>>107815234Solo version of a duet is quintessential single b-side material. With the running length being 38 minutes and a half, it does feel like there wasn't enough material for full album but they still felt like they needed one for Budokan, especially when you combine it with some of the mixing on at least Caramel Pain which sounds like the mixer ran out of time to add finishing touches. Also makes you wonder why they couldn't just drop the short version of Cocoon and Heart as a single and have the unreleased long version be on the album, but again there might have been no more time even if the reason stated on stream was that the production folks felt you can't have seven minute songs on a pop album.
That said, I actually find I like the album a whole lot more a year later than I did upon release, even if I too have a tendency to skip the exact same tracks you leave out aside from replacing Awake with Bibbidiba as Awake itself feels like a mishmash of half-baked good ideas to me as well as being from a genre I don't particularly care for. But I do like Pathfinder and Xion, they just don't really fit the flow of the album.
