Creid

Creid (Irish pronunciation: [kɾʲɛdʲ], meaning "Believe") is the arranged soundtrack to Square's console role-playing game Xenogears. It was written by the game's composer Yasunori Mitsuda and performed by a musical ensemble dubbed Millennial Fair. It was released on April 22, 1998 in Japan.

Comprising ten tracks arranged from the Xenogears Original Soundtrack, the album is mostly done in Irish music style, with minor influences of Japanese rock according to Mitsuda.^[1] Artists from Japan and Ireland were recruited for the project.

Creation

In addition to Japanese musicians, several Irish artists contributed to Creid, including uilleann piper Davy Spillane, formerly of Moving Hearts and Riverdance, and Máire Breatnach, who had previously played fiddle on another Square album, Final Fantasy IV Celtic Moon. Yasunori Mitsuda also asked guitarist Tomohiko Kira and singer Yoko Ueno to appear to the album after an acquaintance introduced him to them.^[2] Hidenobu "KALTA" Ootsuki worked on the album as an arranger and felt his work was made easier by his familiarity with Mitsuda's music—Creid was his second arrangement project with Mitsuda, after Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time. According to KALTA, Mitsuda and he were complementary in style, which resulted in an album leaving a lot of space and freedom for the listeners' imagination.^[3]

The album features five vocal tracks. The main lyricist, Junko Kudo, had no previous experience with video game-related projects and was surprised by the length of the game's script when she asked to look at it.^[4] Although Mitsuda is generally not confident in his personal skills at writing lyrics, he exceptionally wrote those of the titular track "Creid", which were then translated from Japanese to Irish for the recording.^[5]

Reception

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Creid was reviewed by websites RPGFan^[6], RPGamer,^[7][8] Soundtrack Central,^[9][10] and Square Enix Music Online.^[11][12][13]

Legacy

Impressed with Tomohiko Kira's guitar play, Mitsuda laid out plans after Creid to have him perform in Chrono Cross; this would eventually result in the latter game's ending song "Radical Dreamers ~ Jewel which Cannot be Stolen ~".^[14] During their stay in Ireland, Mitsuda and the Creid album coordinator attended a live set of the folk band Lúnasa in a pub. As Mitsuda liked the concert, the coordinator encouraged the Irish band to do a Japanese live tour.^[15] While Creid is the only album released by the ensemble dubbed "Millennial Fair", Mitsuda stated in 2002 that he would like to try bringing back the formation, in some way, for another project.^[5]

Track listing

Personnel

All information is taken from the soundtrack's liner notes.^[16]

• Yasunori Mitsuda – composer, producer, arranger, keyboards, programming
• Millennial Fair
  • Tetsuko "Techie" Honma – vocal on "Two Wings", "Stairs of Light", "Spring Lullaby", and "Möbius"
  • Eimear Quinn – vocal on "Creid"
  • Yoko Ueno – chorus
  • Kimiko Komatsu – chorus
  • Hitoshi Watanabe – bass
  • HATA (Hiroshi Hata) – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric sitar
  • Tomohiko Kira – bouzouki, electric guitar
  • Davy Spillane – uilleann pipes, low whistle
  • Laurie Kasza – tin whistle
  • Kinya Sogawa – shakuhachi, shinobue
  • Haruo Kondo – bag pipes
  • Maria Kalaniemi – accordion
  • Anne-Marie O'Farrell – Celtic harp
  • Laoise Kelly – Celtic harp
  • Máire Breatnach – fiddle
  • Tamao Fujii – percussion
  • KALTA (Hidenobu Ootsuki) – co-arranger, drums, programming

Release history

References

External links

• Creid at Yasunori Mitsuda's website