Caltrops - No Stairway to Heaven - What's in the .zip!

Forum Overview :: No Stairway to Heaven

by Tired of Nicknames Zseni 10/20/2004, 9:06pm PDT

(06) (Ryuichi Sakamoto) Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.mp3 6.97 MB

A chamber-music-esque revisitation of the song Sakamoto did with David Sylvian writing the lyrics and doing the moody, pebble-chewing singing. I eschewed the pebbles in favor of this exploration of the theme. (It's called "Forbidden Colours" when Sylvian is singing.)

09 - Winter Night - (Scott Walker - Scott 3).mp3 2.28 MB

Oh Scott. One of his originals, probably the best of his pre-Tilt work. Can't talk sensibly about it, one of my all-time favorite songs though.

31 - Sonata n°3 in C - Adagio 3d movement - (Corelli A - 12 Sonate op.5 - Veracini).mp3 5.48 MB

A variation on the original, with some heartbreaking moments. The violin tone may throw you a bit at first, but I got used to it after a while and now it seems natural, and it is worth fighting for in this case.

Björk - Homogenic - 04 - Bachelorette.mp3 7.24 MB

Once, I played this while driving a D&D freak home from the high school we attended. He threw his hands up in the air and quailed in fear, his Book of Complete Dwarves flying into the backseat. Barbaric, luxurious.

Bronze Endmax - Moonlight Eternal Mobius.mp3 7.13 MB

Sorry. It had to be done. This song hypnotized me to the point that I almost flunked out of a semester; I just wanted to hear it over and over again. I don't know why. It's probably because I'm a secret synthpop admirer and anime loser. That's Hayami Sho singing. Only his first solo album is worth anything, to my immense regret. I still have to drop everything when this song comes on.

Comsat Angels - After The Rain.mp3 3.49 MB

This is as warm and familiar as pretty gets for me.

Ensemble Nipponia - Hanayagi.mp3 5.86 MB

A solo koto piece based on a traditional theme. I have shipped this around to a number of girls, none of whom appreciated it, but maybe you'll be a better audience. This one is a little thrilling.

Jouyssance Vous Donneray.mp3 1.52 MB

My favorite song off my favorite album! Once upon a time I couldn't sing the whole thing, but now I can do a passable rendition which gets requested a lot at family gatherings. The hard part was learning to just relax and be a girl about it. A beautiful old French song, old like 13th century old, in the beautiful Polyphonia Antiqua rendition. In a few weeks I'll be posting a FLAC of this album once my new copy shows up from overseas.

Maaya Sakamoto - Midorino Hane.mp3 3.98 MB
Maaya Sakamoto - kuukito hoshi.mp3 5.06 MB

Kuuki To Hoshi is the first thing I think of when I think of "pretty song." Ridiculously pretty, ludicrously pretty. Midori no Hane is also very pretty, but not, I think, nearly as pretty as Kuuki To Hoshi.

Sarah Brightman - La Luna - 03 Figlio Perduto.mp3 6.32 MB

I actually downloaded this file from Buki. Hi Buki! She told me I should listen to Sarah Brightman one night when I was in the mood for pretty music years ago. This is my brother's favorite pretty song. I think it doesn't have much on Kuuki To Hoshi, but there is every chance y'all will think more like my brother and less like me.

U2 - Love Comes Tumbling.mp3 5.42 MB

Did you know? The version of this on the Best Of whatever album cuts out several sections of dreamy Edge guitar washes which really make the song for me. Bono does not have a pretty voice, and compared to Scott and Inoue Takehide (who shows up later here) he is a toad, but the rest of the band makes a broken road of a love song out of what might have been quite a lot of gayness.

Various Artists - ANON- S'on me regarde.mp3 2.19 MB

Thrown in as another example of medievalia pretty, but in a way probably more familiar to most people. Hics and heps and lutes and such. Still, pretty.

Zetsuai 1989 - Broken Cliff.mp3 6.87 MB

Here's Inoue Takehide. This is my warm hug of songs and another example of my horrible failure to resist temptation. It's probably not pretty, but I long since lost the ability to tell what its faults are, so it's Zseni-pretty in lieu of anything else. On the other hand, it never made me almost fail a semester. I love Inoue Takehide's voice; while Scott Walker and David Bowie have incredible, magical, dramatic voices that sometimes defy belief, it's Inoue's voice, with its quiet warmth like a friend or a lover caught unawares folding laundry or something and singing to himself, that never fails to calm me down or cheer me up.

[AT9303] 08 - Voices.ogg 4.91 MB
[AT9304] 07 - Pulse.ogg 7.57 MB
[VIDL-30202] 01 - Kiseki no Umi.ogg 5.89 MB

Three from Yoko Kanno's library, the last one sung by Maaya Sakamoto again. The first two piss me off; they'd be perfect except for that part where they aren't, and you'll have no trouble telling when that is. I still wince at them. But everything around the wincing part is wonderful. The last one is sweeping and anthemic and also the theme from the Record of the Lodoss War TV series. That series had much better music than it deserved. I couldn't track down the ending theme, which is also very pretty, but rest assured: pretty it is. Yoko Kanno is a famous songwriter/film and series scorer in Japan. She did the music for Cowboy Bebop as well, along with many, many, many other series, so you've probably heard her work before somewhere or another while flipping past Cartoon Network.