Originally Posted by Delirium-Zer0
(Post 3185891)
Mostly Ayu's albums just need to sound complete and finished. A ONE was such a return to form IMHO not because of its genre or its lyrics (although they do help), but because it didn't sound like a ton of demos. It sounded like it was done. Good mixing, good flow, a couple of bonus tracks that were indeed bonus tracks rather than lazy additions to the album. With Colours the tracks sounded finished (even if they weren't great) but the album itself felt like a thrown-together, unfinished concept and the "seriously, amateur youtubers do better than this" videos didn't help.
LOVE again likewise sounded like a bunch of demos - Yuta Nakano's same-sound-over-and-over approach to string-based ballads was a death sentence for the album IMHO. The mini-albums had some truly great tracks on them that actually sounded ready for release, like "Wake me up" and "Sweet scar," but the album had stuff like "Bye-bye darling" that just didn't sound like it had been polished & completed yet, which kills me cuz the instrumentation is actually pretty excellent... but with the right mix, and some added flourish here & texture added there, it coulda been the new "Liar" or "kiss o' kill."
Party Queen would have absolutely been an old school style Ayu album in most of the right ways (she used to ALWAYS sort her albums more or less by genre, in case most of you have forgotten lol, and yes it was always awkward that she did so) IF the mixing & production had sounded finished. The production isn't NEARLY beefy or textured enough. I do also think the design team misused some of the photos from the "Super Ayu" shoot for the booklet... for instance, the photo with Timmy really shouldn't be there at all, it derails the entire message.
Recent songs have been formulaic, perhaps, but when there is a problem that's not what it is. The problem is the production.
Ayu's songs, at their best, pack some sort of emotional punch - lyrically, yes, but the sound has to do it too. And that means bass in the right places, synth fills when needed, simplicity when the song calls for it, strings as punctuation & emphasis rather than the foundation of an entire pop track. It means a more raw, less cleanly rehearsed sound to some of the more emotional songs. It means reverb & echo in the right places. It means planning out "okay, what is this song communicating?" and "what is the BEST way to convey that feeling through sound?".
Right now Ayu's production seems focused on ironing out imperfections and sanding out any unintended texture (things like cracked vocals, instrumentation that's slightly off-time, guitar fret noises, piano that sustains too long, etc) which results in a flat, synthesized, plastic, fake-sounding record about 99% of the time.
Sometimes that timing & vocal perfection is necessary, like with EDM, but even then you want some echo, some real guitar, some synth with a scratchy sound to it in order for it to sound finished and genuine (see "Sparkle" for an excellent example, and more recently, "Lelio" worked VERY well and I do think fans responded to it.)
But like, I think "Sorrows" isn't anywhere near as effective as "Last minute." Musically they have a LOT of similarities, and even the same chord progression through most of the song, but "Sorrows" sounds like it isn't quite done yet. It sounds like a demo made in GarageBand in many ways. The mix is "good enough" but it's not perfect. And that's the gist of most of what Ayu has released recently - it's "good enough." But no better than that.
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