WISDOM ~Reviews and Discussions~

Wandering_Fox

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So, I happened to get home from work today and waiting in my mailbox was my copy of WISDOM by the one and only ::hora:: ~ Of course I instantly loaded it onto my MP3 player and gave it a listen~ Let's start the reviews!

01 - IMMORTAL

I'm liking the way this CD is starting! The organ is nice and the instrumentation is quite good! I also really like this first verse! No vocals, but then when the chorus starts... I've heard this before... Let's add some vocals... I think the chorus from Kumo Onna would do nicely, because this is a blatant rip-off pretty much note for note. :grin: Still a pretty good song. And the instrumentation is nice~ I'll be listening to this again :cool:

02 - WISDOM

This song has a pretty spiffy bass intro, and then come the strings which are a little reminiscent of "domiNATE". It's catchy, has a beat, and you can dance to it. It has nice progression, but it's a little slow. I can see myself skipping this one in the future. (Wait, isn't this the title track of the CD?) :cool:

03 - The ONE

HORA is really experimenting with basses on this CD. It sounds kind of similar to the opening of WISDOM, except much more gravel-y. I do like the organ that kicks in, and it has a nice choir synth in the background.

04 - WASTE

The opening to this song is VERY nostalgic of Schwarz Stein to me. When the instrumentation picks up though, it's back to HORA. Then at about 1:03, it gets cool. And it sounds like something is building up... and then it falls back... This song could have been much more inpressive, I think, if it had vocals... And the piano sounds very lonely. This is probably going to be a skipper too ^^;

05 - FACT

Ooh, more bass play~ This one is mainly interesting for the special effects and using the same string parts I was experimenting with in a band in high school/college. So it sounds very nostalgic, though I didn't write it. It's a very mellow song, but I like the way it flows.

06 - BURIAL

Wow, this song is VERY uncharacteristic of HORA! It sounds kind of like a military funeral, except with some digital effects and a beat. What blew me away was the strings. They are very nice and melancholy. They remind me a bit of the ending cellos of "Kono Sekai no Hate De (At the end of this world)" by LUNA SEA. Easily my favorite song of the CD, though I don't see it being the most popular as it's not catchy at all and is cetainly not something you could possibly dance to. It would probably made a better ending track if the begining and ending weren't so abrupt.

07 - NOTHING

This sounds a little big like it could be a twisted music box song. For what is is, it's pretty nice and catchy, and pretty mood music. It's not something I would listen to without doing something else though (like reading a book, studying, eating a sandwich, etc...)

08 - RELIC

Ok, this on is a very simple song, but it's a rather nice melody. It really needs a fuller orchastration. If there were ever a HORA song that needed a classical string section, this is the one. The single piano sounds very lonely. It needs some chords or some backing instrumention other than the bells. It sounds nice, but very unfinished.

OK, so we have another vocal-less CD... But the compositions are fairly nice, though a few seem to be much too simple. This album felt very slow and laid back, though had a few good numbers I know I'll be coming back to. And we get to hear an updated version of Kumo no Onna (Listen to them back to back if you don't believe me!)

But wait! Wasn't there a disc 2?!

Yes there was, but it's hardly worth mentioning, I'm sorry to say... You'd thing there would be remixes or new versions, but it really is just songs taken off previous CDs and put together on one CD. If you already have all of HORA's other CDs, you might as well just make your own mix CD or a playlist. It was a little disappointing. For the record though, the tracklist is:

01 - SYNTHETIC ANTHEM
02 - MODULATE GOD
03 - DISTORTED WORLD
04 - PROMINENCE
05 - IGNITION
06 - RAY
07 - VENOM
08 - TRANSONICA
09 - ON FALLING
10 - GENUINE
11 - REFLECT
12 - INSANITY
13 - domiNATE
14 - INWARD

I guess it's nice to have, but it was kind of unnecessary.

So yeah, not a bad album! It's a shame it was the last one, though... I would have liked to see him have gone out with a bang. Or something a little faster paced. I'm fairly happy with this release, though! I'd give it about a 70/100 points.

And, discuss~! ::hora::
 

Daedolon

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Finally received my copy.

The whole of the album made me feel empty inside, the melodies and compositions are perfect to portray the feeling of a great artist's last album (though we can always hope). Instant classics for me are IMMORTAL, WASTE and of course... BURIAL, which makes this album feel even a more dramatic closure to Hora's career. I'll be surely listening to this track once or twice more (counting in hundreds).

While very short, I personally can honestly appreciate the album and the new tracks more than some of the previous material, even though it's not his most exhilarating works.

I do, however, get a smile on my face the moment SYNTHETIC ANTHEM kicks in right after RELIC. A classic Hora in-your-face moment, it redeems all the sadness the actual album might've accumulated and reminds us what Hora is really about.
 

Stan

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Thanks for the review and opinions Fox and Daedolon. I really want to get this album. It sounds like it's a nice one. I sure hope Hora will come back one day.
 

flowersofnight

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Well, I got my copy of the Nightingale of Saitama's swan song, if I may mix my ornithological metaphors. As is traditional, here's my live commentary on my first listen-through:

IMMORTAL
Nice intro, but once it gets started it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. It does continue with a spirit that Hora music too often lacks. Not a bad effort but I think it needs just a little more impulse and forward motion. What he's written here should be the beginning of something, not the beginning and end.

WISDOM
Another great little intro - sounds like John Matrix ("Commando") should be coming up to snap some necks. Once we get into the meat of things, we have a simple but effective song. The addition of "Horabeats" is a bit superfluous here though. I think it's maybe a bit too long; this is a great "stinger" but there either needs to be something more to it, or just exit with a bang. Maybe this should have been the album intro?
And the ending is a cop-out.

The ONE
And now we begin with a buzzy sort of sound I don't think we've heard from Hora before, with a spare backbeat. Repetitive, but it kind of goes with what he's presumably trying to accomplish here. BUT... then the stadium organ starts in - what the heck is this? Poorly played, Mr. Hora. Then we drop everything and briefly segue into really one of Hora's nicer bits. We go back and forth a few times before eventually settling on the better of the two themes. I don't know what he was thinking here, he could have had a classic if he just ditched the organ smashing and built the song around the other part.

WASTE
Repetitive and uninteresting to begin with. Then Hora kicks it up a notch with a genuinely cool melody and beat - but we soon return to the beginning theme. Again: why isn't he editing himself? There are two songs in here, one of which is rad and one which soz.

FACT
I like the weird "bird cooing" instrument, but the melody instrumentation is blunt and overpowering. We could have a good atmospheric song here but it needs remixing. Then again we get another unrelated melody block in the song, on an accordi-organ. I dunno.

BURIAL
Ominous and atmospheric here. Questionable choice of melody instrument, but this is definitely a new and not unpleasant offering from Hora. What's more, we've got stylistic unity again for once. Nice, but I must point out that the ending is somewhat weak (as Hora's endings often are).

NOTHING
A pleasant piece on glass synths, which shows a lot of "Hora character" once it gets going. Not much to say here, but a solid offering - very characteristic but not tiresome.

RELIC
A sentimental music box-type song - not entirely new but I don't think Hora's ever played it this straight before. Kind of a lonely, melancholy choice for his valediction, but maybe that's just how it goes.

Overall: another mixed bag, as we've come to expect from Hora. It's kind of a shame - if he had just applied a little more discipline to his chimera songs and separated out the best parts, the album would have been much stronger. I'm almost tempted to "remix" some of these myself by judiciously cutting out the weaker segments. There's some of his best work on this album, but too often mixed with and diluted by filler. The last few tracks are a strong ending at least.

Also, on a somewhat horrifying note: the liner notes this time seem to imply he now has SEVEN cats ::erm:: ::hora:: Well I hope he enjoys them. At any rate, here's to the man.
 

Daedolon

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It's not remastered whatsoever, but there's no noise issues on PROMINENCE here nor in the original PROMINENCE version.
 

Mikal

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I hope so. I'm surprised Hora think's Genuine is one of his best tracks...
 

Antaeus

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Listened to WISDOM for a few times now. First I need to get used to the different use of layers. Hora made it all sound a bit less 'ordered' than on his other albums(or just got too much used to the overlaying and simplified layering of the music on domiNATE). I really like the use of the string pads on (most) songs. IMMORTAL really stand out for me now. I like the catchy melody. He made a really nice synthesis of the strings as melody and the dropping piano line in the background.

I am afraid some songs lost their identity because he suddenly jumps to entire different atmospheres. For example, The ONE has two entire different atmospheres, and he switches between the two atmospheres. Personally I have nothing against it, but it makes a song lose its identity.

These eight tracks feel sensitive to me. Like the main melody in IMMORTAL, but also songs like NOTHING and RELIC. It feels more sensitive than his other works. Might be because of his illness, or it is just me because I will really miss his albums in the future. Knowing that this might be the last music I will hear from this talented musician.

As for the second album. I think he did some remastering on some tracks(TRANSONICA and RAY sounded 'redone' to me, but really minor changes). It wasn't really necessary, but I guess it's good to end your solo carreer with a best-of cd.
 

Mikal

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It is remastered.

DISC2は今までにリリースした全アルバムの中から厳選した曲を全曲リマスタリングしたベストアルバムになっています。
 

Madmoiselle_Silk

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I got mine today and....it has a scratch T.T....
I'm not going to open mine so I'm really sad it's a defect on the case.... Hope the record's good though, from what you people've written it sounds like it's a good record.
 

Mushi

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I got my cd today and I LOVE IT! A perfect ending with RELIC it's soo sad :(. A perfect album to be Hora's last album. Can't see any point with cd 2 thou :P..
 

Daedolon

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Mikal wrote:
It is remastered.

DISC2は今までにリリースした全アルバムの中から厳選した曲を全曲リマスタリングしたベストアルバムになっています。

I didn't hear any major differences so I'm assuming the second disc is only digitally remastered.

Antaeus wrote:
It wasn't really necessary, but I guess it's good to end your solo carreer with a best-of cd.

Many artists do this so they have an album that's easily approachable by new listeners who want to hear the whole range of music they have made during their career, it doesn't make much sense since his albums will be long sold out when new people find his music, sadly. Here I think it's more just something Hora tossed in to make up for the lack of length or the thought-outlessness (is that even a word) of WISDOM, which I think has largely to do with his illness. It's only 32:20, where other albums have been nearing 40 minutes. Funnily ICEBOUND, the only other dual-CD album Hora made is also only 32:18.

Madmoiselle_Silk wrote:
I got mine today and....it has a scratch T.T....

My copy also has a small crack in the jewelcase, it's the first Hora CD I've gotten in that shape. Luckily it's only minor, but kind of sad since only ICEBOUND and WISDOM have these unique jewelcases I have NEVER ever seen before anywhere else and I really like how they're built. Both albums somewhy have a picture of a sky as their cover art, wonder what that's about.
 

Mikal

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I see Wisdom as continuation of the themes explored in Icebound. Both have an underlying sense of melancholy, but whereas Icebound had a reasonably light atmosphere, Wisdom is laced with much darker undertones.

It's impossible to tell what was going through his head when he was putting together this album, but to me the main emotions seem to be misanthropy and despair.

I love Modulate God and Ignition, but if anything the best of CD just serves to illuminate the stark contrast between Hora's first 4 albums and his later works.

In my opinion Icebound, Reign, domiNATE and Wisdom show much more of that unique Hora spirit than his earlier offerings.

And Wisdom is the absolute pinnacle of this.

Regardless of the content, I was always going to buy this album just as a small way of saying thank you for the effect Hora's music has had on my life.

So... ありがとう洞様 ~
 

Mikal

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Well I've been listening to Wisdom non-stop for several days now... and I have to see it just keeps getting better. There's so much energy and emotion...

Also the dark military beats combined with the minimalist keys remind me of FFVIII ::kisaki::
 

Madmoiselle_Silk

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well, the sad part was that my wisdom had a 3 cm crack in the case...T.T and prominence just 1 cm....=( I can't wait until someone uploads the record=) (I haven't opened mine)
 

Mikal

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Why haven't you opened yours? Collector fetish?
Cuz if it's cracked you might as well just open it :P
 
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