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Tracklisting
1) Stars
2) Discovery
3) Metropolitan Museum (メトロポリタン美術館)
4) Are You Ready For Love
5) Space Travel
TIME&SPACE is SAWA’s second mini-album, and the first to use multiple genres instead of focusing on just the House genre, and the first to use multiple producers instead of the one. The track Stars was produced by J-Tek artist/producer, RAM RIDER. The song Discovery was SAWA’s first ever recording, and was featured in the Playstation Portabel game “Nippon no Asoko de.” Stars also got a PV, to help promote the mini-album. It was released on the 12th of December, 2008.
As it was with her debut mini-album, the promotional track comes first. Stars shows a change in SAWA’s style, focusing on the staples of the J-Tek genre such as vocal distortion and synth usage being used together. SAWA’s natural singing voice is still audible, but an echo effect is placed on it for the song. Regular instruments such as the acoustic guitar are also used in conjunction with the synth. It’s a huge step up from anything on COLORS, with the only issue being the way she hits those high notes in the song. Those aside, it’s definitely her best song so far.
We now get a blast from the past in Discovery. This was her first ever recording, and you can tell that it was, as it still carries a House feeling with it instead of the techno sound the previous song had. SAWA’s voice is without a vocoder, and the synth has the whole COLORS feeling to it, but at the same time, it’s a lively song that manages to keep your interest, and while SAWA does some weird things with her voice in the bridge and chorus, the overall synth and the rest of the vocals sound great. It makes me wonder what happened when they were recording COLORS, because this blows all of it out of the water.
The next track goes back to the J-Tek sound, but with a rather experimental, artistic sound to it, which is hinted at by the song title, Metropolitan Museum. It’s a huge mix-up when it comes to the sound. It starts off with a quiet sound that would remind one of a museum; sterile and quiet. Then, a quicker synth comes in, followed by the deeper main synth line. SAWA has the echo effect again, and she’s doing some horrid things with her voice. The synth is good though, probably all that keeps me listening at this stage. However, when it gets to the chorus, SAWA’s voice gets a bit more bearable, and the slight change in the synth compliments it well, which is nice to see. It takes on a very baroque, quiet old-time sound about halfway through, with the sounds of cheering and such in the background, before it slowly starts fading back to the original. SAWA’s ad-libbing sounds like shouting because of how nasal it sounds in this part. That piano-ish solo near the end is interesting, yet short. It’s not a great track, but the instrumental and chorus make it worth at least a few listens.
Now comes a real surprise, a cover of the Elton John song Are You Ready For Love. I’ve never heard the original song, but I’m liking how the completely synth-free instrumental sounds, but this song raises one question… How the hell did SAWA ever become an English teacher? Her accent makes it rather hard to understand what she’s saying, especially since the song is in complete English. This really shows how nasal SAWA’s voice really is, as those high notes in the chorus are just PAINFUL. Downright PAINFUL. I’m not a huge fan of this track.
Space Travel brings back the Tek sound, but it’s more along the lines of Metropolitan Museum than Stars. It has a rather simple synth line, almost along the lines of her House-genre songs… Which makes me wonder if that would be what it is, instead of a Tek song. There are NO effects on her voice this time, though while the verse synth is simple, the chorus synth kicks it up another notch, which is mainly what makes me question the genre. That aside, the synth is rather boring until it gets to the bridge. In fact, the bridge is the only time that I really like the instrumental more than I did for any of her House songs. Her voice is a bit better than it was in the past few songs, but it’s not great.
Mini-Album Score
C
Track Preference Order
1) Stars
2) Discovery
3) Metropolitan Museum
4) Space Travel
5) Are You Ready For Love
So, this album is definitely better than COLORS. There’s no doubt about that. Her voice hasn’t seen many improvements, though, even though the music she’s accompanying has, and even then, a lot of it is rather dull. This girl needs to stick to one genre and find a decent producer that doesn’t make her sound like downright crap. RAM RIDER did a brilliant job with Stars, why not just keep him?
I’m sure you all remember how badly I scored SAWA’s debut release. While the PV for ManyColors was interesting, the song itself and the rest of the COLORS mini-album got old rather fast. Well, SAWA’s latest promotional track now has a PV, and this time, it was produced by RAM RIDER, so I had high hopes for it.
Thankfully, this is a VAST improvement. This is where she actually starts sounding like a Tek artist, as there is a bit of vocoder use in the song (Though it’s mainly an echo effect and a bit of muffling), and the synth has a very techno-influenced sound to it, rather similar to RAM RIDER’s own music.
This song is definitely what I was hoping she would give us at first, as it’s a lot catchier, and SAWA’s voice sounds a LOT better under the vocoder. Her high notes can still be a bit annoying, but it’s still a vast improvement. It has a spacey sound to it, and utilizes of a few simple synth crashes and simpler rough lines to give the song its sound, and it works quite well. It’s not as upbeat as most of her material on COLORS was, either. It has more of a mature sound to it, while still keeping the cute sound to it.
The end of the song, with the skipping vocodered vocals, is a bit overused when it comes to tek songs, and it comes in here too, which isn’t really a surprise. Though I did like the fact that the whole song had an acoustic guitar playing in the background.
The PV for the song, however, is extremely simple. After a text introduction, we’re taken to a dark stairwell, where the illuminated SAWA starts singing while the camera rotates around her. The space element starts coming in when a bunch of planets starts forming a halo around her head. I thought this effect was sort of… Odd. But when the planets start circling down around her and it explodes into the galaxy scene, it makes a bit more sense. The “tiny planets she spawns from her fingers” looks awesome, too. The stairwell’s always visible while these psychedelic lights are circling the room, and the lights are mainly there in the chorus apart from a quick flash every time the crashing synth makes a sound.
SAWA’s trademark disco ball makes yet another appearance, but it’s not as pronounced or important as it was in ManyColors.
SAWA herself looks a lot better in this PV, too. She looks especially cute in the multi-colored dress she’s wearing this time, which I’m thankful for, because she was hideous in that silver dress in ManyColors. Her dancing isn’t really anything to write home about, but at least she isn’t trying to come off as if she thinks she can dance like other Tek artists do. *coughamicough*
The close-ups of SAWA, though, remind me oddly of MEG. SAWA makes some rather pronounced mouth movements compared to other artists, which is also a trademark that MEG seemed to have. There’s a little bit of similarity in their facial structure, too, which doesn’t really improve the resemblance, but at least SAWA isn’t trying to come off as childish as MEG does.
Song Score
A+
PV Score
B
Overall Score
A-
So, it turns out SAWA isn’t as bad as COLORS would have you believe! I prefer the Tek sound Stars has a lot in comparison to her older sound, and hopefully the sound sticks for the whole mini-album, as unfortunately, RAM RIDER only produced this one track, and she has a few others doing the other four tracks. I’m looking forward to seeing how the mini-album turns out, now, but I’m not getting my hopes up too high until it’s actually out just in case it ends up being a disaster.
(NOTE: I have a few special things planned for the Christmas season, so expect a post on December 1st detailing it all.)
Tracklisting
1. ManyColors
2. blue
3. yellow
4. pink
5. green
COLORS is the debut mini-album (That was released in a physical version) from SAWA, and it was produced entirely by Hanzawa Takeshi, from FreeTEMPO. It debuted at #8 on the iTunes store chart and was in the top 3 for three weeks on the dance chart. It was released on the 18th of June, 2008.
The mini-album opens with the main promotional track, ManyColors. This song has quite a few things going for it: A semi-interesting House-influenced arrangement a producer who I suppose could pass for as well-known (I’ve never heard of them, so don’t take me seriously instantly there) and the lack of any vocoders whatsoever. There is one problem with this song though: SAWA’s vocals. While for the most part, they actually sound quite nice, those screeches you hear from her in the chorus can be EXCEEDINGLY annoying. I can see why they didn’t use vocoders: It would’ve made the song quite a deafening experience. That aside though, it is quite enjoyable.
blue follows, and in a much calmer suit, which would fit the title, seeing as blue is usually seen as a calming color. It has a much more laid-back sound to it instead of those loud, high-pitched notes used in the first track. SAWA sounds pretty good at first, too. Her voice does reach quite a few high notes this time too, and while they aren’t as bad as ManyColors’, they can still be rather annoying. The song still sounds sort of similar to ManyColors in its synth usage, but not whne it comes to the notes used.
yellow starts as the slowest of the bunch, focusing on the ppiano playing alone once again, and some clapping. I like the simplistic sound the opening has, and SAWA’s higher-pitched ad libbing doesn’t come off as too bad, either. She uses quite a few of the high notes, though. They probably sound best in this song compared to th e others, though, as she has a bit more control over the notes as she’s pulling it off. yellow bears another huge similarity to ManyColors, though, with the bridge sounding as if it was pulled straight from the bridge. The saxaphone usage near the end is really nice, as that’s something you don’t really hear in a song in this genre.
pink is as close as you’re going to come to the more popular tek music on this mini-album, but that synth STILL sounds exactly the same as it did in ManyColors, which is really starting to annoy me. SAWA loves her high notes in these songs, and in this song they tend to sound annoying yet again. I’m not really too happy with this song.
The album closes with green, which tends to sound rather different to the other songs, FINALLY. It has a much jazzier sound to it, and the instrument usage helps keep it interesting. SAWA’s voice doesn’t sound appealing at all, though, and it tends to sound rather rough against the instrumental. The saxaphone is back, and this time it fits the song much better. Her voice is really getting to me at this stage, but this is one of the better songs.
Mini-Album Score
D
Favorite Track
ManyColors
Yeah, so this album was pretty much a huge failure. The producer let her take barely any large steps with the music, and her singing was too grating to be really worth listening to. Quite honestly, this almost got my first F-, but ManyColors, blue and green all have a few redeeming points, so I decided to give it a bit better of a score. I’m hoping her next mini-album, “Time & Space”, is a bit better, since RAM RIDER’s producing at least a few tracks on it, but this album was certainly not good at all, apart from those few redeeming features that mean nothing when separated into different tracks. I may have said some tracks were enjoyable, but try listening to this whole album and sticking to that view afterwards. You’ll see. Okay, so SAWA isn’t really Tek, so I may have reviewed this from the wrong viewpoint, but bad music is bad music. Nothing’s going to change that once a song’s released unless you get a damn brilliant remixer.
No, this isn’t yet another write-up.
I’ve decided that I’ll be doing what I’ve probably been hinting at for quite a while, and feature SAWA. I know I’ve taken a lot of artists down for… Various reasons… But, Sawa’s fairly new, and only has one mini-album and another one coming (Plus her digi-release “Discovery”, which I can’t find for my life. Help would be nice.), so I’ll get into the spirit of it while her career is young.
As such, I’ll be starting with her first mini-album, COLORS, and moving onto her upcoming mini-album when it’s released.
(Pardon the lack of a picture, but the only real circulating ones are the cover for COLORS and the promo for it, and I need those for the review.)
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