用户Wiki:Demobanker/The compendium of Touhou music review projects

This was plucked from an old, abandoned reference page on my userwiki. I'm not planning on making the other sections there into their own page, but I think this part should deserve its own page.

Anyways, what you'll find here are a collection of websites or personal projects that is about reviewing or recommending Touhou music. As I've said on Albums reviewed on Midnight Insomnia, projects dedicated to writing about or reviewing Touhou music are fairly rare, and having them all in an accessible place can help listeners find things that they wouldn't have otherwise listened to. Plus, I have this theory that if you want to write about Touhou music, or at consider Touhou music an art form, you should at least engage with other people's writing in addition to writing yourself.

I've organized the list by start year, and included the year of the last Touhou-related writing from the project. There's a few criteria for inclusion, first being that the people behind the project should be somewhat knowledgable about the fandom or about doujin music. The writing must also be more than Letterboxd-tier one liners. Finally, they have to be available on the internet in some way, even if archived. Sorry, people who nuked their blog from the internet.

Definitely incomplete, this is just the list of things I came across before, plus a few Japanese blogs I got from this collection of Japanese music websites by Peter, a Japanese music digger (as in he's Japanese, not that he specializes in Japanese music) living in New York. Sites from the latter source will have lackluster descriptions as I only skimmed through them. I definitely need to go through Bilibili and see if anything fits here. Feel free to post in the comments if you know any others, especially historical, pre 2015 ones. Language doesn't matter, as long as it follows the criteria listed above.

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• SoundWing (JP; started 2006?, most recent update 2012) - Run by kizkiz, reviews doujin music in general

• Loli Salad (EN; started 2008, most recent update 2016) - Run by Fang-tan, writes about doujin music in general but also reviews Touhou.

• 同人音楽でもどうでしょう？ (JP; started 2009, most recent update 2017) - Run by omega1349, reviews doujin music in general with a focus on rock and metal.

• 雑巾雑記帳 (JP; started 2010, most recent update 2014) - Run by borozo.

• Midnight Insomnia (EN; started 2010, ended 2012) - Blog run by delyssen with general doujin music reviews, featuring a lot of Touhou albums.

• Touhou Derby (JP; started 2010, ended 2013) - A site about vocal music run by multiple people and has a ranking list of best singles and albums released at each event.

• 井戸の中から （東方アレンジレビュー） (JP; started 2013, most recent update 2013) - Run by cep. Note that the author considers 3/10 stars as the average.

• Touhoupop (EN; started 2015, most recent update 2019) - a review site by kbnet, who wrote circle introductions for the now-defunct overseas doujin webshop BuyDoujin. The reviews talk about the music with a dose of music knowledge and humor. The site has an ongoing series that looks at Alstroemeria Records' albums and the context that they were released in. Also, the writing style takes influence from Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music, and by that I don't just mean the guide namedrop in the Nite Versions review.

• 2d同人音楽 (official Youtube mirror) (EN; started 2019, most recent update 2021) - general doujin music review/discussion podcast by Veto (Find Your Way, the distant journey to you) and denshūto that has a lot of Touhou reviews. Goes in depth about each album not just in terms of sound but also in the concept. podcaster's note: 2d means "2 dopes"

• The Prism Records (started 2019, most recent update 2021) - a short video review series by Surnist. Funny, short, and fast paced.

• Touhou Garakuta music review section (JP; started 2019, most recent update 2024) - Yeah, you can't really talk about Touhou music reviews without mentioning the official site for Touhou news and fandom stuff. Got some insightful stuff, especially 柊正午's reviews on Nocti and Someone 45356.

• Demo's yearly music recommendations (EN; started 2021, most recent update 2025) - A series of pages on the Chinese Touhou wiki run by long-time wiki editor Dem- heyyy it's me!! While I've been writing my thoughts on music privately or through Discord comments for years now, it's around 2020 where I finally decided to put them on the public web, for better or for worse. Touhou music was a huge part of why I wanted to explore music, and I like making connections and recommending things, so the entries tend to mention non-Touhou music. I personally think the writing could be more insightful, but that will come with practice.
  • The link goes to the 2024 page cuz I think that's where my writing sucks the least, followed by the 2022 page. 2021 page is the worst because about 1/3 of the entries are "hey I'm still writing this, check back later".