MA.S ATTACK - 珍時怪異

MA.S ATTACK
珍時怪異
[MA.S ATTACK; 2009]
9.6









Not all doujin music is UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ. Not all doujin music is guitars and cliché metal riffs and the SSKKKKKRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE that is in every Dragonforce song that minami has adopted from time to time. Not all doujin music has the prominent melody delivered by a vocalist (or a semi-realistic computer program). There are some out there that ignore the popular trends in the scene they have anchored themselves into and called their home. Upon listening to the opening track of 珍時怪異, MA.S ATTACK newcomer (or one-shot artist) ユタカナウシロ is already awkwardly out of place once you realize he’s in the same scene as circles such as the hard rock/heavy metal circles like CROW'SCLAW and IRON ATTACK!, the hardcore figureheads such as t+pazolite and REDALiCE, and the unbearably quirky IOSYS.

珍時怪異 is the very rare Touhou arrange album you might get two or three of released at Comiket that averts what everyone else is doing in such a drastic way you would be hesitant to lump together the aforementioned artists, or swear that ユタカナウシロ is from a different continent altogether. Ambient techno is already rare in the doujin scene, but to hear someone take a stab at the genre and make it so thick in texture is like witnessing a miracle of the universe. Take Spring Rain, for example. Ambient drones, the leading melody, glitch, various beats and breaks, and shit tons of other sounds that are along for the ride. It’s in the same realms as 青空の影へ, but contradicts the minimalist beauty of the opening track with the busyness of a well-oiled machine. 雲の閉ざせし路は has three or four different breakbeats at once molding together to create a single entity. 幽霊客船へようこそ has the busiest moments on the album with enough ambiance at once that could be separated to create two or three tracks. It appears so simple while being densely layered.

Even fans of more intense and faster music have something rejoice over. The chaotic dreamy glitch of エソテリア-prototype- proves to be on par in abrasiveness as some of the tracks you would find on PURE EXISTENCE and Speed Ball Z. After the last five tracks, ユタカナウシロ’s final track Rich Umbrella sucker punches you in the gut with harsh distorted bass and noisy synth melodies while still holding on tightly to the ambiance of previous tracks. The last two tracks are both arranges of Interdimensional Voyage of a Ghostly Passenger Ship. モリタ’s helluva fun arrange contrasts with 幽霊客船へようこそ’s dub-inspired ambient with glitchy breaks and a clean piano providing the melody at a hurried pace, and NEET師匠’s resembles a mixture of the Sonic CD GST and the Reading Rainbow opening.

The production and mixing would make 95% of the circles out there embarrassed or envious of ユタカナウシロ. There is so much activity, but every little piece is audible and easy to find with a little focus. The layering of so many sounds waiting to be found is what makes this album so much damn fun to return to. If you treat the last two tracks as bonuses and don’t let it bother you that one song is arranged three times on the same album, this is about as close to a perfect Touhou arrange album can get. 珍時怪異 is a brilliant rarity, mixed and produced with the utmost love and care.

Corky Voce - Ambient Dreamer

Corky Voce
Ambient Dreamer
[Corky Voce; 2009] 
7.6










Back when I listened to a huge pile of releases back in January 2010 from Comiket 77, Ambient Dreamer left a strong impression on me with some of the strongest tracks from the 600+ songs from the 100+ albums, EPs, singles, etc. I downloaded. The high points in Corky Voce’s debut release, I either forgot or, even worse, ignored the flaws that plague the album from being the best release from December 2009’s Comic Market.

Ambient Dreamer is an album that knows damn well what to do two-thirds the time, but is far too timid to carry it all the way each time or gets so caught up in what it’s doing that it goes overboard the other third. I’m going to hazard a guess that they like vocal manipulation software. Layered recordings (マトリョーシカ), echoes (Inner Heart), fidelity (楽園 -シントニック・コンマ-), a very-light pinch of the robot-voice effect that’s is on every other song in Daft Punk’s Discovery (practically every song), duets with second member Kei Fujiyama (Good Day), the list goes on. While Sayaka Horise does have a good mellow voice, the moment she makes her pitch higher is when everything falls apart.  If you have ever listened to Radiohead, you might have noticed that with each passing release, Thom Yorke sounds whinier and whinier to the point of annoyance. Now imagine that but higher pitched and more irritating.

That’s right. Sayaka Horise is trying to out-Thom Yorke Thom Yorke.

What genre is Ambient Dreamer? Hard to tell because they get around to various sounds, such as the paint-by-the-numbers J-Rock (いざない), post-hardcore (Ambient Dreamer), Hard Rock (マトリョーシカ), etc. This is no surprise to anyone who has known the groups past contributions and their flexibility.

The songs themselves range from great to mediocre, and the reasons behind it being mediocre make you sincerely wish it was crap. However, don’t fret because it's still one of the most solid releases from the 77th Comic Market. 風車 has a childish nostalgic feel to it and a solid musical transition. The piano melody of 楽園 -シントニック・コンマ- would fit perfectly at one of those retro soda shacks and is the one time that Horise’s high pitched squeals work and would blend into the song list of pop’n music perfectly. マトリョーシカ is my personal favorite track with a Barracuda-esque opening rhythm, a post-punk touch, and guitar solos that are just as catchy as the lyrics, and blueNote’s opening could very well be a darling homage to Endroll by Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. Despite the name, title track Ambient Dreamer doesn’t have even a shred of ambience in it, but has guitar work that sounds like a really clean Number Girl. Hell, Inner Heart sports more of a dreamy vibe by simply having a soft guitar with a bit of reverb.

It’s so weird to think that the songs that I’m practically tripping over myself to praise share the same compact disc as those that feel like B-Side material or have such a sudden change at the halfway point it will have you eyeballing your media player in amazement as the track number stays the same when it clearly is an entirely new song altogether. 蝶’s first third says “I’m easy-listening with a traditional Japanese influence”, while the other two-thirds sounds like BeForU if they were more intricate.  いざない displays the nadir of Horise’s vocal talents, and Good Day’s mellow stride is constantly interrupted by angst-stained squawks that should have been its own song.

I want to love everything about this album, but it has many missteps and songs that stick out like a sore thumb that would be suited for a more light-hearted release. It’s difficult to not be tsudere for Corky Voce’s debut. Instead of scrapping the laid-back records, we get these weird bipolar vocoded Frankensteins. Maybe next time Sayaka Hirose and Kei Fujiyama will learn to correct the mistakes made here and polish their strong suits. Looking over the flaws, what makes this album so strong is that it stands out from many other doujin releases by besting most circles in technical skill, production, and being damn catchy. Ambient Dreamer is a collection of songs with radio-appeal, which is surprising because so few circles lack such gusto to be talented and daring while still being accessible.

Subroc Records - SUBHUMAN

Subroc Records

SUBHUMAN

[Subroc Records; 2009]
9.1









One thing to get out of the way: This is NOT a remix album. It may look like one, it has a strong vibe like one, but all 14 tracks are not based directly off of any song from Serial Experiments Lain, but are instead original tracks inspired from the widely-praised cyberpunk masterpiece made in the late 90s. This must mean we are in for some quiet, calming, ambient pieces, right? Wrong again. SUBHUMAN is inspired from SEL from the atmosphere the soundtrack provides, but for the most part takes a sharp turn, trading in eerie drones for industrial breaks with dark ambient soundscapes abound.

Opener Depesonalization completely shatters the average SEL track length of around 80 seconds, clocking in at more than six and a half minutes with curling low-bass drones, static, and lo-fidelity sampling. The darker, more beat-oriented Re:Duvet starts out as a freestyle rap duet growing into an aggressive breakbeat rock ballad. The Accelerator contradicts every song on the original Lain soundtrack while still capturing the feeling of anxiety with it’s fast, loud, panic attack-induced bass trills that would later on swim from one ear to the next in yoshihisa nagao. Memory takes a note from noise rock distorted guitars and vocal implementation while unwavering from its ballad song structure. hello, weaher evolves from a quiet piano track to a trill-heavy marriage between a samisen and a guitar.

On the subject of dance-style tracks, Bolt opens up as a space ambient techno club jam with a glitch-chime middle, finishing up as a drill and bass-meets-breakcore riot. Protocol In Dub brings the vibrating bass of dub into the Dark Ambient world of Subroc Records founder 3x6, proving to be the only song ever made where I can tolerate wobbling bass. The tracks that ground itself deepest into the more wallpaper music feel of the series include subconscious image and Wired_lainのいる世界, both mostly made up of minimal drones and sprouting beats at the two-third point. The album finishes up with a Bonus Track, an accoustic version of a vocal segment of Re:Duvet.

I know that there isn’t a single hint of enthusiasm throughout my painfully dull analysis, and I contribute my poor writing to the fact that I am awful at praising genius when it’s right in front of me. Out of the one-hundred plus albums I have heard from Comiket 77, SUBHUMAN is the one that comes closest to perfection. No blights to point out, nothing to nitpick, not a single worthless track to be found. “Good for a doujin album” would be an insult. “Essential doujin album” doesn’t cut it. These 74 minutes of hard hitting dark ambient mood swings has no need for such crutch-like words.  Even if it remains unacknowledged by most, this will always be the crowning jewel of the most recent Comic Market.