[2008] H/\L minus two members = worthless?
 

Yes, I said it.

I think some people have noticed that H/\L, as arrangers for Ayu since like 1999/2000, have started to slack off like woah, and it's kind of obvious why. Like, in 2001 and 2003, H/\L lost two big members of their team, Yuta Nakano and Atsushi Sato who is also known as ats-. It is my belief that they were what made H/\L the team that they were.. like, when Ayu used to have really good arrangements and we'd be like "Wow, these songs are amazing!"

Examples of their tracks before Yuta's departure:
Fly high
immature (album version)
appears (album version)
Far away
SURREAL
AUDIENCE
M
evolution
UNITE! [might be overthinking it since Yuta left around this point.]

Examples of tracks before Atsushi's departure:
Daybreak's H/\L's mix
Free&Easy
Over
WE WISH
Dolls
neverending dream
Greatful days
No way to say
Because of You
ANGEL'S SONG [might stretching this since he left in 2003]

And afterwards they've had tracks like all of Ayu's summer songs since fairyland, Kaleidoscope/LABYRINTH/reBiRTH.. etc.

A more complete list under the spoiler with bolded songs being the ones that most people think sound like something else:


It's like, the soul was sucked out of them when these two people left the group. Just so you know, Yuta Nakano recently started more work with Ayu and its been fantastic [arrangement starting with HEAVEN and rainy day, both AMAZING!!!! and compositions starting with talkin' 2 myself which was worked on with H/\L.. hilariously enough, his old teammates, who he probably bossed around while making the arrangement ahahahahahaha]... and ats- has done a lot of amazing work with random avex artists and others.. a standout is his work on Yuna Ito's ENDLESS STORY. [though H/\L did arrange ENDLESS STORY, but I guess that's a different story.]

Sort of surprising to me that every single one of Ayu's similar-sounding-songs has been done by the bumbling duo that is H/\L today. It's just.. astounding. What do you think? Should she just stop using them? I personally think so, as that would be a lot better for Ayu and uh, better for us.

Next time you think that the summer songs or H/\L interludes all sound the same, don't blame Ayu. It's basically all H/\L's fault for being so LAZY.

HAL was a group?Didn't knew that.
Fly high rules.Thanks HAL!

H/\L was originally a group of like four arranger/composer/writers who did work for other avex artists, and then did their own thing as a band for like a year or two, stopping in 2003 [their singer, H/\LNA left them]~

I'd say that their latest works are far from amazing arrangements, but they make for good songs. Like, all the stuff that people say "SOUNDS THE SAME LIKE _________" is all because the new H/\L lacks creativity or something. They did momentum and M, all the summer songs, the triplets of the interludes..

Eh, sure, the songs have a different feel to them, but to say they are worthless? The original H/\L team had some incredible pieces, but the songs afterwards aren't garbage, there are some quality songs on each of the lists post-departures.

I think they're lacking the creative drive that made them so "likable" before, and should maybe take a break.

It's like, the most obvious examples are the summer tracks [which I ENJOY A LOT] but I think that Ayu could probably use other people for them you know? And the interludes.. oi. Kaleidoscope, LABYRINTH, reBiRTH are all, tbh, the same thing. They've produced some good stuff since the two members left, but they need to stop using older elements in the newer songs, especially if they're blatantly obvious.

Sure, the songs after the departures are decent, but I think that with the right arranger [CMJK/tasuku/Yuta Nakano], they could be more than just decent. part of Me was a disaster which could've been prevented with a different arranger, imo.

you can still blame Ayumi because im 100% sure she does her part in saying yes or no to what instrumentation is going to be put in her songs. :P

Well, yeah... to an extent. But ultimately, she probably has faith in them despite them being a completely different team than they were before the members left.

I'd say that she probably lets them do w/e they want since they've produced such hits in the past. [to emphasize AGAIN: different group though, tbh.] Also, the group has an emptiness to their arrangements.. like I don't really care for it myself, since a song is a good song to me no matter the sound, but if you look at it from a non-biased perspective, they lack depth. Again, see part of Me for a big example of this and compare it to NWTS. There are so many layers in NWTS it's insane, and part of Me is just... empty. Same goes for a lot of their recent work as well. This thread is just to point out why some songs sound similar to one another, not to say that I dislike all of their work, since I LOVE MY ALL and many other recent tracks.. since I really don't have a problem with the sounding-like-something-else, since her songs are really all unique to me..

[Oh no! Self-contradiction! Oh well, stop talking and maybe no one will notice!]

Thanks for the info!

Whether H∧L is a group of four, two, or ten members, I think we still need to bring back older composers. To have Kunio Tago do "Together When..." was a fantastic idea, and we just need more than H∧L and Tetsuya Yukumi (OMG).

I'm not trying to turn this into a "composers-you-wish-would-come-back-or-feel-need-to-go" thread, I was just saying.

Maybe it's not the loss of members that make the songs seem less creative, but the fact that there are only so many ways to write a song out there, a melody or arrangement is bound to be repeated or sound recycled, just like lyrics. That's just what I think. I'm not saying that's a fact.

I've been saying this since BLUE BIRD came out, because that's when people really started to notice. That's when I started to notice, anyway. They have definitely become generic, and in my opinion, stale. Every time I see their name in the arranging credits, I squirm.

I have to admit, talkin' 2 myself was very unique for them, it used more layers and synth, and the strings as well. But I can't help but wonder if that was more of Yuta's direction than anything else.

Knowing Ayu though, H/\L will flood her next few new releases, and I can only hope that they get something good out of it, like t2m.

I wouldn't put the blame in the lack of the two members necessarily, since I was rather surprised at how momentum sounds so much like their very older pieces and even like when they released stuff with H/\LNA. I just believe that H/\L has a little of a limited kind of arrangement, specially when it comes to guitars because I think they're very synthetized.

They still do some amazing arrangements though: BLUE and (don't) Leave me alone

H/\L and Tetsuya Yukumi? OH NO!!!!!. We need less of that. tbh, (m)u was Ayu's last really groundbreaking album imo, as it lacked both of them. Two H/\L songs and one Tetsuya Yukumi track. Ahaha. This is all my opinion, of course, as that was your opinion that they should work together..

I've seen lately that Tetsuya tries to compose melodies for Ayu that sound similar to her older tracks. Like Life [AMAZING IMO] sounding like SEASONS and MY ALL sounding somewhat like Replace / momentum / etc.. I dunno. It just seems like he tries TOO hard.

Uh, I think you read it wrong. Chibi_Venus said "we just need more than H∧L and Tetsuya Yukumi" :P

Oh, thank god. Oops for my eyes glancing over it wrong, since they suck together.

A rat just died next to my laptop, so I'm kinda spacey. Dang thing jumped on me a few days ago and now it's dead via trap. [Sorry, rat, but you're scary.]

On topic: I think Ayu should really stick to her current team minus H/\L for an album or two. Like, she should use more tasuku, CMJK, and Yuta.. possibly DAI if he wants to come back and let Kazuhiro Hara work on his own stuff..

Eh, it's hard to know how Ayu selects arrangers. I wish she'd divulge her reasoning in choosing someone over another arrangers.

Nah, it's definitely not that. Ayu has themes she likes to go back to because that's what she likes to write about, whereas with like arrangements and stuff, there's like a world of different layers and sounds you could go through and it's like, weird how Ayu's sound as gotten sorta empty since then. Like, think about how (don't) Leave me alone could sound if it was arranged by another group.. it'd have like epic strings and maybe some drums and stuff.. it's just like "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?!?!?!?!?" when they overuse synth and fake strings.

Wow they wrote so many good songs! I love m. :O

I thought H/\L was a person. thanks for the info but not good news because the creator of M left already.

They only arranged the songs. Ayu's the one who wrote M. Do you guys not know your Ayu history or something?

^

Lolll why should we? o.o

Well, just wondering if you knew, since M was the first composition Ayu did.. but it's okay if you didn't know. I'm just shocked, I guess.

So you don't give them credit that they don't deserve, maybe?