Below are Yoko Shimomura and Takeharu Ishimoto, KH Composers‘ comments.
Dearly Beloved:
And here it is again… (I’ll skip the rest of that sentence!) Every time I think, what should I do for ‘Dearly Beloved’~? For this title I hit upon it plain and simple, deciding to go with triple metre for 3D! When I said this in a magazine interview, Ms. Shiraishi, who was in charge of producing the soundtrack, said “Huh… is that it? That’s really why you thought to do it…,” and I got dejected; (I could hear a voice in my heart saying… I wish
I hadn’t heard that…;) Actually, it’s natural that this melody would suit triple metre. ‘Always on My Mind’, from the ending of the first title, was triple metre, you see. So, I’m sure that my simple idea for triple metre
wasn’t really an idea, but something that was going to happen due to the circumstances.
–Yoko Shimomura
TWISTER -KINGDOM MIX-:
I was rather astonished when I heard that ‘Twister -Kingdom Mix-’ was to be put in KH3D. I did not see it coming that Neku was going to make an appearance in KH3D. I first heard the news when our good old sound man Kawamori rang me up. Haha, then I was surprised all over again about putting in an arrangement of Twister. “Whoa~ I did not see that coming, wow!” Twister is the track I have made the most arrangements for so far, being a popular track from ‘The World Ends with You’. So, to make yet again another new arrangement for use in KH3D, I changed the vocalist and also re-recorded some acoustic guitar that would serve as the key to this song. I am simply over the moon to record it for this KH 10th Anniversary Best CD, and so I hope you enjoy my songs too, united with the World of Shimomura that Ends with You, the fans, who chose for this Best CD!
–Takeharu Ishimoto
L’Oscurità dell’Ignoto:
This song was one of four songs for the series of final bosses (along with ‘Rinzler Recompiled’, ‘Deep Drop’, and ‘The Dread of Night’, not recorded for this CD,) that were churned out during the final stages of production.
I think perhaps that time was the most I’d had sounds overflowing inside my head out of the past few years? (Being boss music, there are a lot of sounds to the music in a practical sense, haha.) They specifically wanted me to use a phrase from Xemnas’ theme from KHII for this song. I wanted to use the melody of the second part of ‘Darkness of the Unknown’ there for sure! And, the speedy pipe organ part from the beginning. With only that decided, I let the rest to momentum and wrote it in one go. A song written in one go will definitely have momentum to it! Even after listening to it over and over I still think it does.
–Yoko Shimomura
L’Impeto Oscuro:
Just re-listening to this song makes my heart start pounding, haha. Basically, I had the whole shape of the song playing inside my head, but, the data wasn’t matching up (or I should say, it sounded good but I physically didn’t have enough time, a situation that disqualifies me as a professional ;), and I was still writing the song on the day of recording. I rushed into recording with what I’d submitted as a demo without having time to wait for word back on it first. “If it gets shot down we’ll work something out. I’m responsible,” I said, recording violin and cello. In the end, the OK came during recording… (I found out after recording). I couldn’t believe it. I just kept repeating, “You’re kidding? Really? Really?? Seriously??” Mr. Kawamori says I skipped my way out of the studio, haha.
–Yoko Shimomura
Link to All:
During development, I created this song as ‘the theme for connected hearts’. There’s a lot going on, but we’ll all do our best together! The future will clear up for sure! Those are the sorts of feelings I had in mind making this. I was conscious to give the song an atmosphere of being positive, not worked up, and not overly forceful. Me wanting to go and put the phrase from
‘Dearly Beloved’ in a song like this is, well, habit isn’t it, haha.
–Yoko Shimomura