Sana - mode (1 March 2001)

Sana is the nickname of Sanae Shintani, who in later years has used her full name for some releases. She’s spent much of her career at Konami providing vocals for a variety of songs in their Bemani series. In 2001 Sana released her first solo album, mode, but Bemani fans will recognize some of the tracks. As far as I know, the album was produced in-house at Konami by Naoki Maeda, who has about 184,000,000 aliases and has contributed more songs to Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution series than anyone else, using new aliases sometimes for individual songs, heh. Most of mode exhibits his dance-pop style, although more relaxed in pace and atmosphere, ‘lounge’-ish. Sana’s vocals are given much more attention in the re-recordings which make mode more interesting than a straight-out soundtrack, especially noticeable on songs like the second track, which is reminiscent of Kahiri Kamie to me.

Anyway, as always I hope you enjoy the album!