LifeSpiral-MJR – “INTO THE FUTURE” Feat. MITSUKI

LifeSpiral-MJR – “INTO THE FUTURE” Feat. MITSUKI – Single Review

It’s not too often that it happens folks, but every so often, I’ll get a song that sounds exactly like what someone tells me it’ll sound like.  When I received “INTO THE FUTURE” by LifeSpiral-MJR featuring the vocals of MITSUKI, I was told it was a “throwback to 90s anime theme songs” – and that’s definitely what we’ve got here based on everything I’ve heard in it.  So excuse me while I put my feet up on my desk here…I figure the rest of this review will write itself given that the notes I received were so accurate!

Alright…maybe there’s still a little more I can tell ya…

For starters, you’ve got LifeSpiral-MJR expertly handling the production of “INTO THE FUTURE,” which was also co-produced by Japanese composer Moji.  On a musical level, the “throwback” comment is definitely the correct assessment.  In fact, if you were to judge this track as an instrumental, which you could easily do by checking out the single’s release at Spotify, which supplies us with an instrumental version – you might even go as far as to say that the 90s would be a gracious assessment of where the roots of a song like “INTO THE FUTURE” come from.  With all the ripping guitar solos goin’ on and the use of graceful, airy atmosphere in the instrumentation…honestly, you might feel like “INTO THE FUTURE” has just as much in common with the 80s or even the mid-late 70s when it comes to the core of its musical DNA – but where the original assessment of this is correct is that you’d find a whole lot of this kind of sound in 90s anime.  That’s true as far as I know it, which was interesting to me even back then…it was such a borrowed sound that had already been mined and explored in a million different ways, yet when paired with some action-based cartoons and kickass animations, all of a sudden it became a fully relevant sound again.  Not only that, but as you can tell by “INTO THE FUTURE,” it ended up retaining its relevance, shifting right into what we’d now have to acknowledge is actually a timeless vibe of its own that is still exciting to listeners around the globe to this very day.  All-in-all, you can’t help but notice how LifeSpiral-MJR and MITSUKI have captured the spirit and essence of anime’s greatest in this new single…it gives you the feeling that you could go out and conquer the whole world when you listen to it, and who couldn’t use that as a part of their daily soundtrack, right?  While it’s certainly true that anything considered to possess ‘throwback’ sound could potentially come out seeming too dated, I feel like this collaboration did it all so damn well that listeners will be happy to overlook any of that.

To me, when you’re going after something that’s has already been done in the past, it really becomes all about commitment if you’re going to attempt it in the present.  That’s where LifeSpiral-MJR and MITSUKI genuine excel and set themselves apart from the rest on “INTO THE FUTURE.”  They dedicated themselves to the moment, they committed to their respective roles, and they delivered like the professionals that they truly are.  The music has been flawlessly produced by LifeSpiral-MJR…I mean it, there’s not a hair out of place, and you can audibly hear the tremendous skill & effort it would take to make it that way.  As far as MITSUKI is concerned, I felt like I started out impressed by her voice to begin with, but that the more I spun my way through “INTO THE FUTURE,” the more I realized how beyond impressive she really is.  Even with the music being so undeniably entertaining & filled with twists & turns, it’d be hard to argue against MITSUKI being the real star of the show here, because her voice is really SO INCREDIBLE that any set of ears would have to acknowledge that she’s got the X-factor, 100%.  To say that her role in this song takes a metric TON of skill to accomplish would be an extraordinary understatement – believe me when I tell ya, you practically have to be all-out SUPERHUMAN to be able to sing as well as MITSUKI does on “INTO THE FUTURE.”  Ultimately, it’s her remarkable performance that brings the balance to this single…the music from LifeSpiral-MJR was already exceptional to begin with, but it needed a real star like MITSUKI to put it over the top in a way that people would really hear it.  You’re certainly not gonna find me complaining about anything I’ve heard here.  I’ll readily concede that an anime-style song likely appeals to a narrower slice of a potential worldwide audience I suppose, but by the same token, I like to believe that our ears are all conditioned to accept the best of the best when we hear it…and you couldn’t do a song like “INTO THE FUTURE” any better than these two have.

Find out more about LifeSpiral-MJR at the official page at Instagram here:  https://www.instagram.com/lifespiralmjr_official

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