Rie Sugimoto -- Yasuragi no Yubiwa (やすらぎのゆびわ)

Recently, I was giving a listen to my favorite album by Rie Sugimoto (杉本理恵), “Heal Ring”, from August 1992. One of its songs, “Beyond The Maze”, have already been covered by me years ago, but now I’m here to talk a little bit about the album’s last song, which is called “Yasuragi no Yubiwa”.

“Yasuragi no Yubiwa” is a ballad that seems to come out from a fairy tale. As I could see while doing a little bit of research, composer and pianist Hiroko Taniyama’s (谷山浩子) music style is described as fantastic and mysterious, so the song’s vibe is not a surprise after all. As for Rie’s voice, it’s what it is: very shaky and weak (well, she was crying too, but we all know she isn’t a great singer as well). However, she sompensates being a nice and tender girl, which coupled by the song’s beautiful melody and lovely piano-centered arrangement, makes for a very beautiful aidoru ballad.

Like I said before, Rie enjoyed some underground status as an aidoru singer who made vocal renditions of songs inspired by video game music (interesting enough, “Yasuragi no Yubiwa” is “Heal Ring’s” only original song, the other being reworked versions of video game music). It was an interesting niche concept, but didn’t help her in the mainstream scene at all. By the time she was releasing songs, the aidoru scene was mostly dead anyway...

Lyrics were written by Hiroko Taniyama. She also worked on the composition, but this time with Akimitsu Honma (本間昭光).

I want this album!!!

Rie Sugimoto -- Beyond The Maze (迷宮の彼方)

Sometimes I end up finding odd stuffs. The latest was Rie Sugimoto (杉本理恵), an aidoru who won a contest organized by Nihon Falcom Corporation (日本ファルコム株式会社), a video game company, and became the spokesgirl for the Ys series (Ys is an RPG video game series and, according to Wikipedia, second only to Final Fantasy as the largest Eastern role-playing game). She also won a record contract and released some albums with songs arranged after the Ys series soundtracks. It’s a complicated story that I don’t really know about. But what really matters for us, here on Kayo Kyoku Plus, is the music.

Released in August 1992, the album "Heal Ring" contains this melodic song called "Beyond The Maze". Although Rie was a very weak singer, this song is actually pretty nice. The arrangement is beautiful with all the "celtic flutes" (or are they just synths?) and the Latin rhythms in the background. As for Rie, she sings “Beyond The Maze” like what I imagine an elf would sound.

Apparently, “Beyond The Mazed” is the "vocal version" of this Ys song called "Subterraneal Canal". There are a lot of different versions of this song, and I'm almost certain that the one presented below is not the original as the original is probably full of synths as every other video game music from the late 80s/early 90s. On the other hand, the melody is the same, which makes the comparison with Rie's vocal version possible. The resemblances between them are very subtle, though. And I must admit that I quite liked this instrumental song too.

Lyrics were written by Matsui Goro (松井五郎), while music was composed by Falcom Sound Team J.D.K. As for the arrangement, Shoko Honma (本間昭光) was the responsible.