TatshMusicCircle - Far East of East III

TatshMusicCircle
Far East of East III
[TatshMusicCircle; 2010]
1.9






I did not get into IIDX music until shortly after RED AC came out. I didn’t give much of a crap for his music. I have never been big on GENOCIDE, and was lukewarm to Sphere. However, I, like many others, have left RED ZONE on repeat on my iTunes player. The two-word mantra SPEED RAVE made me take a liking to the idea of more Tatsh songs with a rock-meets-rave formula. I rode Gekkou off as a misfire, since Twelfth Style and Scripted Connection=> were cool, and even Xepher was decent if you ignore the hype. In DistorteD shit like DEEP ROAR turned its ugly head, and it doesn’t help that Double Loving Heart showed how inept he is (like almost every other Bemani artist or person on the planet) at J-Pop. However, we still had Kachoufusetsu and D.C. Fish so it wasn’t all bad in DD. Then, he vanished to pursue other interests, because apparently, making music for VNs that nobody has heard of and the doujin music market pays better or something.

Recently, he has returned in Resort Anthem. Now, I may not have heard to song, and I cannot find it anywhere, but on the chan's I was told it was more shit in similar vein to his Touhou arrangements, which must mean it’s tripe. I have heard WHITE MUTATION, which if it weren’t for Sampling Masters Mega, would have been a total waste of time bothering with. I have also heard the first Far East of East, which was crap, so I bailed out on the second. Judging from Far East of East III, I missed nothing skipping his arrange album from C77.

It follows the standard formula: Rock-meets-Eurobeat. Unfortunately, Tatsh shines far brighter with  techno, and can’t make good rock to save his life, and Eurobeat is a dead-end genre. That much has already damned FEoE3 to the point of beyond saving. As if the arrangements being the most boring shit on the Goddamn planet wasn’t bad enough, the tracks are mixed VERY VERY VERY poorly. Here’s a game for all of you people who have good headphones: Count how many times you hear static and tinniness at a fourth or fifth of your player’s maximum volume. It could be anywhere as high as a couple hundred times (the vocals of 涙のソリチュード and every other piano note in 蜃気楼) or a few times, with those few times consisting of prolonged periods of droning static (The eternity stay with and 哀、揺れて・・・). It’s generic, uninspired, lazy, one-bit rock and eurotrash arrangements playing over a wall of static. I guess you could say it was dirtied. With loudness.

Even if it wasn’t on the dark side of the Loudness Wars, TatshMusicCircle is still a bad circle. It shakes the senses as to how something can be boring and horrific at the same time. Even awful music isn’t dull because you are set back at the ineptitude of the people surrounding the project. TMC is unsalvageable and Far East of East III puts to rest any arguments saying otherwise.

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.