Track Listing
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SURREAL
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Duty “Eric Kupper Big Room Mix -Radio Edit-”
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SEASONS “BUMP AND FLEX RADIO EDIT”
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Duty “Under Lounge club Mix”
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Duty “nicely nice remix”
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Duty “STEPPIN’ DUB MIX”
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Duty “Sky Modulation Mix”
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Duty “Dub’s mellowtech 002 Remix”
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Duty “GENIUS BEAT MIX”
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SURREAL -Instrumental-
1. SURREAL
The final A-side before the album, SURREAL is surprisingly one of the strongest tracks of the era. It starts off quietly and like a fantasy, before guitars comes in takes over and the song oddly becomes something like that should be on “MY STORY”. I really like the rock-oriented arrangement of SURREAL and Ayu is sounding really strong. I’m surprised that HΛL produced this track, but then again I’m not surprised cuz it does sound like one of his productions. Great A-side.
2. Duty “Eric Kupper Big Room Mix -Radio Edit-”
Weird, that we get remixes of the title track off of the album in remixes. The first remix of Duty is your typical american remix because it features basically the same motif for most of the song except for small synth solos in the song. It’s nothing special really, and I would’ve rather had a better guy do a remix.
3. SEASONS “BUMP AND FLEX RADIO EDIT”
SEASONS gets another remix but on “SURREAL’s” single? xD Anyway this remix is a nice, chill and rather experimental remix here. Problem here though is that the track cuts and slashes through Ayu’s singing parts and makes it count like “ad-libbing”. Wow what a waste of time this remix actually was, it barely feature anything of SEASONS…
4. Duty “Under Lounge club Mix”
It does lead into this remix nicely enough. I’m starting to notice that Ayu is covered up by the music during the verses and she’s barely audible…it is until she gets into the bridge where we finally can hear her which is good enough for me. Once again, the music isn’t going anywhere through the time of the song, but it’s a step up from “SEASONS’” remix.
5. Duty “nicely nice remix”
I actually though I was listening to “Plastic Lover” from Gacchan…Then I hear Ayu here and I start to wonder why the songs are all sounding like one continuous remix. This one combines a little bit synth and Ayu vocals being messed around with and we get this remix. Once again the word I’d use to describe this remix, “chill”. I’m getting a bit tired of this though.
6. Duty “STEPPIN’ DUB MIX”
I think we’re actually getting somewhere on this single. I’m liking the heavy beat that’s going on and it’s catchy. The rest of the arrangement once again fails on the same reason stated in the previous remixes. Though it did add this creepy synth part to make it try to stand out more. That’s all that was going for it because this remix flew over my head pretty quickly…
7. Duty “Sky Modulation Mix”
We finally get into a remix that doesn’t sound like anything else on the single. The Sky Modulation mix of Duty starts off with some synths and Ayu singing under echo effect. I also noticed this and the next remix are both past 8 minutes long which is unbearable to most because well it’s too damn long. Ugh, I did hate the repeating part from Ayu that sound like she got punched in the arm. At least when the beat started coming in, things got better and turned into a nice electronica song. I still think it takes too long to get the song anywhere so I deem this a bad remix as well.
8. Duty “Dub’s mellowtech 002 Remix”
Damn, why are the remixes on this single suck harder than previous singles? We get another dubbed version of Duty, but it actually is slower than the previous song which is unfortunate because Duty should’ve been kept somewhat energetic. The good thing is that Ayu sings the verses, so I’m clearly happy with that and it flowed a whole lot better than majority of the others.
Ok, hands down this is the worst single since “For My Dear…”. The only good thing was the actual A-side. Duty and SEASONS had really poor remixes here and I’m surprised it was released simultaneously with the “Duty” album. Definitely the biggest disappointment so far in her career.
