Source for this article is at 1up and was written by  Kevin Gifford, 10/06/2010

Nobuo Uematsu and Hitoshi Sakimoto collaborating.

Lord of Vermillion (a fantasy collectible card game that’s become a mainstay in Japanese arcades since its debut in 2008) and reworking it into a clone of Capcom’s Monster Hunter series.  There is one aspect to this project that’s a bit more unique, though – sound duties on Arcana are being handled by Final Fantasy impresario Nobuo Uematsu and longtime game-industry veteran Hitoshi Sakimoto. It’s the first time (believe it or not) that the pair has worked together on a game project, and you could say it only makes sense: Uematsu did the music for Lord of Vermillion, while Sakimoto handled the job for its arcade-only sequel in 2009.

“The first Lord of Vermillion was centered around a very rock-like sound,” Uematsu told Famitsu magazine in an interview published this week. “Being an arcade game, the idea was to give an edge to the soundtrack so it wouldn’t be lost in the background noise. I also thought that if it was rock, I’d eventually get a chance to play it with my band!”

Now that the series is jumping from arcades to portables, Uematsu told Famitsu that the soundtrack is making a very necessary transformation. “Listening to music in a loud, hectic environment and listening to it at home or wherever are two very different things,” he said. “You have more freedom to arrange and rework the sound to your liking, and it gave me a chance to tackle some of the issues I didn’t like about the LOA tracks. We also wanted LOA to offer a larger variety of sound, so we got a variety of people from a variety of genres to do arrangements for us.”

How did Uematsu and Sakimoto meet, anyway? The first time was way back in the days before the Square-Enix merger, when Sakimoto ran into Uematsu inside the company’s smoking lounge. “Uematsu was a pretty big and important person in the company, so I saw him more often in magazine articles than in real life,” Sakimoto recalled. “I found it amazing that he always arrived really early in the morning and left late at night — I just couldn’t believe it. I asked him what he did whenever he started running out of energy, and he said ‘If I leave something behind at night that needs to be done the next morning, that naturally starts up my engine in the AM hours.’ I still remember him saying that to me.”

“I don’t think about trying to start a new track first thing in the morning,” noted Uematsu. “That always winds up taking a lot of time, and if you hit a mental block, you’re liable to waste the entire day with nothing to show for it, right? So I save the early mornings for comparatively easy work, like reworking or arranging melodies I’ve already come up with.”

Lord of Arcana is due out next week in Japan, and in addition to Uematsu and Sakimoto, a decent variety of composers are handling arrangement duties on the soundtrack — people like Yoshitaka Suzuki (Bayonetta, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker), Satoshi Henmi (Lost Odyssey), Tsutomu Narita (arrangement work on Final Fantasy XIV), and Kenichiro Fukui (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children). “Even though all of these people can work with any kind of music you can think of,” said Uematsu, “my goal was to have them work on what they can do best, which I thought would make the end results more perfect.”

“It’s always tough, working on the soundtrack of a game sequel when someone else was involved with the original,” Sakimoto added. “We’re back together with LOA, though, and the whole atmosphere is different — I think it’s turning into a really nice package.”

Square Enix Music Review by Chris

The score for Lord of Arcana features spectacular technical values, vast stylistic diversity, and considerable contextual impact. However, it lacks somewhat especially as a stand-alone experience due to its excessive focus on old rather than new melodic material. While there are occasional barren or generic moments, the arrangers generally did a good job of interpreting Uematsu’s main theme and others from Lord of Vermilion. However, the final experience is too samey to be entertaining, in large part due to the misguided production approach. Many may wish to download this rather expensive digital score, as there are many highlights among the endless arrangements, but it is essential to splice the release to make it sustainable for repeated listens.
Source Article at SEMO

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We have made this a download for your listeners here.

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LORD of ARCANA ORIGINAL SOUNDCOLLECTION
ロード オブ アルカナ オリジナル・サウンドコレクション

01 Master Guardian 6:00
02 A King’s Trial 5:39
03 Myth 6:20
04 Heroic Soul of the Past 6:13
05 Arcana Force 5:00
06 Master of Arcana 4:16
07 Subjugation 4:20
08 Annihilation 3:16
09 Collection 3:23
10 Search 3:23
11 Battle I -Arc Night- 2:27
12 Battle II -Genocide- 5:06
13 Battle III -Grants Hell- 4:27
14 Vs Master Guardian I 7:54
15 Vs Master Guardian II 5:25
16 Vs Master Guardian III 5:51
17 Church 4:08
18 Crimson Tower 4:55
19 Vermilion 6:31
20 Slayers’ Guild 3:50
21 Kariyoporto 4:15
22 Avatar Create 4:10
23 The world of Horodyn 7:02
24 LORD of VERMILION (Sephirothic version) 6:09

Disc length 120:00

iTunes credits:

Nobuo Uematsu: 1~12, 14, 17~19, 21, 23, 24
Satoshi Henmi: 13, 15, 16
Kenichiro Fukui: 20, 22

From the ending credits:

Production / Music
Nobuo Uematsu

Music / Arrangement / Synthesizer Programming / Guitar
Satoshi Henmi

Arrangement / Synthesizer Programming / Guitar
Kimio Itoyama (Michio Okamiya)

Arrangement / Synthesizer Programming
Kenichiro Fukui (HAL TOKYO)
Yoshitaka Suzuki
Tsutomu Narita

Main Theme “LORD of VERMILION (Sephirotic version)”

Music: Nobuo Uematsu
Lyrics: Kazushige Nojima (Stellavista LTD.)
Translation: Mr. Brian Gray
Arrangement / Synthesizer Programming / Guitar: Kimio Itoyama (Michio Okamiya)

Boy Soprano: Willas Vesterskov Åstrup
Vocal Production: Holger Lagerfeldt
Coordinator: Thomas Böcker (Merregnon Studios)

Drums: Hideo Yamaki
Electric Bass: Toshimi Nagai

Disc information from VGMdb