minimum electric design - 少女は電気河童の夢を見る

minimum electric design

少女は電気河童の夢を見る

[minimum electric design; 2010]

3.9

Matsui has released five works (if the catalog numbers on his site are to be assumed accurate). To not muck up after this many albums is pretty impressive, since most circles drop the ball at least once by their third. The way he would fail, however, was impossible to predict. He never once struck me as someone who would work well (or consider) pairing up with a vocalist, but on his latest EP released at Comiket 78, ルミコルミヲ performs vocals in three of the five songs. Although not even grating like many of the female vocal in doujin music (for example, 95% of them), her delivery isn't much better, and taken in as a whole scope, probably even worse than the eight billion so-sugary-moe-you're-choking-on-your-own-glucagon singers that poke their heads out of the woodwork come every mid August and late December.

The first gripe I have with ルミコルミヲ is that she sounds so tired and passionless, almost like she was forced against her own will to participate with matsui's most recent creative output. Her raspy vocal performance in 少女は電気河童の夢を見る sounds like she hasn't slept in four days and just got back from finishing a triple work shift. Her deadpan performance in とある紅茶と非日常 do not blend in with his samba rhythms and acoustics, and no matter what language your song is in, having "loo-la-loo-la"s as part of your lyrics is a fucking unpardonable sin, and there is no detectable effort in her tone and pitch to try to get into a groove with the instrumentals in 四季折々. However, matsui is also at fault. Take for example the song I have formerly mentioned. It feels like he was under the impression that because ルミコルミヲ was singing (or talking depending on how much credit you're willing t give her) on this EP, he felt that he could slack off. Personally, I wouldn't be fazed if the reason he got the aid of a singer was to meet a deadline and to avoid having to complete songs that were probably only half-finished. 胎動する sounds like a cool demo until you realize it is only a minute long song, and 今此処に在る隙間 is missing all the bells and whistles of what made his first LP border-lining on brilliance.

少女は電気河童の夢を見る is a tragedy after 幻想郷 Electronic Shoegazer and sanae telegraph. Granted, the C78 release wasn't a xerox of either of the two, which is worth some credit, but not enough to pardon the poor execution. Maybe if we're lucky, matsui has learned his lesson from this instance and will think twice about getting a vocalist, or perhaps will collaborate with someone who isn't so damn apathetic about it.

Mushi/Lumpy/Musique Concrète - A Bug, Touhou, and Strawberry Jam

Mushi/Lumpy/Musique Concrète
A Bug, Touhou, and Strawberry Jam

[Mushi/Lumpy/Musique Concrète; 2010]

7.6



No, I ain’t bullshitting. t+pazolite’s Lumpy circle really did making a third release over three years after A Bug, Touhou, and Melon Soda (Hydrocyanic Acid), the ying to Honey Milk’s yang. I’m not sure what brought it on, but according to the broken and inaccurate translations provided by babelfish, I think it had something to do with a get together with various other circles and booze. The first album was breakcore, the second was ambient noise, so one would expect a theme with their first release in the new decade. However, there is no set sound. Sure, we get some breakcore and ambient, but we also get swing, hardstyle, and whatever the fuck one would call Shitty Night (Derpcore comes to mind).

We also have a wider cast of arrangers from various circle’s making their first (and probably only venture) into the wacky world of Lumpy, including REDALiCE (ALiCE’S EMOTION), Tainokobone (Azure&Sands), oiko (N-Tone), and Dobu Usagi (dBu Music). We also have many familiar faces such as circle founders t+pazolite, Yuuna Sasara, and ziki_7, along with LV.4 (CODE-49) who appeared in Melon Soda back in May 2007.

This is Lumpy’s most assessable and friendly to newcomers due to it’s wider variety. Fans of dBu Circle will be appeased with tHe minD aNalyzeR, a jazzy swing arrangement of Satori Maiden ~ 3rd eye that rewards attentive listeners with very subtle ambient soundscapes that could easily be missed in the first five listens. Those that have been yearning for two ZUN tracks in one song will have their thirst quenched by t+pazolite’s Luv the lUNatic??, a spastic drill and bass track that Christian’s the a perfect marriage of Hartmann's Youkai Girl and U.N. Owen was Her?. Fans of Deep Forest back on Honey Milk will find much to celebrate about its spiritual successor Cherry Blossom Underground (Lovely Mound of Cherry Blossoms ~ Flower of Japan), which is also done by ziki_7.

Personal highlights include the two arrangements of Stirring an Autumn Moon ~ Mooned Insect. Yuuna Sasara’s バグレイディオ is a four and a half minute track that sums up everything I loved about Honey Milk with melodic glitch, instrumental rolls, and breakneck breaks, and Tainokobone’s 熱すぎて触れない虫 is the closest attempt I have heard at recreating Board’s of Canada’s sound with a downtempo beat, surreal ambient soundscapes, and a melancholy guitar a la The Campfire Headphase. If it had a hazier sound, you might have been actually able to pass it off as a work by the fame Scottish duo and trick a few diehards.

There are many brilliant arrangements here. However, you (yes, YOU. The only reader who has visited since whenever this highly neglected blog was made) are probably asking “why only a 7.6? If it’s really so awesome, why not give it an undeserved 9.2 with BNM on the sheer basis of it not being trance shit like you always do with “unique” releases”? That’s because what’s really good isn’t quite good enough to forgive A Bug, Touhou, and Strawberry Jam’s sins. The two weakest tracks hit you like a one-two punch by Mike Tyson.

Shitty Night, although humorous and whatisthisidon’teven worthy within the first two or so listens, is a novelty that wears off, mostly considering of samples of men fart, grunting, shitting (hurr get it), and wet stools reaching the bottom of the toilet bowl. Perhaps the worst part about the song is that you THINK they’re sampling infamous noise punk group The Gerogerigegege’s Night EP, but they aren’t. Still, if you need a cheap laugh to shut up the eight year-old boy within you, then hearing Gensokyo Millennium ~ History of the Moon recreated with bodily functions will satisfy your craving. REDALiCE’s state-of-the-art is two-thirds passable, and one-third more obnoxious than Shitty Night. You know that faux-pas ethnic electro sound people use to mock bad techno? Imagine that but it being an arrange of Mystic Oriental Dream ~ Ancient Temple and outside of the realms of parody. The album comes to a close with oiko’s drill-saturated arrangement of Septette for the Dead Princess Degeneration, and seeing as we already got the brilliant micro-sampling dnabgib kaerB back four years ago from the same circle, it already suffers by being in the shadows of the zenith of Doujin music, ultimately making it the weakest and most forgettable track.

Then we have some tracks that are immediate dividers. ziki_7’s London Bridge is droning ambient with noise for the first album that develops into a Schizophrenic collage of sounds and buried beats, all of which make a track that sounds nothing like The Bridge People No Longer Cross. LV.4’s Collapse Day completely flips the mood of Fires of Hokkai upside down, turning it into the quietest song from UFO into an epileptic fit.

A Bug, Touhou, and Strawberry Jam is not an album that will appeal to everyone, but most will find one track they like, so it’s not a complete waste of time looking into it. It’s clocks in at a rather standard 45 minute length, and showcases ten sounds from eight artists placing at least a foot outside of their comfort zones. This is what happens when artists bullshit around. The result is more fascinating than that of their "professional" works. People are quick to embrace or reject it.

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.

ALiCE'S EMOTION - RED

ALiCE’S EMOTION
RED (Disc C Hand-in-Hand)
[ALiCE’S EMOTION; 2010]
3.8

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.

DDBY - Highway2

Bizen
Highway2
[DDBY; 2010]

6.2









I cannot deny that the circle DDBY can produce some classy-ass shit. If all of the music in the world as opposed to two-thirds of Comiket were just Touhou arranges, Bizen would be listened to by gentlemen in top-hats sitting by the fire in their lavish chairs as tall as thrones sipping pricey brandy and wine while polishing their monocles while pulling out the 78 RPM Touhou Synthesis set (assuming we all don’t hang ourselves from their being only two-hundred fifty-something or so songs ever made and billions of arranges of each first).

In late June, DDBY has released their third album of 2010. Likewise with the original Highway, Highway2’s arranges are based off the spinoff game starring Aya Shameimaru, who has been scorned and loved by many, either as a borderline-Tabloid reporter in canon, or as a cumdumpster by fanon. The original Highway were arranges of Shoot the Bullet, so now we are treated to remixes of Double Spoiler tracks. Based off Modern Youkai Colony, opener City is your standard jazzy liquid funk that we have come to know and love from Bizen. Piano Soon somehow sounds even more eastern than The Mystery in Your Home Town and sedates the original track’s hectic tempos with chilled out cheery flutes. Nemesis’s Stronghold is remixed twice on this album, with both arranges averting the usual formula Bizen has been known for in his past releases. Syncopation implements rough percussion and high-spirited synths reminiscent of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Square Night sounds like primitive instrument mimicking music programs and club music where funk is locked into combat with techno. Based off Bell of Avici ~ Infinite Nightmare and closer Auto Pilot is guitarist Takayan’s moment to shine, but even coupled with the spastic at first glance breaks, it still doesn’t save the arrange from sounding like something I’d hear playing on The Weather Channel.

Highway2 has no actual misfires but suffers from the never-changing drum line which comes off as tragically generic and seldom changing, similar to TS5. The breaks feel like they were made in a short amount of time and pushed out the door. The blandness is hidden by the instrumentals huddling together around it to keep it out of main sight, but every once in a while someone drops their amber-stem pipes and exposes the weakest part of the drum and bass offshoot remixes: The drum and bass itself.

CPY - CPY～はじめてのサンプルCD～

CPY

CPY～はじめてのサンプルCD～

[CPY; 2010]
0.0

















Regardless of how bad your typical Touhou doujin album is, they are at least trying to resemble the melody of your favorite songs as they savagely beat it with no remorse. You can look back on most bad remix albums and say "Yeah I don't like it, but that's because it didn't appeal to me. I am sure this might be somebody's cup of tea, but just not mine". I hate pre-Strawberry Jam The Ramones, Burzum, and a bunch of other bands and music groups, but I can fathom somebody getting a kick out of them for whatever the reason. There is no album I have come across sans the likes of brokeNCYDE where I would aggressively assert that you would have to be batshit insane or live in a parallel world where trite music is like Brian Eno until now.

CPY～はじめてのサンプルCD～ is guilty of every crime you can commit against music: Terrible mixing, below bedroom production values, boring riffs, tone deafness, the inability to sing, and having the gall to announce this as a teaser for an album which will be released four months from now. This album wouldn't get a trial or wait on death row, but instead would be shot in the head upon sight without hesitation.


Now upon listening to East on Light, you might be like me thinking that the way the painfully synthesized violin sounding like it's being sodomized by a tiger is CPY's attempt to be obnoxiously quirky or avant-garde. The moment that talk-in-a-half-assed-sing-songy voice kicks in, you start to honestly start wishing he was being artsy and pretentious as opposed to sonically butt-fucking A God That Misses People ~ Romantic Fall with a condom lined with razor blades. After those 114 seconds coming to an end after going on for two minutes too long, we are treated with the 70-second ear sodomy dubbed Love Bomb, which takes the already criminally overrated and remixed Flowering Night to the nadir that it has been striving toward since August 2005. I am at a loss as to describe the most unconvincing guitar opening other than an off key carousel burrowing its way to Hell in hopes that it can fall in the fires of the damned and end its miserable life. The vocals are not only off key, but also off tempo. By this point, you would swear that CPY is honestly fucking around with us and holding back his laughter each time someone came up to him at M3-25 purchasing his craft work, which was probably done in a single sitting with no retakes or planning. The final "sample" is 空白回想, where he is now performing a hit job on Tabula rasa ～ 空白少女 from The Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, complete with your stereotypical metal kick drum-heavy line. It figures that one of the only times a PC98 songs gets attention, it gets stuck in the biggest troll doujin album of the year so far.

The last track on the album 東○大運○会 実況中継 appears to be CPY talking with his friends for 15 minutes from what sounds like through a 360 headset, most likely chatting about how much the people who bought this are complete suckers for Touhou remix albums and how they'll still probably purchase the full version at Comiket 78 even though it's an unredeemable 4 minutes of hell, making the idea of putting a stethoscope on the amp during a Swans concert sound tempting as permanent deafness is the only guaranteed escape from the full release of CPY～はじめてのサンプルCD～ coming August 2010. It's music like this that I use to propose that there can be no God, and the only consolation is that I see them struggle on how there can be an all-loving creator who would allow this to be exposed to any kind of public.

ALiCE'S EMOTION 2009 - Chaos Flare/COLORS/Lycoris/Sphere Caliber

 

ALiCE'S EMOTION

Chaos Flare/COLORS/Lycoris/Sphere Caliber

[ALiCE'S EMOTION; 2009]

3.5 / 4.7 / 8.3 / 7.5

REDALiCE has always been one to release a lot of albums in a year's time. Back in 2008, he put out seven, and six the year before. This does not mean he's slowing down, as he still makes appearances on other doujin albums left and right, churning out hardcore techno at a miraculous consistent pace. When he wasn't sticking his head into every hole he could find, he and circle co-founder Ayumi Nomiya were making and releasing four Touhou remix albums, each of which was released a few months separate at one another.

There is so little of interest about Chaos Flare that it actually leaves me a tad red-faced that I have nothing to say. I personally blame myself for going backwards from the releases, with Sphere and Lycoris making CF look completely boring to listen to by comparison. I guess color me wrong for saying Mizuhashi Jealoussic Park, which was kidnapped by IOSYS for their 2010 release, was from a better album, because CF is worse than Toho Ageha.

COLORS is a vast improvement on Chaos Flare, but also falls victim to having most of the album easily forgettable. If you have heard one vocal remix of Necrofantasia, you’ve heard them all, and Sleeping Beauty is nothing special. Artificial Flower Garden is the musical equivalent of chronic masturbation, always edging but never climaxing. Don’t let the guitar credits for title track COLORS lead you to believe we are getting something special, as it’s just monotonous chords that don’t really contribute anything to the song. Taken out of the context of being on an ALiCE EMOTION release, the electro-house Elebreaka could be mistaken as something made by Traffic Jammies. Tears Doll uses what I like to call “manipulating vocals to sound as artificial and whiny as fucking possible” technique, which combined with Michiru Kaori’s shrill squekly vocals, makes it the worst track out of the thirteen on here by miles. COLORS is filled with some hits and a lot of misses.

An aggressive sound made pretty with joy-filled vocals in Fallen Flower and un;balance, high-spirit synths in lolite, pretty percussion in Alkaloid and a hint of mischief in Morphine. The outer-worldly drones and synths of Hidden Radiance, Magical Higan Tour 2009’s ambient to breakcore blasts, and Oriental Darkcore’s buildups add a feel of mystery and suspense. Despite the rather dark and grim cover, the sound Lycoris boasts is of that that leans more towards celebration than of an ill omen while still being on the lookout.

Given the reputation that doujin has when it comes to vocal tracks, you have every right to be cautious, especially when they are apart of more than half the track listing much like Chaos Flare. Sphere Caliber is the most mellow out of the four releases, with trance being prominent. If you can pardon a bit of moe-ish voice, Ghostly Parapara Ship (Hardcore Edit) uses vocals as a necessity rather than a tag-on to conjour the energy needed for this fist-pumping speed rave. PsychoSniper and under the black, over the shine have better vocals than the aforementioned track, but are musically weaker. Searching For... has more of a lounge groove, making it kind of like the black sheep. REDALiCE goes back to a more light-hearted sound with Heian Inferno and Law Field resembling tracks on Angel Rings more than Crimson Hardcore. Magnolia is THE JAM OF A LIFETIME a masterpiece of bouncy hardstyle. If all of the tracks were up to par with REDALiCE's material, Sphere Caliber would effortlessly outshine Lycoris, but there is so much baggage and dead weight that it hurts the overall quality of the final release of 2009 (seriously? P*Light? Are you bullshitting me?).

With each passing release, an evolution in sound is apparent. There is an awareness that if they keep going along with the same basic structures, Akai Hito and Ayumi Nomiya would be pigeonholed as dime-a-dozen J-Core hacks. It might be the guest-star artists influencing them, or perhaps a sudden burst of inspiration with the release of UFO, but I can see the boldness developing gradually, hopefully promising a better future for the circle and the artists who hop on board, making remixes together in the not-so-distant future, possibly influencing a new route to follow. I cannot help but feel a tad optimistic.

Blck Onyx - DiGiTiZED FAiRiES

Black Onyx

DiGiTiZED FAiRiES
[Black Onyx; 2010]

5.7

I don't get three-flavor ice cream cases at all. I mean, I can understand the concept behind them, but just how many people buy them because there live with several different people in a house, each of whom don't like certain "basic" flavors, and just how in the name of hell is a third of a case satisfactory? Too much for one bowl, and not nearly enough for a second serving the time after. It leaves you unsatisfied unless you aren't too picky and would eat the other flavors (or perhaps take from the other flavors as well). And so this is exactly my beef with DiGiTiZED FAiRiES, the ultimate example of a Touhou remix album that is basically a three flavor carton of ice cream, being a third Trance, a third hardcore, and a third DURRHURR (or mint strawberry pineapple blueberry all in one).

The first third consists of trance tracks such as the reverb-heavy opener Milky Child. セプテットテープセット throws acid onto the field, with a start abusing various effectors at the start before becoming fairly standard afterwards. Flandre Underground Rave Party!is the highlight of the album, feeling like a track you would hear at a club by not being too direct of a remix with an explosion of energy at the end, and FLANDRE SCALET as our piece of Engrish for the album as a bonus.

The middle is the weakest portion, being entirely hardstyle tracks. saw-soul thundering bass drowns out the more subtle layers. TRAUMA MUThAfUckA and cruel punisher use samples that anyone who has looked into the Japanese Hardcore scene for more than an hour would immediately recognize. cruel punisher is the best song of the three, borrowing breakcore and trance elements, but it's not saying a whole lot. もふもふ, frankly, baffles me as to what to label it as, with quiet melodies and distorted uplighting drones done in the form of ambient, and a deep bass seen in techno techno but at the tempo of hardcore. ?63HiiraossHuikgoeH53? corporates breakcore, chiptune, many shifts between various instruments, tempo shifts, etc. that makes it stand out the most from the nine, but in the end come off as an abandomed clustefuck that could be passed off as a B-Side track on ABT&HM(P). Code Red Biological 2010 is another remix of U.N. Own was Her? and is significantly weaker than Party Rave, but still has a fantastic buildup with increasing beats, musical layering, and fade-ins.

What we have here is not an album, but three collective extended plays aimed at different audiences. If you like trance, the first half is for you. Hard style nut? Dig into the center. Want a mish-mosh or a surprise? Skip to the seventh track and leave the player on until the end of the album. If you like all of them, you're mostly like going to find something you like out of this.

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.

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