Posts Tagged ‘set’
10
Nov
Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Music. Tagged: australia, bgm, big, concert, Gaming, goddess, house, legend, list, lyric, Music, opera, orchestra, Review, set, setlist, sydney, symphony, Zelda. Leave a comment
Oh look, a post that isn’t ludicrously lengthy.
At the end of last month I put to bed a small regret of mine – Half a decade ago I was presented with the opportunity to attend the Sydney debut of Symphony of the Goddesses, a worldwide concert tour immediately following on from the special Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary concerts in Japan and the USA. For reasons I can no longer remember clearly (probably funds), I did not take this opportunity. Naturally I regretted my decision pretty soon after the performance dates arrived and several of my friends raved about how good the show was. I told myself the next time I had such a chance I would not let it pass. But for years, no such chance appeared.
So when, after years of sporadic worldwide tours with varying set lists, the announcement was made that Symphony of the Goddesses would be returning to Sydney harbour this year, no price would have been too high for me to snatch up a ticket. Two years after entering the opera house for the first time to attend the Pokemon Symphonic Evolutions showcase, I was back in the venue’s main concert hall to take in the fully-realised music of one of my absolute favourite media franchises. And what an evening it was.
There are three main reasons I’d go to see an orchestral performance of a videogame music selection – The atmosphere, the craft and the arrangement. Hardly groundbreaking reasons of course, and I’m sure the majority of the people in attendance on the night had similar motivations. Atmosphere is created mostly by said people, whose collective energy and passion tend to elevate an event that otherwise gets by on a uniquely strange blend of nerdiness and class. This department provided the largest point of difference between the Pokemon concert and the Zelda one for me. At the Pokemon event, there seemed to be more themed and/or casual dress in and around the hall, while during the concert the audience reacted loudly to each track and arrangement – especially the more widely recognised ones. While the Zelda show was hardly black tie – and cosplay was there if you looked for it – I definitely noticed more of a conservative attitude to dress code in general. What’s more, during the concert you could tell a crowd favourite by a groundswell of hushed whispers and gasps rather than whoops and shouts. I can’t quite put my finger on the reason for this (perhaps Zelda’s slightly older fanbase, or the fact the concert landed on the exact weekend of PAX Australia in Melbourne) but it certainly lent the atmosphere a more reverential tone and allowed quieter pieces – of which Zelda boasts several – to shine.
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21
Nov
Posted by vagrantesque in Music. Tagged: adelaide, australia, bgm, big, concert, generation, house, list, Music, opera, orchestra, Pokemon, Review, set, setlist, sydney, symphony. Leave a comment
Yep, another concert post! What a time to be alive.
I’ve lived in Australia for 17 years now, and been a tourist to these great shores before that. But last night marked the very first time I had the pleasure of entering the Sydney Opera House. My reason for doing so was not exactly standard for the venue, mind you, but it was certainly worth the wait. The long-hyped orchestral treatment of the music from the Pokémon series had finally arrived in our backyard, and the event did not disappoint.
It was a bit of a sore spot for me that I had never seen the famous Sydney Symphony Orchestra live in any capacity, not least of all because that meant I’d missed both 2011’s Distant Worlds concert (music from Final Fantasy) and 2013’s Symphony of the Goddesses (music from the Legend of Zelda series). But I was never going to miss this one, and there were very obviously hundreds of others who felt the same, because there was a real excited buzz in and around the iconic Darling Harbour venue. Continue reading →
22
Oct
Posted by vagrantesque in K-Pop, Music. Tagged: australia, baebae, bang, big, bigbang, concert, daesung, dragon, fantastic, gd, kpop, list, loser, made, melbourne, Pop, Review, set, setlist, seungri, solo, sydney, taeyang, top, vip. Leave a comment
The first of two concerts I’ll hopefully be writing about before the end of the year! This post got long…
Well what a treat that was.
In the world of K-Pop, there are few bigger acts than Big Bang (Is that the right way to write it? I’m never sure – Should it be Bigbang? Or BIGBANG, even? Let’s just go with the way that makes the most English sense). Debuting nine long years ago, the YG Entertainment flagship group has been consistently at the top of the K-Pop consciousness for a while, and has amassed quite a considerable reputation in the Western music world as well. Outside of PSY and perhaps Girls’ Generation, there isn’t a more widely recognised K-Pop name than Big Bang. Just about every solo release from the group’s five extremely busy members is met with pandemonium by fans, and when all five get together, well, that’s something else.
So it was a big enough deal when Big Bang announced earlier this year that they would be coming out with their first release(s) as a group since 2012. I never expected that in their subsequent world tour announcement, Australia would be included. Yes, the country ritually ignored by the big name Korean music labels, especially since the relatively disappointing – though still loud and passionate – attendance at 2011’s poorly-marketed K-Pop Festival. Yep, the arrival of Big Bang on our shores for the first time – for two rapidly sold-out shows no less (and a reactively added third) – is probably going to be pretty significant for Korean pop music fans down under going forward.
But never mind all that. Big Bang’s second Sydney show, which I was lucky enough to attend alongside five friends, was just a really good time.
Yep, it really happened.
I’ve been to one K-Pop concert before – B.A.P’s Live on Earth tour appearance in Sydney last year, and it was a lot of fun. But this was next level. Yeah, that’s mostly because Allphones Arena is a much bigger and more technically impressive venue than the Big Top, of course, not to mention Big Bang has more money to put into a spectacular show than B.A.P does. The boys from YG have also been around for far longer, and have built their name up over a sizeable body of work. G-Dragon, T.O.P, Daesung, Seungri and Taeyang are walking legends in their field, and they wouldn’t have had to do much to send the beyond-feverish crowd into raptures. Yet if you ask me, they matched their much younger colleagues in just about every way on stage, turning what was already a major event into one hell of a night.
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17
May
Posted by vagrantesque in K-Pop, Music. Tagged: b.a.p, bang, bap, big, concert, daehyun, himchan, jongup, kpop, list, mercy, no, one, Pop, Review, set, setlist, shot, top, warrior, yongguk, youngjae, zelo. Leave a comment
I’ve been both busy and ill this last week, which is never the best combo for this blog, but here we go now.
It was the experience I felt I had to have. After almost three years without such an opportunity, last weekend I finally made it to a full-on K-Pop concert (That incredible late 2011 K-Pop extravaganza came a few months before I cared). Though my enthusiasm for the genre probably peaked last year, when I came pretty damn close to attending a similar event before it fell through, I am by no means done with appreciating K-Pop and even if I was, I have bought so many albums and written so many words about it already that to move on without having seen it live in its purest form would have been a real shame.
Enter TS Entertainment and their always busy headline act, six-member male group B.A.P.
Also known as “A K-Pop World Tour That Actually Includes Australia – Wow.”
Sydney’s Big Top in Luna Park was packed for the May 10 performance event and there was a surprisingly decent contingent of older and male fans getting into the swing of things (I had expected an almost completely teenage fangirl demographic in the crowd and was happy to be proved wrong). As I mentioned in a K-Pop countdown two years ago, B.A.P’s musical output does tend to have a more universal appeal than most male K-Pop groups, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
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29
Dec
Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2013, Lists, Movies. Tagged: 10, 2013, Best, countdown, Film, Movie, piece, scenes, sequence, set, ten, top. Leave a comment
This is without question one of my favourite lists to make. A particularly amazing scene within a movie can elevate the entire film in the eyes of anyone it affects. Much like a memorable character, a well executed scene can also overshadow a mediocre film. But either way, a notable segment of film is always a talking point, and an immensely enjoyable talking point at that. The following scenes made me stand up (not literally) and take notice throughout 2013. Some were scary, some were amusing, and some just blew me away, but all were captivating in their entirety.
Spoilers most definitely follow, given the nature of this list.
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VR BEST OF 2013 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s scary. Respectful disagreement is welcome.
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10. News Team Rumble, Round Two – Anchorman 2
I wouldn’t say Anchorman 2 is better than the first one – it’s way too long and tries a bit too hard to make a point – but I laughed quite a lot during the movie anyway, which was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. It occasionally suffers from a desire to revisit old jokes, but it manages to pull most of these off, none more spectacularly than when Ron Burgundy’s news team finds itself in the middle of another obscene inter-network brawl. The number of big-name cameos that take place in this scene borders on ridiculous, even compared to the over-the-top equivalent battle in the first Anchorman. The actors who show up (I won’t name them just because the film is still so fresh in theatres) mostly aren’t even comedic ones, but they all clearly relish the chance to make fun of themselves. Minotaurs, werewolves, cannons and fighter jets then get involved. The revisitation really shouldn’t work, but it does.
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Vagrant Rant 