Motoi Sakuraba

[Elric68]

Greetings Moonies !

Just wanted to suggest a musician for the playlist: Motoi Sakuraba

Sakuraba is a progressive rock keyboardist who used to play for a japanese neo-prog band called Deja Vu (available in the Moon request list). Deja Vu have only one album, but after this Sakuraba wrote and played lots of material, including one solo album and lots of soundtracks for games and anime series. Some of these soundtracks are quite interesting and look like progressive rock albums (some in the vein of Deja Vu's "Baroque in the Future" ) more than OSTs.

I've got one or two myself ("Shining The Holy Ark" and "Live Concert") and I thought they were music by a prog band before learning that they were soundtracks.

I thought this might interest you, so why not trying to play Motoi Sakuraba's music here ?

[Avian(Admin)]

He's in there! We've been playing him for years. Great stuff.

[Elric68]

Oops, sorry Avian, I didn't see him, only Deja Vu. Feel free to remove this thread, then. I didn't mean to give moderators more work than they already have, so my sincere apologies to you all.

[Hawksun]

His Video Game OSTs should be put up here. Most of them are awesome with a great symphonic sound.

[the_original_ib]

Some of those Sakurabas (like Shining the Holy Ark) were pretty tough to find a few years back. I wonder if they are any easier to locate now.

[Elric68]

Some like Valkyrie Profile, Tales of Symphonia or Baten Kaitos are quite easy to find, but if you're looking for a Shining The Holy Ark copy, for instance, good luck, it took me weeks to get one and it was quite expensive (about 40€).

I agree Hawk, some of his game soundtracks are great. I enjoy Shining the Holy Ark, Tales of Symphonia or Baten Kaitos OST. Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile are less interesting. His works for the anime Saiyuki also contain some great progressive songs. I also have a special prog/heavy remix very difficult to find (and unofficial I guess) with some remixes of his songs by other artists or by himself. Great music here, stunning remix of his "Fighting of the Spirit".

P.S: makes me think that there are lots of interesting game soundtracks/remixes that would fit for the Moon: for an example, Chrono Cross OST (Yasunori Mitsuda) or the Square Vocal Collections (lots of celtic influences) with Joanne Hogg from Iona on the vocals (!!! did you know that ?). There are lots of other examples but these are the ones that come up first I guess.