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.

Mushi/Lumpy/Musique Concrète - A Bug, Touhou, and Honey Milk (Poisoned)

 

Mushi/Lumpy/Musique Concrète

A Bug, Touhou, and Honey Milk (Poisoned)

[ Mushi/Lumpy/Musique Concrète; 2006]

9.0

For a fan of DnB, especially of the experimental variety, Comiket, Reitaisai, etc. prove to be a barren wasteland for fans of the genre. However, every now and then, an album like A Bug, Touhou, and Honey Milk (Poisoned) will be unearthed, perhaps several years after the original release date. Drum and bass and ambient is freakishly hard to come by as is in the doujin community, much less an entire Touhou remix album dedicated to the genre(s).

The nature of the album is mostly rooted in breakbeats while being remarkably diverse. The album opens up with Ultimate☆8bitCrash's chiptune breaks. Deep Forest exchanges chiptune for ambient featuring breaks and beats which are reminiscent of µ-Ziq’s Mouse Bums from Bilious Paths, and ぶれいくこあ? sounds like a ragtime performance gone awry. 最モ危険ナ童遊ビ is basically what Kid's Festival ~ Innocent Treasures would have sounded like if Venetian Snares did the music for Perfect Cherry Blossom. misT is a cluster of drill and bass blasts and scratchy distorted melodies, which, quite frankly, becomes dull quickly while 門番の知られざる17年 -E't'B- proves interesting despite being done in a similar style.

This album also has remixes of remixes, such as the high point of this release dnabgub kaerB, which knows not the meaning of the word "calm" and greets you by kicking you in the fucking face with a chaotic splicing job of JAZZ 2005’s 我儘お嬢様の為の Bigband, making it sound so different that one could confuse it as an original track for the first half out of the context of the album. The closing track Cirno foolish! is also a remix of a remix of Scarlet Destiny’s Cirno Stylish, featuring much cleaner sample rips than the former, mixed in with somewhat lo-fi breaks and synths.

The album takes detour from the drum and bass breaks and trades it in for a more ambient feel with wwrriiggggllee, which is tied with dnabgub kaerB for my favorite, but is on the complete opposite end of the music spectrum, being an ambient piece with intensive sampling (one of which being David Bowie's Neuköln of "Heroes" fame) and no beats. The following track tele-phony terror (i wanted to believe it) is on the same page, but develops a beat after scaring the piss out of you. The soft glitch Enter Fire Power begins the transition that leads us out of the atmospheric nature of the previous two tracks.

After three tracks, we are brought back to chiptune breaks with 夜折り折り折り折り折り, only for Unlimited Voyage 1480 to throw us a curve ball by giving us another remix of a remix, this time being of hardcore artist t+pazolite’s Unlimited Spark!, featuring the same editing styling seen from dnabgub kaerB mixed with a Hardcore bass beat. Preceding Cirno foolish!, we have DEMY, the poster boy of the album providing us with various genre elements we have experienced from the past dozen tracks.

Now that we have an idea what you will be getting into when listening to this album, how does it stack up musically? In my opinion: Really damn well. It might be me just getting tired of the dime-a-dozen trance and rock arranges out there, or perhaps it’s because I have a very biased favoritism for experimental drum and bass artists like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, but this was like an oasis in the middle of a desert for me. With fourteen tracks and a wide variety of genre fields covered, it can withstand multiple listens, which is just as important as simply being a good album, and with a length of nearly an hour, it needs to be varied. Any other album of similar length rooting itself in a single genre would be hurt from replaying. The track order in A Bug, Touhou, and Honey Milk (Poisoned) changes it up enough to remain appealing from start to finish.

The abrasive and bipolar nature of ABT&HM(P) traps your attention in a vice grip and puts you on a wild journey that very few doujin albums can provide. Even if you disregard "doujin standards", it's fucking remarkable. This is just not your typical Touhou remix album, but also a 57 minute-long lecture on what remixing should be: Breaking songs down and rebuilding them from the ground up as you see fit.

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!