WAVE - Morrigan - Monolith "II"

Morrigan

Monolith"II"

[WAVE; 2010]
8.8



Doujin music is not a very profitable business, and while it is hard to make big money off of, it's even harder to become a big name in the community with the "big names" seemingly chosen at complete random. With the release of Monolith "II", we are greeted with a piracy warning on the back of the CD:

It is no surprise that music piracy is a problem in the doujin music community, as the artists are releasing music for a profit, just like everyone else. However, I have never recalled a time when a circle spoke out against music thief, and WAVE is so far one of the only circles to date to put an anti-piracy warning on their releases to date.

The three-track Monolith "II" is so ambitious for a self-release that it would be forgivable to mistake him for being under a label. It opens up with the ethnic-dance jam Reventon, which puts the listener off-guard when the deep pulsating yet relaxing bass of Peak Lounge. The title track Monolith "II" has a heavier bass with breaks and ambient drones and synth melodies, one-upping the likes of The Flashbulb by doing the one thing he could never accomplish: Dedicating enough time to a track for it to actually evolve.

With the amount of effort put into these 19 minutes and 47 seconds of music, it becomes very easy to see why WAVE are so pissed off. We all have heard a number of boring and run-of-the-mill doujin albums that are just so typical, uninventive, and a chore to listen to that we feel no guilt for not throwing so much as a penny into their rattling cup for smearing our car windows with wet newspaper. Morrigan has not only cleaned out windshield, he has also vacuumed the interior, waxed the rims, fixed the dents, and got rid of the Lord knows how many scratches on the side door. When you try this hard and nobody gives you a dime, you have a right to be pissed off, so rain hell down upon me for getting this off of mediafire!

Blasterhead - Blasterhead Works 1995-2003

Blasterhead
Blasterhead Works 1995-2003
[Blasterhead; 2003]
5.0





I remember listening to Blasterhead's first original album back several months ago, gnashing my teeth after every track, criticizing the fuzzy recordings, and the abuse of the hardcore bass beat for track after track after track. I dismissed it as complete and utter garbage and a ghastly selection of songs for one to choose for their first album. Upon a second listen, I have grown fond of several of the tracks. However, enjoying five or six tracks out of sixteen doesn't really bode well, since that still leaves you with the other two-thirds being hard to keep down inside my "J-Core"-jaded stomach.

Much like the chillout/ambient techno Retake and the dnb/breakbeat sora nuxx, BW95-03 takes a different direction with the genres prominently displayed, with hardcore/acid techno being dominating the 67 minutes on the compact disc. Guitar loops play a huge part in BW 95-03, including in the acid techno opener Shadow Under The Shadow. If you hate Alec Empire, don't feel ashamed if you skip Pop Chaser, Hurry Up Pizza Boy, Do It Runrun, and Friendship. Coastal Waters And Wood gives listeners a vague idea of what to expect from sora nuxx. After we take another acid techno detour with Girls On The Palmtop, we return to hardcore. R-99 is strikingly similar to Do It Runrun if slowed down, and the resemblance 4M L.E.D.-G vs GUHROOY's ErAseRmoToR maXimUM is humorous. The jewel of the album Fire's bass drills are delicious, and Close Your Eyes (GB Edit) proves that chiptune can have pretty music as it fades in and out, bringing Blasterhead's first real release to a close.


This isn't anywhere close to as bad as I recalled it being, but it's still a far cry from his future releases like the two albums mentioned early on in the review and Killbots EP if you are a fan of chiptune. To those who were unimpressed with BW, give the other releases a chance. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Sharpnelsound - Mad Breaks

DJ Sharpnel
Mad Breaks
[Sharpnelsound; 2005]
8.0






I have never liked DJ Sharpnel. They're overhyped, mediocre, and ride on a the gimmick non-genre "lolicore". They're are far better J-Core artists out there. DJ Technorch has made great song after great song, and was my gateway to doujin music. REDALiCE isn't all that, but he has Angel Rings and a few decent arranges backing him up. USAO wrote some pretty nice shit for USAO CD vol. 3, I enjoyed Roughsketch's 108 Sketches, along with t+pazolite work on the same album and neetmania. I guess what I'm trying to say is that nearly everyone can have one time they do something right, and for Jea and Lemmy, that release is Mad Breaks, an hour long album of J-Core that actually frightens me with how good it is.

Don't get me wrong. I still hate him and his anime-clip-splicing parlor trick, but this proves to have some craftmanship put into it. It opens up with the surprisingly slow (by Sharpnel terms) Gate Of Dreams, which proves promising with not a single chipmunk-voiced sampled clip. Hot Pepperz kicks up the tempo (along with the quirkiness factor) and uses audio clips from Galaxy Angel. Zettai Remix by Society Suckers rips classical music and evolves into an audio-splicing track in the significantly more interesting second half, and we return to Sharpnel with the hardcore part-hip-hop, part-hardcore techno, and part-chiptune Star Wars homage titled Bounty Wars, followed up with the even more enjoyable hardcore rockabilly rave Complecks Baby.

You Don't Know What is the most honest song title in doujin history, as I have no clue whether it wants to be a speedcore song or a hardcore hip-hop mix. It seems to have thrown its hands in the air shouting "fuck it" and splits it 50/50. Together As One flounders with the same amen break sample we hear throughout half the album and generally has very little to offer. If you cannot tell that SF-C and SF-R are "tradional" Japanese hardcore remix of Chun Li and Ryu's theme respectively from Street Fighter II and have owned/knew someone with an SNES, you've wasted your childhood.

The out-of-place saxophone sampling and vocal rips gives Solitude Sun some personality and sophistication, which the mindless and wild Speed Disco Vol. 2 compliments it by being the exact polar opposite. The piano and synth melodies 20031023 are so out of place on Mad Breaks, you could probably fool a few people into thinking it's a Touhou remix. Although I'm not a fan of Mugenjou Project's Audiovisualism, I can easily imagine it growing on some people. The album ends on a good note with Blue Army, which actually deserves praise people give it.

I will not lie: I originally revisited this album to completely tear the shit out of it as writing a review trashing something is easier than praising it. Instead, I listened to an hour of mostly pretty great music. It balances the silliness that attracted an overseas audience while still keeping the geeky-side of the hardcore techno scene in mind. Not too stupid while not too retardedly abrasive. Instead of riding this off as a freakish fluke, perhaps I should reevaluate my stance on the most famous duo in the doujin community.

IOSYS - ごっすんリミックス アイン and ツバイン

IOSYS
ごっすんリミックス　アイン/ごっすんリミックス ツバイン
[IOSYS; 2008]
4.2/5.6

I am not a hater, nor am I a fan of IOSYS, but this is fucking bullshit. If there was a line separating "asinine but with explanation" and "complete retardation", they have purposely chosen to disregard it and run into the retard zone until they have disappeared over the horizon. I can understand a one disc remix album a year after release, but TWO discs TWO years later? It takes a lot of stones to be riding on one of the songs that put you on the doujin music map.

In 2008, the same group that gave birth to F.O.E. and Overdrive (much to your pleasure or dismay) have released the 2+ hour two disc set spanning 27 songs, all of which are remixes of Marisa Stole the Precious Thing from various groups. I have put myself through the ordeal of listening to the whole thing expecting to be showered with remixes so horrid I'd piss myself laughing, but instead was greeted with a bunch of mediocre recreations.

We kick off with a moderately enjoyable Detroit Metal version by Live House S.S.H.'s 埼玉最終兵器, and then immediately get thrown into a bunch of mediocre electronic remixes such as the rave version by 株式会社スーパースィープ's 細江慎治, taka's glitch house from Junkan Production's, typical Cis-Trance, well, trance from Technetium. dbu music's どぶウサギ brings some joy to an otherwise painful experience due with quirky sampling and general playfulness, while WAVE brought my hopes up for an ambient remix which deteriorates into half-assed drum and bass. The genre-hopping remix by Innocent Key's yohine takes a shit over everyone else on this disc, and half of that fecal matter is later eaten by Masayoshi Minoshima who rekindles my hate affair with Alstroemeria Records. After more forgettable remixes, we finally come to a close with another mediocre rendition with IOSYS superstar ARM slamming the final nail in the first disc's coffin, only to sport a shit-eating grin while purposefully hit it hard enough so that the rest of the wooden frame splits a bit, forcing us to start all over again, which unfortunately gives rise to disc two.

Thankfully, disc two is not nearly as difficult to sit through as the form compact disc, even with the edition of another song. We open up with 電開製作所's 柏木るざりん metal/hard rock cover, complete with hilarious lo-fi vocal recording and barely sounding like a remix, and then we have SOUND HOLIC who is joined by the Swing Holic Band making with their take on the track, and by "take" I really mean "insert singing into the recording in a very unconvincing style", making the listener yearn for a clean version. 999 Recordings breakcore remix DJ Technorch goes the full distance to demonstrate why he's the best J-Core artist out there and fucking floors me with not only being the best remix on here, but one of the best remixes I have ever heard in my life. It takes a so-poppy-your-jaws-starts-to-tire song into a fierce, well-mixed, abrasive, and surprisingly complex track, destroying the song and reconstructing it all the while having its roots familiar to the listener. This is why I love this man. He always goes the extra mile, even for stupid and terrible crap.

Continuing the trend of MStPT remixes that sound like original tracks with vocals inserted into them is 有限会社モナカ's 中矢博元 orchestral "remix" that comes off as stereotypically "epic". I can only imagine how at home hardcore artist/voice-sampling fetishist REDALiCE must have been, and Silly Walker's すぺらんかー must have interpreted it as a sort of challenge to see who can dick around with the vocal track the most. イオシス's D.watt, much like many of the people on disc 2, sounds like he dug through his unreleased lounge creations and layered the vocals on top of it. Much to his credit, it sounds like he spent more than 20 minutes integrating them, which is more than I can say for Shibayan from ShibayanRecords' take. bassy from Barbarian on the groove is the first people in Lord knows how long to have their remix to sound like it was made to be a remix. Innocent Key strikes again with 溝口ゆうま's genre fusions with rock such as hardcore techno bass, synthpop keyboard, turntablism, and occasional vocal distortions. We end again with another ARM "remix" (by which I mean another song with vocals thrown in). You would figure with so much hiphop funkiness, there would be more fucking around with said-vocals, but not really until the second half, which is still highly lacking.


On disc one, most of the remixes were crap ass, and on disc two, many of the tracks of the tracks barely or don't even resemble the original song they were remixing, and would have faired off loads better without miko's less than average singing voice. Get the Technorch (which is the only reason why this is getting a two and a half) and maybe two other remixes and cast off everything else and just pray that one day we'll get vocal cuts for most of the tracks on the latter half. There's probably something in this beast that someone might enjoy, but why bother getting the whole kit and kaboodle for a dumpster full of hit-or-miss mixes you'll never listen to again?

春帆楼 - Namusan EP

deathgoraku
Namusan EP
[春帆楼; 2010]

5.9



So I kick off this blog which I will most likely get bored of quickly with a release that can hardly be called an "extended play". Clocking in at 4 minutes and 10 second (half that if you don't count "instrumental tracks), Namusan EP is probably the shortest release at Reitaisai 7.

Namusan consists of a remix of Fire of Hokkai titled すべからく法の灯火の下へ, consisting of bell chimes that swim around in your ears, ambient drones, and distorted hip-hop vocals. It would have been better, and possibly, pretty damn cool for a simple composition if it weren't for the paint-by-the-numbers drum beat loop dogpiling on top of the soundscapes. The instrumental (aka vocal-cut) version feels naked and a tad dull, making the original track stand out more for its vocals. It's the little things that can provide a spark of interest.

It's still strange that knowing that I now have an excuse to mention " avant-garde hip-hop" and "Touhou" in the same sentence. Too bad I can't also sneak "good" into the conversation.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1nmrmzmm2to