[1984] Rie Murakami - Sahara (Full Album)

Discogs master link: discogs(dot)com/master/939422-Rie-Murakami-Sahara Tracklist: 1. Fall In Love [0:00] 2. Sahara [3:55] 3. Every Song I Song [8:25] 4. I Won't Last A Day Without You [12:22] 5. T.N.T. [18:03] 6. Eternally (Instrumental) ~ Smile [22:25] 7. Say Cheese [26:58] 8. I'm The One For You [32:20] 9. If I Ever Lose This Heaven [36:34] 10. Take Me Home [41:49] Arranged by: Masanori Sasaji (all tracks except 10) Takehiro Honda (10) CD purchased by me, ripped by muzukun, scanned by squidlin Oh man... I got lots to say about this album. Per the usual, I don't remember when exactly I had stumbled across this album, but for sure it was many years ago. At the time, I hadn't yet appreciated the musical arrangement skills that Masanori Sasaji could bring to the trouble on any original albums he helped work on for other artists. As a result, I didn't feel much for this album when I listened to it and promptly forgot about it years later. Last year I had the sudden urge to re-visit this album when I started listening to more stuff by Sasaji, and MAN. This album was amazing to listen to from start to finish!! Unfortunately there weren't any good uploads of this album on YT—whatever full uploads there were, they're all sourced from an old shitty vinyl rip. It was during this time that I found out this got an official JP CD release in 2022. Ship To Shore/Light in the Attic did release this on CD in 2020 (and even seemingly temporarily had it on streaming for a while) but I chose not to pursue their release because they made the mistake of splitting track 6 into two separate songs, despite the fact that they were originally & purposefully meant to be a single track consisting of two musical cues. This didn't come across as a shock to me because I had actually listened to a rip of the streaming version before I got the CD (and as such, I knew the CD would sound the same), but the actual album audio—as in, the way it's meant to be listened, regardless if it's the US remaster or the JP remaster—has a lower pitch than the shitty vinyl rip... yet I actually prefer the pitch of the vinyl rip more than the other 😭💀 I can't describe it in words all that well but the composition/melody just sounds better on that LP rip than it does on the official audio itself. The fact I'm even admitting this is crazy because it's usually the other way around—the vinyl rip typically has bad pitch due to faulty equipment used during recording and the official audio sounds much better. But yeah, this was the sole exception. I'm still trying to adjust to the official audio's pitch but I haven't gotten used to it yet. Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, this is a rip of the JP CD since it hasn't been posted anywhere yet as of me writing this out. Enjoy!!