Well here's an analysis of the piano solo...
Yoshiki's piano solo in Art of Life has to be at once one of the most controversial and brilliant compositions in rock history. Rarely has anyone come close to Yoshiki's dextrous use of this instrument in rock composition, and no rock musician that I know of can match his raw power and talent in playing. The piano solo in Art of Life is about seven minutes long with no extra accompaniment, and starts out simply enough with syncopated eighth-note chords in the right hand and single notes in the left, gaining strength and body as the left hand gradually enters with both chords and running notes, changing from eighth-notes to sixteenth-notes and then suddenly a few seconds before seventeen minutes, repeats itself all over again. Just as it is starting to become repetitive, you'll notice a little discordance in the notes. At first, that might be attributed to an overactive imagination from sitting through the same song for almost twenty minutes, or even a slip of the hand on Yoshiki's part (I'm sure that's happened before, even to him), but as the piece draws on, the discordance becomes more and more apparent, and by eighteen minutes it's very obvious that Yoshiki is consciously missing notes. The running melody is still there, but it is slowly pushed back by the seemingly random notes that intrude in upon what was a beautiful, simple line. By the nineteen minute mark, it has degenerated into the fine art of pounding.
The discord has puzzled many an X Japan fan, but if you can get past the pounding and carefully listen to each note, it'll become quickly obvious that Yoshiki isn't throwing up his hands in despair and just playing the piano with his feet (though he might be doing some of that, who knows...it's Yoshiki, after all). There's a meticulous quality even in the most discordant of the notes in this solo. You might have to listen a few times to the solo, taking it as a whole rather than as two seperate parts, melodic and discordant, to effectively see the larger picture, but Yoshiki keeps the rhythm of the solo moving through the entire seven minutes, never stopping, never pausing, pushing the notes so that they seem to be dripping from the piano strings. This is piano playing - not just keyboarding or rock piano playing, but true piano playing at a high quality classical level. This is the level of professionalism that artists like Gackt aspire to but haven't reached. (Gackt's piano solo Blue, the c/w of Mirror, actually sounds like a more amateur version of Yoshiki's Art of Life piano solo, pounding and all.)
If you listen even more carefully, you'll notice that there are not two hands, but four in the later part of this piano solo. I don't know the recording facts about Art of Life, but obviously Yoshiki must have spent hours in the studio by himself just recording these seven minutes (I don't even want to know how long it took to record the whole song). The four piano lines clash with each other in a dance reminiscent of the earlier dueling of melody lines between the band members in the metal section. Yoshiki's piano work becomes even more complicated at this point, with a constant stream of running sixteenth and thirty-second-notes in all four hands, using the full length of the keyboard to its full advantage. Yoshiki holds nothing back. He pulls out all the stops, pouring into the piano rage, grief, hatred, anger, sorrow, loneliness, passion, hope, joy, and pure ecstasy all at once. The piano, like his drumming, effectively becomes an extension of his own body and his own mind here. The music sweeps across the listener, jarring and painful in its discord, frightingly searing, almost orgasmic in its pitch.
And then just as the pounding threatens to cause severe brain damage to all X Japan fans everywhere, Yoshiki lets up. The melody comes back, flowing softly through the discordant notes bit by bit as the orchestra enters once more. The random notes fade slowly as the former melodic line returns in a more refreshingly pompous state with the strings bolstering it, soaring to new heights. The piano gradually fades back into the background and then it is just strings, just as it was in the beginning. A swelling run up the keyboard (and maybe harp?) segues into a single-note rendition of the melody by the treble strings and a strong, solid bass line underneath. The orchestra slows and stalls at a fermata at 24 minutes, and then...
