A

A is an extended play by Japanese recording artist Ayumi Hamasaki. It was released by Avex Trax in Japan and Hong Kong on August 11, 1999, in 10 different editions, and through Avex Entertainment Inc. worldwide in September 2008. It additionally served as a single from her second studio album Loveppears, and is her first single marketed as an EP. The 12-track EP contains four new original songs: "Monochrome", "Too Late", "Trauma", and "End Roll", and eight remixes. All songs were written by Hamasaki, while production was handled by long-time collaborator Max Matsuura. Musically, like Loveppears, A is a pop rock album with dance music influences. Lyrically, the new songs are written from a third-person perspective, and deal with themes such as nostalgia, anxiety, and trauma. Upon release, A received favorable reviews from music critics for its individual tracks—some of which were highlighted as examples of Hamasaki's best work—and as a collection, with additional praise for the production quality of the EP versions of the original songs over that of their parent album counterparts. Some criticism was directed towards the number of remixes present on the EP. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_(Ayum...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)