009 1 text. The other one had HBMC-009-U 1. My best guess is that the "U" stands for update.

The differences are summarised below:

HBMC-009 1

CTDB TOCID: FiAnF9vaqt5dQZ212qJrbJx0S2c-

Individual track lengths:

3:31 - 01 Time goes by...
3:31 - 02 Cyber Space 303
4:47 - 03 Sledge Hammer
3:30 - 04 Rambling feather
4:41 - 05 Relieve
4:56 - 06 Tensional field
4:06 - 07 Rapid Fire
3:40 - 08 Catch The Tomorrow
3:53 - 09 Demons Carnival
3:53 - 10 Engage
3:46 - 11 KUSANAGI
4:48 - 12 Amitto
4:54 - 13 Wail of soul
4:47 - 14 Survive

Total disc length: 58:43
.wav Total File Size: 592 MB (621,453,112 bytes)
.flac Total File Size (Level 5): 401 MB (420,502,043 bytes)
Sound volume compared to other: Quieter

HBMC-009-U 1

CTDB TOCID: sXKoiqD1g9zpJxAMlbW3jYjUZp0-

Individual track lengths:

3:33 - 01 Time goes by...
3:33 - 02 Cyber Space 303
4:49 - 03 Sledge Hammer
3:32 - 04 Rambling feather
4:42 - 05 Relieve
4:56 - 06 Tensional field
4:08 - 07 Rapid Fire
3:41 - 08 Catch The Tomorrow
3:55 - 09 Demons Carnival
3:55 - 10 Engage
3:48 - 11 KUSANAGI
4:49 - 12 Amitto
4:56 - 13 Wail of soul
4:49 - 14 Survive

Total disc length: 59:06
.wav Total File Size: 596 MB (625,597,336 bytes)
.flac Total File Size (Level 5): 440 MB (461,474,423 bytes)
Sound volume compared to other: Louder

There's nothing wrong with either rip but the info is presented as above regardless.