Hello!
Back in the late 90s I spent a lot of long nights battling insomnia. I would regularly tune into a local radio station on weekends that would play hours-long blocks of Latin-Freestyle music that was woven together in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Regardless of how smooth it was, it was music designed to never let up and to keep the drinks flowing. This particular station simulcast it's broadcast from a local club. Every once in awhile they'd flip on the mics for a station ID and some crowd-cheering.
Fast forward to the early 2000s and life was a lot different. Those blocks of music were gone and going to Youtube for a 10-hours mix was impossible given the service was like -3 years old. So...I did my own tracks. Granted, they were much shorter and only contained snippets of songs. The main reason I had to make them short was bandwidth being terrible and I did sometimes want to send them to friends. So my medleys were how I spent my time for awhile. I never had ideas ahead of time...I would pick a series on the fly and then let the creativity guide me to the end.
Late last year I revisited some of these tracks after not thinking about them for years. You know what? They weren't so bad. Easy to say since I made these for myself. After re-ripping a large swath of my CD Collection to FLAC during lockdown I now had the materials to make some really high-quality recreations of my old tunes. I started with Liveman, got some really good feedback on Twitter and took off from there...
The last thing I did was to create an album cover. Conveniently I wrote an article this month that featured some weirdness with the Kamen Rider Black suit. Why did they use him for an early ZO trailer? Why do rock bands like using scuffed images of him on their albums? I guess this is my contribution...
Yeah...does it look familiar?
The end result gave me some Pretty Hate Machine vibes as well.
So here is my album--Live Action Sound. I recommend listening to it with headphones since if you're a laptop user like me you were likely cursed with awful speakers. Soundcloud also seems to clip into tracks a little abruptly. This could be on my end, but I don't think so since my files seem to start a bit smoother.
I hope you enjoy it...and let me know what you think.
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CCLemon99
Live Action Sound
20.February.2021
01. V•Hero Cinema Fair '9X <Jinzoningen Hakaider • Kamen Rider J • Kamen Rider ZO • Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue>
I always got a little annoyed that Hakaider never got lumped in with the 90s Kamen Rider films. I know it isn't great...but I dug it!
For this mix I have two versions of MODE's Wild Side (album and Karaoke) and Karaoke versions of the ending songs from each of the three Rider movies. Transitioning from ZO to Shin's themes is a bit of a challenge, but I think it is one of the more seamless edits here. By the time you get to the end of the track, Wild Side seems like a distant memory...
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02. UltraSensei '80 <Ultraman 80>
This is the only track that I created for this album. I think it has a bit more maturity (even if I did make some updated edits to other tracks) than everything else.
I'm incredibly fond of all of the theme songs from the series, but I decided to only focus on the first two. The instrumental version of the OP is sooooo goooood. The transition into the ending theme song is kinda masked by the "SHUWATCH!". Two different versions of the ending theme are used as well. The ending sound is the henshin effect. It's weirdly similar to the sound that the song ends on.
I've listened to this mix a lot lately. Not because it's new, but I actually really like it.
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I instantly fell in love with the Kamen Rider SD soundtrack when I first heard it eons ago. I really hope more than anything it encourages others to check it out. Can you believe that it comes from the same composer of Turboranger, Fiveman, and Zyuranger?
I just used various bits of the soundtrack and the Karaoke versions of the theme songs.
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This one is a bit stilted, but I enjoy it enough to go through and recreate it in FLAC. The only new bit is the "KIRYOKU TENSHIN" bit from the audio drama. This is one of the very few bits of Dairanger dialogue that was released in stereo... There is a little too much of the ending theme song, but that's alright. It's a solid tune.
Oh yeah, that weird edit in the instrumental version of the OP...that wasn't me. That's legit how Columbia released it.
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This show has a love/hate thing going on. I don't really have an opinion, but the song collection has some absolute jams. As much as I tried to avoid *any* vocals in this album, I kinda had no way around it with Get High. That song is one of the great Metal Hero songs and it would've been a tragedy not to be able to keep it in thanks to some backing vocals.
All the tracks here are a mix of Instrument and Karaoke versions. For the record, Get High was sung by Kotetsu Kyodai...which was Hironobu Kageyama and Masaaki Endo's short-lived duo prior to JAM Project. Kotetsu Kyodai > JAM Project...
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It's really hard to make the Goggle Five song collection cool, but I pulled all my favorite bits back in the day. The early 2000s version of this had a different ending. I made it a smidge abrupt by just dropping in the eyecatch. It's one of my favorite eyecatches. I used to use it as my ringtone until I found out it was the culprit of my iphone spontaneously wiping it's memory clean at random.
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07. Go Ahead! True Dream '94 <Blue SWAT>
There was a time when I was absolutely obsessed with Blue SWAT's terrible song collection. This was my attempt to really make something decent out of it. Yes, there is a lot of True Dream. The Instrumental and Karaoke versions of the other songs are from some fairly obscure releases. That kinda backs up my obsession claims, eh?
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08. Live for Tomorrow '88 <Chojuu Sentai Liveman>
This is the first song that I redid and got this whole project rolling. I think one of my favorite transitions ever is from the Bimotion Buster theme to the ending song. I don't know what I was on when I came up with that one, but damn that is still impressive all these years later.
I did smooth this one out quite a bit, but it was always pretty coherent.
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I originally first put this one together in 2003. I'm definitely not a Hurricaneger fan, but I really needed a reason to convince myself that I liked the song collection. It's all pretty linear if you break it down. Hurricaneger theme to Goraiger theme to Shurikenger theme and then both mecha themes before closing out with a surprise appearance from the ending theme song. Can I just say that the instrumental version of the Shurikenger theme is infinitely better than the vocal one?
The title to this one is something of a tribute the ending song from Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya.
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I love the Winspector song collection so much. This is one of the oldest ones I ever made. I actually did some fairly extensive work to get it presentable for this album.
If there is one thing I adore about it is closing this whole album out with Gekisou! Rescue Machine. The ending of that song is just one of the most perfect outros ever. The energy never lets up...in fact it only picks up as it fades out into the horizon.
Oh yeah, there is also a little bonus hidden track in the mix. It may or may not be the only reason I redid the Goggle Five medley for this album.
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Album Playlist: https://soundcloud.com/loud-noises-1/sets/live-action-sound
I hope you enjoyed this album. Maybe I'll dig back into the well if anyone is interested in hearing more.
See ya!
-CC
PREVIOUSLY...
Kamen Rider is More Human Than Human
What is an Anniversary Year? [Ultraman and Kamen Rider Edition]
What is an Anniversary Year? [Super Sentai Edition]
2020
1993 Sure Was a Thing... [Dairanger Fantheory Special]
Song Collection: Kamen Rider Black
