I can’t believe how many times I said to myself, while listening to this album, “now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
The Kukeiha Club comes through on this album in the same way they did on Snatcher Zoom Tracks and other classic arrange albums. Mostly jazz-styled arrangements with great “break” sections in nearly every piece, and lots of memorable melodies. Character themes and fantastic “Ending” music make up this, the first of 2 “Music Collection” CDs for TM2.
It’s funny, because I was recently considering the value of the Tokimeki Memorial (1) Piano Collection 2. But the jazz piano solos on this album do stand out, which is something I generally cannot say of the Piano Collection proper. The production is great and the music is extremely pleasing to the ear. My favorite tracks including the opening track “Delivery Love” and the ending music “Meeting You.” The latter is the longest track on the album, clocking in at 8 minutes. The shortest track, by the way, is track 6, at 4:30. In other words, these are sufficiently lengthy jazz arrangements.
Listeners will note that there is one vocal track on one I thought was designed to be the pinnacle instrumental arranged album for this game. Track 3 is the “unplugged version” of Kasumi’s theme. I like it more than the original version, which can be found on one of the many Vocal Collection albums for TM2.
Compared to the four “Sound Collection” albums from the first Tokimemo, I think this album is superior to any of those. They were good too, granted, so I think we have a winner here.
