用户Wiki:Demobanker/sandbox

yearly listening log drafts

Just some drafts for my listening log and recommendations pages. They're mostly for the years I haven't gotten to yet. Some of them talks about the music, some are just basic notes.

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HELICON （2022-05-20） 社团：DualInsomiNa progressive metalcore, djentcore Some quick thoughts: 1. The tracks benefits a lot from mastering that doesn't make everything sound like mush. 2. Because the overall arrangements are unchanged from Helix, the parts I don't quite like about that album still apply here (in particular, the out of place sounding rap part on Ephemera. The funky math rock guitars added to it is interesting but I'd prefer if it was integrated with the metal parts). The bottom line here is that if you like Helix, you'll like this. If you haven't listened to Helix but you like progressive metalcore in the vein of Erra with an explorative attitude, you definitely should give this a try. 2.5. The British vocals is a really distinctive part of the circle's sound. The relative lack of Touhou arrangers in the UK is surprising considering the popularity of its underground music scene . So yeah, this Chinese metalcore album mananges to out-British the entire UK Touhou music scene. 3. What really shines here is the atmosphere. There are a lot of tiny details you can hear, and the production makes the atmospheric parts feel even more ethereal. It ends up continuing the doujin new age influenced sound that 海芋花's title track had that the rest of the EP never developed. 3.5. In a sense, both this and Helix's cover art is fitting of its overall atmosphere. Helix's post-apocalyptic, modern action movie washed-out parking lot color scheme looks fitting of its muddy production. Here, it's still a post-apocaliptic place, but it's overgrown with vegetation and fits the lush sound of the remaster.
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東方硬核破壊祭 （2022-04-24） 社团：CXR Record various hardcore EDM genres (note: the album is streamable as all participents have uploaded their track on their own Soundcloud.) A collab album that I was looking forward to because of the people on it. While I don't really follow their music, I know that they don't have much connection with the existing Japanese Touhou hardcore&dance scene. In theory it would be interesting to see their approaches have to making arrangements. That's not to say the artists are completely unrelated - many of them, including the circle leader cexiria, are associated with the Japanese breakcore netlabel Lost Frog Productions. So, this is either gonna drive me crazy (good) or drive me crazy (bad). this is "pristine", huh? opens the album with a slab of hard to categorize bass music. It's disgusting and amorphous even by my standards (in a good way). It's then followed up with a bunch of tracks in the hard kicks area of genres (rawstyle, frenchcore, uptempo hardcore, etc.). 魔理沙　脳以外全部摘出 has huge 音MAD energy. idk man it just hits hard while being somewhat eclectic. I'm hitting my limits of describing EDM right now.
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Gensokyo 199X 2： Another Touhou 90's Album （2022-06-06） 社团：Nocti various 90s EDM genres, mostly the breaks & beats Testing hiding longer writing under collapsables - not a fan of using divs directly but the Hide template doesn't work inside this template, and the 折叠框 template breaks sometimes and shows {{{2}}} if its content has links, but the exact triggers of this bug are hard to find. I don't think the devs should prioritize fixing these bugs given that most people aren't gonna encounter them, hence this workaround. Collapsable - click to toggle -> > Track 5: Shinigami Cruise > Genre: early 00's hip hop hey wait a minute... I thought this was supposed to be about the 90s???????? As far as 90s revivalist music goes, I find that I'm most drawn to retro-futuristic visions. This could be something like the dnb and hardcore breaks that are largely influenced by old video game music (which I've already talked about on both the 2021 and 2022 lists), utopian virtual's surreal take on 90s muzak (MIDI or otherwise), or digital fusion's extension of prog, jazz and funk aspects of SNES and FM synthesized video game music. The approach on this album is more straightforwardly retro. That isn't to say it's a technical exercise in being period-accurate. For example, the new jack swing tracks, while not as polished sounding like Bruce Smear's or Seiho's hyperglossy take on it, still have some production tricks that feel distinctly modern. I think it ultimately benefits the album though as it's fun dance music and not music school homework. Ironically, I think the only track that doesn't feel retro is Forgiven, partly because trance is one of the genres that still has a huge popularity among Touhou music fans and producers (and thus can't die and become retro), and because the drums sound like softened hardbass donks. Lovely Earthbound samples, 'nuff said. P.S. Might I interest you, the reader, in this two hour documentary on the early history of EDM? It's by a rave music producer in a music server I'm in and it is very in-depth, covering developments from the 70s to the 90s, with a few mentions of contemporary genres as well.
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Touhou Afrobeats （2022-05-08） 社团：Quark I posted this, but I'll leave the draft in a collapsable Collapsable - click to toggle -> instrumental Afrobeats (take it from people who actually do the research) Despite the utopian and international aspirations that people ascribe to Touhou music, with some even proclaiming that there's Touhou music in almost every genre imaginable, the reality hit you once you start digging into what's actually there. You ask questions like "what are some circles that make powerviolence?" and you quickly realizes that the scene is not the spring of creativity and wtfjapanseriously-ness that weebs and clickbait creators make it out to be. If you're interested in music styles that are mostly made in one region, or just have an interest in music beyond the USA-UK-Canada-Japan sphere, you'll come to that conclusion even more quickly. Sure, you can find tons of bossa nova and Celtic folk albums made by the fandom, but ask a Brazilian or Irish music nerd about hidden gems from their country, and they'll be glad to tell you about dozens of musical styles with roots in local traditions. This isn't limited to folk and classical music either, as every country has their own unique spins on pop music. The point is, there could be a lot more variety going on! On the EDM side of things, there's a huge lack of music that draws on African or Latin club music. Reggaeton and moombahton have been popular for a long time, and as a result you can find a handful of arrangements in those genres. Even then, there are a whole lot of styles that aren't covered. Take for example gqom and singeli, two African EDM styles with music journalism coverage and a sizable following around the world. Yet all these didn't result in people making Touhou gqom or singeli arrangements. This release, short as it is, hopefully will inspire people to check out other overlooked styles.(rewrote this part to be less confessional. this style of music writing has long been a pet peeve, and me writing it doesn't make it feel better. still sounds preachy, but at least it's not preachy-confessional) On to the music. Afrobeat is a pop genre that draws on a wide range of genres, including hip hop, R&B and dance. Here, there's no vocals, so the music ends up being more EDM than pop. The two members of Quark take this chance to show their own take on the genre. Vibe$peak uses a mostly acoustic sound palette that sounds warm and welcoming. 楓上綵為's tracks are more overtly EDM, with lots of sharp, high-pitched synths placed at the front. Starting off with 夢遊踊女ハルトマン is a great choice, as the unconventional time signature of the original theme plays well with the rhythmic tricks that Vibe$peak pull. 幻象懐郷 has a synth that sounds like a flute which I think is neat. 憂夏 closes out the EP with something more laidback. Overall, it's a fun listen. A melodic and colorful party that leaves space to play with rhythms. I truly hope this circle will become more well known!
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サドマゾヒズム （2011-12-30） 社团：サリー alternative rock, alt-prog I can't believe I held off listening to this for so long. Byou, the self-titled and Less are all excellent albums, but this one manages to make the circle's style feel ethereal and lush. There's a lot of light-sounding instrumentations here, like the twinkly guitars on サド or the strings on plaza Blue age. It meshes with the delicate vocals to add an elegant sounding layer to the music without softening the circle's alt rock heft into indie rock territory. With that in mind, コウモリ stands out like a sore thumb with its dissonant metallic freakouts. Ironically, those types of songs on other albums, like 童歌 or 【byou】, were what first drew me to this circle as it was a sound that metal circles just kinda ignored. Here, it ends up giving a weird mood whiplash. It also doesn't help that the chorus is a bit cheesy and twee. If the song was meant to cause mood whiplash, however, then it succeeded in two ways. Going back to the positives: enn ～淵～ is an excellent opener and a great statement to the album's sound (the spoken vocals are a great touch). Likewise, plaza Blue age is an excellent closer that manages to add drama and intensity on top of the whole thing. 新規テキストドキュメント has some cool clap sounds and rhythms going along with the synths that I'd love to hear in EDM. All in all this is an excellent album and I'm still kicking myself over not listening to it 10 years ago! (written 2022-05-07)
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［ Dualism ］ （2018-05-20） 社团：Ecriss atmospheric/artcore drum and bass Even at 24 minutes long, Dualism is still one of the best electronic albums that you can find in Touhou music. It's beautiful and evocative, and hints at a story that unfolds over multiple listens. While most of this album is an extension of artcore dnb, it wows me in a similar way to some of the more high-profile conceptual, genre-bending bass music releases like Deconstructing Nature, Plateau, or Lei Line Eon. (wanna rewrite my old comment on the page, here it is for posterity) This is some of the most gorgeous atmospheric drum and bass (well, drum and atmosphere, since there isn't a lot of bass on here) I've heard. Every track has its own lush, dreamy soundscape that sounds both organic and technological, and this dreamy sci-fi mood complements very well with the Hifuu theme. What makes this different from something like IOSYS' Bloom or ごんばこんなか's Hifuu Soundscape albums is its emotional intensity. Ecriss can write some really cathartic moments, but that only happens about once or twice in their early releases. On here, it's in every track. Whether it's the piano chord smash halfway through Ghosts and Specters, the fractured breakcore section in Illusion and Delusion, the accordion/piano waltz on Wisdom and Bravery, or some other moment, there's always something on here that makes me go "oh wow, this is beautiful" whenever I listen to it. Oh, and the last track is footwork, in case you have an interest in the genre.
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紅魔館にピアノなんかあったっけ？ （2009-10-11） 社团：Unknown - Dimension solo piano, classical+jazz For someone who don't get much out of solo piano video game remixes, this overcomes a lot of the issues I have with them. The arrangements feel fresh and aren't just a plain cover of the original, and there's a lot of variations in dynamics. What's more, even though (I think) this is composed, the jazzy parts actually feel like they were improvised - which gives me the feeling that there's actual jazz on here. This might be a weird thing to point out, but when a lot of jazz piano VGM remixes uses jazzy-sounding chords and playing techniques without improvising from the original melodies, having something that sounds improvised is rare.
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Dispirited （2022-06-27） 社团：Dreams of Nihil blackgaze, post-black metal, progressive metal With Touhou becoming widely popular in the past few years, it's not a big surprise that there's a Touhou arrangement circle from Czechia. What is surprising is that they play blackgaze - a metal genre popularized in the 2010s that's strangely missing from Touhou music, so much so that I made a list to keep track of them. This genre has been developing way before Deafheaven's seminal album Sunbather burst into the public consciousness in 2013, and it has evolved in thousands of directions since. Dreams of Nihil is clear about its influences in the track notes. Deafheaven is an obvious pick, and the other blackgaze bands named are a good primer to big name bands in the genre. Specifically, they mention Alcest and Lantlôs, two bands that carry a dreamlike atmosphere, and Harakiri for the Sky, which combines the genre with post-hardcore to make long songs with a complex flow of emotions. Other band mentioned are Ellende and Agalloch, two bands that combines dark, stripped down folk music with atmospheric black metal and post-metal respectively. But how do all of these influences come out? It's all over the place, but it primarily is about the atmosphere. (gotta expand this) Another part I like about the album is its song structures. The varied and constantly flowing structuring keeps the music interesting. Combined with the arrangement, it ends up directing the original themes in a new direction, compared to the relatively faithful arrangements of Touhou prog mainstays like Demetori or Xi-on. (same, expand this too)
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廃樂典 （2020-10-11） 社团：境界天文台 experimental classical, electroacoustic, noise reposting my comment here: I'm just going by the crossfade here, but for a piano album that isn't going for experimental techniques, this has an incredibly hazy sound and minimal arrangement that is notably unique. At least, the closest thing I can think of in touhou piano music is ArmpitMaiden's pre-Maiden's Capriccio era EP Beginning of the East. The piano parts sound gorgeous and otherworldly, and the noise elements adds a layer of unease to the existing mood. The more apt comparison here would be Lobgesang. The major difference here between the two is the approach. Lobgesang's arrangements were from an academic direction, and that included both the classical and electronic parts - electroacoustic music did have its roots in academia after all. In contrast, the classical elements on here are more contemporary and accessible. If the electronic manipulation weren't here, the tracks would fit perfectly in one of those "relaxing Touhou piano remixes" compilation videos. The electronic elements on here, too, feels more accessible even with all its hostilities. It's there to enhance the mood and provide atmosphere, like the background music to a strange video about DiPP - after all, the first times that electronic music reached a mass audience were through film soundtracks.
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異聞見聞録 下 （2021-10-31） 社团：miso-nicomi records breakcore Chinese 2hu fanbase pls make a breakcore collab album so I can write like 3 paragraphs about the first wave of Chinese breakcore
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心娶 Kokorometry （2013-08-12） 社团：荒御灵 airy industrial bass music writing notes - albums I want to mention: Logos - Cold Mission (2013) Egyptrixx - Pure, Beyond Reproach (2017) Our.v - via (2018) which is no longer available :( less industrial and more organic feeling, but still related Murlo - Dolos (2019) Howie Lee - 天地不仁 (Tiān Dì Bù Rén) (2019) Most albums here are made way after the release of this album, but the point of this writing shouldn't be that Kokorometry is "ahead of its time" - if anything, it's contemporary to a movement in 2010s underground music that focused on texture and rhythm, and combined airy and ethereal atmospheres with industrial and sometimes plain weird soundscapes.
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Mirage Cadence EP （2020-09-30） 社团：Araecelis contemporary classical Delicate piano retakes of the artist's house arrangements. Of these, Glacial Midsummer ("Solstice" ver.) is the most developed and my favorite because of that, but I also like Turn in or Turn Up (Twirling ver.) for its interplay between the two arranged themes.
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Enigmatic Tributes （2024-04-09） 社团：名古屋作曲の会 various genres, about half classical 🇯🇵 I played this and was immediately blasted with a surreal, kfaraday-esque digital fusion arrangement of Jelly Stone, and I knew I just had to talk about it even if I dislike the rest of the album (which I didn't). The piano tracks are great, as usual GODWOOD does an awesome job at them, but I'm drawn most to the more bizarre tracks on here. Niynuh Swidffel's arrangement of Mokou's theme is both a lighthearted xylophone and horns classical piece and an old school house tune with huge taiko beats. Red Cat Theater then puts on a 3rd eye arrangement that starts off as suspenseful bells that is quickly overwhelmed by chaotic, lo-fi floods of noise. なんすい's other arrangement which closes out the album is another nifty one - it plays at being a train ride, with announcements and breaks to simulate stops, and musical landscapes that moves between chiptune and orchestral all grounded on a techno beat. (write a bio or something for this group!)

also have stuff for these in mind but I don't feel like cleaning up and putting here right now:

• Fatal Contamination (and the spectres of 00s prog metalcore band Between the Buried and Me)
• bugdaughter (want to expand on my comment on that page some more)
• containmentzone (where I talk about my complex feelings on electronic music meant for chilling, but also, this is a fascinating and unique house album)
• Susume (a celebration of the literary side of the fandom, but also a mourning over the english speaking fandom's dismissal of brony music)
• per speculum in aenigmate (about the idea of orchestral music as the peak of art, my disappointment with this idea, and why this take on the genre appeals to me)
• Parallel Passage of the Vile (Why I love modern dissonant metal, and why it's surprisingly not antithetical to Touhou arrangements)
• Suture:, 博麗歌暦華伝, 38万キロの裏側 (Three Chinese art pop albums that I want music nerds to listen to)
• some Blankfield & Electric Red albums (where I pretend to have been into djent since 2009. idk this doesn't really work unless I do a bunch of research into what it's like to be that kind of person. but still: a lot of it will talk about the state of the genre between 2009 and 2012)
• RESetup;, Samplejunk, So Many Materials (I read about the rise of digital maximalism in bass music and want to try to relate it to the rise of the rhythm game notespam style of J-core around the same era. Do I have something good or am I just grasping at vague correlations? Who knows!)

assorted prog metal opinions

Jotting down some opinions while I revisit stuff while working on the wiki. Not sure how the overall tone of this will go - as much as I like prog metal, I also don't like trad prog or power metal, which is like most of the big-name circles in the fandom lmao. But I'll try to point out things that sound interesting to me.

曲目信息
Shout at The Devil （2006-08-13） 社团：Demetori progressive metal, power metal (mostly) Revisiting because of Holmgang Ov Gensokyo's doujin metal essentials series and man, Eastern Dream still shines as the best track. The completed version on 如臨深遠 ～雨縒煙柳～ is gorgeous, but this one is equally pretty because of its stripped down instrumentation. It stands on its own so well that I'm amazed that it's considered a demo and relegated to bonus track status. The other standout is オリエンタルダークフライト, which I legit forgot existed. The remade version on 闡提宗祀 ～ Offering to The Sukhavati was already the earliest example of Touhou djent arrangement on this wiki, but its inclusion here really cements that fact. Musically, of course, it kicks ass. The unrelenting pounding guitars feels like being trapped in an oppressive storm, with lighter guitars and synths parts for contrast that feels like being shrouded in mist. The guitars are as ferocious as Meshuggah's proto-djent (or "technical thrash/groove metal", if you're one of those metal nerds) riffing on Destroy Erase Improve (1995), but where that album had the atmosphere of a scorching hot desert, this song has the feel of the dense, mystical forest evoked on Vildhjarta's Måsstaden (2011). I'm still not into the EP as a whole because it's a good song and an excellent song sandwiching three vgm power metal songs that play it faithfully to the originals. There are brief synth/mellotron bits that gestures towards prog-ness but don't develop the tracks in novel directions.
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黒点回廊 （2010-06-20） 社团：月臥丘書寮 Good deep cut from ChaosAngel's channel. It's got a grab bag of styles, including power metal, Dream Theater prog, and even death metal (翔び立つ凶鳥はU.N.オーエンではない、彼女だ, weirdly though the booklet commentary talks a lot about death metal despite it only being one track on the album). The arrangers also put care in writing bass guitar parts, and it's prominent in the mix too which is unusual in doujin metal mixing.
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Drawing the Spell Ⅳ （2009-12-30） 社团：Crazy Voltage Dream Theater-esque heavy metal; instrumental I dislike Dream Theater-esque bands, but this circle makes it manageable by taking away the guitarwank and keeping the songs short. The most frustrating thing about this album is that every track starts with cheesy HM cliches and only start doing good prog interpretations a minute in. Also the last two songs rely on the organ to carry the melody and leaves the guitar to do boring fast riffs. The worst contender is the ballad Wonderland After Dark where the good part starts 2:23 in, lasts a short while and then you're back to the cheesy ballad part. On the flipside, this album has some of the circle's most elaborate organ arrangements.
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Drawing the Spell Ⅲ （2008-12-29） 社团：Crazy Voltage see the previous one More Dream Theater-isms here, but it get a lot more manageable when you take away the wankiness and keep the songs fairly short. Hourglass And Flames tries to do djent - emphasis on "tries" because those moments are brief and only lasts a few weak chugs before switching to fusion prog. Despite that, it's one of the circle's more unique songs.
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Brutal Games For Reminding Of Death （2008-12-29） 社团：CROW'SCLAW mostly heavy metal; instrumental Man, Taka just can't stop sprinkling in cliches. Most track intros on this album are generic heavy or alt metal riffs that has been used hundreds of times before, but if you get past that you do get some interesting interpolations. Immortal Madness, for example, subtly brings out the original themes after a while. Common State Of Innocent Violence also does this with a groove metal base. I also like how How Does I Feel To Be Alive? separates the original melody into short phrases and connects them through melodeath parts.
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東方グラインド （2010-10-11） 社团：Sketch The Fantasy It's grindcore but each batch of game songs is a medley and the arrangements can get really hard to discern which makes it count for this list I don't think it's suprising to learn that I dislike when vgm metal arrangements get called prog even though they're really faithful to the originals. Even more if they're medleys. This album bypasses that through grindcore intensity and technical playing. On an individual level, the arrangements are nothing as obscure as 眞紅ノ眷屬ハ圓環スル螺旋ヲ嘆ズル or some of AGENT 0's stuff. The trick to how STF fit a lot of the originals down to 17 seconds is that they just expand on specific melodies and parts. Taken as a whole, though, it becomes overwhelming. There's also plenty of tempo changes between tracks to trip you up, and the noise/cybergrind bits on the EoSD medley can catch you by surprise (though that doesn't come up again until the end of the album). I like that each batch of songs starts with a little comedy sketch. Anyways expect a backwards 2x speed cover of this album as the centerpiece of Holmgang Ov Gensokyo's next album, -¾ ~ Touhou Metal Goes Kaizo, where each sketch will be replaced with an hour-long podcast... Something else notable is that the actual album length is 36 minutes and 59 seconds, but because of sub-second rounding it shows on the wiki as 36 minutes and 11 seconds. This type of discrepancy gets really noticeable with large tracklists like this. Good thing most tracks on here share titles and track lengths so I could copy paste my way into filling this 99 track monstrocity. Can't wait to see creating the wiki page for this album becoming a speedrun category. Protip, there's no Wind God Girl (short version) arrangement on here!!!
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In The Wake Of Scarlet Devil （2015-08-14） 社团：The Last Battalion half power metal and half djent The benefit of writing down the album genre out rather than simply listing them as tags is that I can be a bit more nuanced in my descriptions (or so I think). You read something like "progressive metal, power metal, djent" and might think of something that combines them together, like Empyrios' Zion (2013), one of the rare power metal albums I enjoy. But this is more of a half-and-half deal, with prog metal being the overarching sound. Hailstorm, 'Luna Bile, Jack The Ludo Bile and Septet pour une infante defunte are all Demetori-styled power prog tracks. The djent stuff is kinda eh, but hey, Obizen didn't have much of that genre despite the cover literally referencing the genre progenitor, so they are definitely trying this time. Dead But Dreaming is an interlude that combines delicate guitar playing with electronic beats. Sometimes the beats are straightforward techno stuff, and sometimes it's more freeform.
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Amorphous （2010-08-14） 社团：Stratiotes melodic metalcore My old notes on this was basically "the playing is sloppy and there's a lot of straightforward covering, this sucks!" but even then I didn't complain about Albert's vocals, which is how you know I was a real one lmao But I was totally underrating it back then. There are some great ideas, and while the execution in terms of playing isn't superb, the big-picture stuff do come out well. The tracks have a wide range of dynamics, and the weaving in other originals and acoustic parts makes it feel like it's telling a story. Sure, 感情の魔天楼　～ World's End is more polished than the White Lotus suite, but the former sounds like the original song but more epic, while the latter feels like its own distinct thing.
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Cubical another perspective has violated systematically （2007-08-17） 社团：CYTOKINE jazz fusion-influenced metal; instrumental surprise!!!! random CYTOKINE prog metal album out of nowhere Very jammy album with lots of fun keyboard improv and playful drumming. The way that different original tracks come together without feeling like a simple medley just shows how ambitious they were with this album. Hidden gem.
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Metamorphose（毎日五月病。） （2011-09-11） 社团：毎日五月病。 instrumental Very 2000s in its mix of epic, soaring heavy & power metal riffs and the riff-on-one-note approach of that era's metalcore. I think that little bit of eclecticism explains why the arrangements take some unexpected turns. Pretty fun overall.
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Perish In Polaritia （2016-08-13） 社团：CLOCKWORKS TRACER melodic metalcore (with a fair bit of influence from early 2010s metalcore) The highlights are great (the chorus to Burnt Pages is especially excellent) but it gets bogged down by the breakdowns which just kills the momentum (the one on Burnt Pages being the first one that I liked). Their previous two albums had more engaging breakdowns so I have no idea why they flubbed it on this album. It's such a shame that's the case, but I still consider this one of the top Touhou metalcore albums out there.
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Envy You All Men！ （2010-05-16） 社团：Stygian Riverside instrumental Before the revisit, the most I remember about this is that I was super disappointed it wasn't a black metal album lmao. For reference, the only black metal tracks on here are Green-Eyed Black Envy and Unhallowed Judgement. I'm iffy about calling this prog metal as the arrangements are straightforward heavy metal fare, but MAX-BEAT uses mellotrons on a few of their tracks and that's prog-adjacent enough that I feel it's worth including.
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Château Bleu （2013-12-30） 社团：Riverside symphonic power metal (tr.1), post-metal/djent (?) (tr.3), pop drum and bass (tr.2/4), alt rock (tr.5), Celtic music (tr.6) This is partially a jokey inclusion because it was tagged as prog metal on RYM for a long time, but I think the person that did the tagging mistook them for the Polish band with the same name (which is one of the rare Dream Theater-core bands I like, because they actually do emotive songwriting). In a rare turn of events, I actually like a power metal song! Symphonic power metal, even! The Magic Valleys of Dark Wolf feels tense in a way that I don't get from most songs in that style. It all builds into a beautiful vocal part 2 and a half minutes in that legit made me cry the first time I heard it. 棒 is also tense, but in a more cinematic way that's also an unusual approach for cinematic-sounding metal. The intro builds suspense with a heartbeat sound and a noisy wind that almost overpowers the guitar. Then a huge electronic roar pops in and suddenly you're barraged with pounding rhythmic guitar hits. If you check the lyrics you can see that it's very repetitive, and this part of the song really drives in on that aspect. The rhythmic riffs repeat all while 秣本瑳羅 speaks the lyrics in a strangely dispassionate way, with only short bursts of melodic shredding that break through. It's a very textural song and the way everything builds in 2 minutes is incredible, and this is from a circle that isn't known for making metal. I also want to mention that Chercheur and 波鼓 - hako - are really good pop dnb tunes, with a distinctly lush and breezy sound and fairly dynamic grooves.
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ソウルオブリバース （2021-10-24） 社团：Reset All Controllers power metal, hard rock (tr.3) liquid drum and bass (tr.6) This is like a worse version of Demetori, where it doesn't even revel in power metal speediness but instead throws you a hard rock song midway through. Also I didn't even notice this had uncommon time signatures until I read the track comments, which tells you how much the arrangements doesn't stand out. To be fair to them, time signatures are one of the things I care the least in prog because, from a listener's point of view, it's just a way of counting and has no significant impact on the sound. I like complex, ever-changing rhythms and tempo changes, and those two factors can lead to uncommon timesigs, but you can have them in 4/4 too. The dnb tune is fine though.
曲目信息
Sanity and its Counterparts （2013-11-01） 社团：NVRMLTICE half heavy metal and half power metal This is the NVRMLTICE's first full-length album, which has a mixture of Touhou arrangements and their first original songs. For the original tracks, I'm liking the variety in the Dream Theater bits on Forbidden Love ~ A matter of Love and Death, the breezy acoustic & post-hardcore intro and outro on Lines We Can't Cross and the anime song esque A Place For Us, but those bits end up as dressing for what is overall normal heavy metal writing, and it basically lives and dies on its melody writing. Personally it doesn't grab me, as they mostly feel unmemorable and I keep thinking I've heard them from some third rate RPG battle music compilations. If anything I really wish they could develop those sounds more. The Touhou arrangements are speedier and more on the power metal side. While it doesn't get past my dislike of power metal, I have to give props to some nice details. Madness Rules a Kingdom of Fools features some crunchy modern guitar tones. Then the symphonic gothic instrumentation and basswork on Prismatic Lunatic Halloween! are pretty neat and should have more of a presence in the mix. A redone version of Burial Waves from Icebound Sea is my highlight thanks to its delicate twinkly piano as well as an expansive, multi-part structure. I'm probably not making this album sound all that appealing, but remember that this represents their early forays into writing original songs, and they still have a lot of room to develop.
曲目信息
BULLET HELL （2018-01-04） 社团：RichaadEB power metal I was convinced by a friend to give this another shot, who said that Rich applies Between the Buried and Me-styled riffing into the Youtube VGM metallizer sound. And I can't really disagree with that as my first experience with his music was lurking on the prog metal subreddit and seeing his now-removed Telos cover. The influences are there in the solos and some rhythmic choices, most noticeable at 0:55 of Septette for the Dead Princess. The thing is, these are ultimately minor additions to the regular Youtube guitarist VGM cover sound, which I just don't care for. What appeals to me the most about BTBAM is their ability to write emotive songs with harsh vocals, dissonant guitars, long songs and stream-of-consciousness writing, all things that don't usually come to mind when you think of emotional music. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to hear more arrangements that takes heavy influences from BTBAM (or 00s prog metalcore in general). But I'd like it to have some sort of ambition beyond the kind of stuff you hear from Youtube guitarists. Amorphous and Fatal Contamination does an okay job at it, but doesn't have the technical finesse and ear candy eclecticism of Stratiote's sucessor circle Regnum Caelorum Et Gehenna. Then there's the other big Japanese BTBAM-like band, Arise in Stability, which focuses more on combining emotional writing with technicality, and also unintentionally included Captain Murasa in a song (2:20 here). The Bad Apple cover takes a different route by mixing djent grooves with straightforward house beats. It's fun, but the way it keeps switching between the two grooves and never letting one last for long does deflate its fun a bit. Rhythm shifts are great, but it doesn't work if you just switch between a straight groove and an actual fun groove!
曲目信息
LIGHTNING MIRAGE II （2012-12-30） 社团：黒ヶ音研究室 power metal Trying to write about Bullet Hell reminded me of this album, which is also one of the rare power metal albums I like! What makes it stand out is its constant metalcore d-beats, which has a unique sort of manic energy that can't be accomplished through shredding alone. Having unrelenting blastbeats can get exhausting real fast, but at 24 minutes it's short enough to not overstay its welcome. The slight electronic additions are fine, but I wish the circle tried more out-of-the-box ideas like the futuristic psytrance bit just before 2 minutes into Bullets of Love. I find the Blankfield guest track meh compared to their album works, but it's still a solidly made piece of technical, melodic metalcore, and puts the drumming into a more familiar context. Incidentally, the two are a part of a band with Heterodyne. called The Countless Notes, which takes this album's drumming and combine it with a more concise version of Blankfield's technical metalcore/djent writing, and add emotional melodic vocals on top. I highly recommend them.
曲目信息
Red Hazard Demo （2009-09-22） 社团：ELECTRIC RED extreme metal, old-school djent (somewhat) Over the past few months I've been trying to dig more into the history of djent, starting with Meshuggah and taking Periphery's self-titled album (2010) as an endpoint. Back then, the term djent wasn't even the most commonly used term for this kind of music! Most people called them math metal due to its rhythmic complexity comparable to math rock or mathcore, or it was called some combination of (tech) thrash, groove, industrial, and death metal, even though they don't sound like any of those four genres at all. Something I wanted to know was what approaches bands took to add melody to the genre. Meshuggah's music was distinctive because they took the groove-focused sound of 90s metal (groove, nu, funk, and surprisingly tech thrash) to a technical extreme, leaving no melody to hook people's ears. In contrast, Periphery's debut was more melodic, with vocal hooks, melodic solos, synth lines and softer guitar parts. What about other bands inbetween? SikTh, one of the bands that were most influential to Periphery, embraced a chaotic style of metalcore that let out melodic guitar lines and clean vocals in the midst its busy, twisted guitarwork; in contrast, industrial metal bands like Sybreed and Mnemic were more focused on monolithic grooves, but contrasted them with poppy choruses drawn from Fear Factory (who is one of the bands that kickstarted the 90s metal trend towards groove); Threat Signal went in a similar "pure grooves versus melodic choruses" route from a metalcore base; Textures, an industrial-tinged prog metal band, used clean vocal sections freely starting from their 2006 album Drawing Circles, and had a dense, effervescent atmosphere influenced by Devin Townsend; After The Burial forgoes blending altogether and puts a clean distinction between techy melodic metalcore shredding and chuggy breakdowns. On the instrumental side of things, you got Chimp Spanner, a solo project whose debut album started with tracks that blended the rhythmic chugs with jazz-fusiony shreds; French metal band 1980 is more interested in combining jazz and metal than doing all-out rocking, and balances prog metal technicality with softer but still groovy jazz sections; German jazz fusion band Panzerballett comes at jazz metal from the jazz side, covering songs like Black Sabbath's Paranoid or the Simpsons theme with Meshuggah chugs; Coming back to Periphery, if you listen to their guitarist Misha Mansoor's Soundclick demos (which he re-organized and put on streaming back in 2021), in particular Archives Volume 4 and 5, you'll hear metalcore and math metal dissonance (especially the tracks that would later become Periphery songs), but also a lot of fusiony and sometimes video gamey melodies. A lot of Peath2's djent writing comes down to simply layering Touhou melodies over math metal riffs, sometimes outright using Meshuggah riffs as a base. It's fairly simple, but the sheer contrast between melody and dissonance is frankly weird. It's like if Meshuggah's jazz-fusiony solos were being stretched out to song-length. With that said, this only covers half the demo. ⑨telligence is a midtempo and frankly boring heavy metal tune, Necrofantasia is melodic prog metal spiced up with a bit of metalcore, and Deathscythe and a Cluster Amaryllis does a blend of techy metalcore and death metal. (reminder to clean up the writing in the future, this could use more work)

Guide To Aramitama

Aramitama used to be one of my favorite circles but I lost interest as they seemed to be full on into making techno.

The organization for this list isn't final but I do want to group similar albums together. And unlike my UFO Country discography run, I'm not doing this in chronological order to give myself a bit of space.

Folk Fusion Series

Covers albums that features folk music like the erhu on 華人の星霜 or Irish music on No crap on Tap!. Recommended if you're not into strictly electronic EDM and want something that's more organic. However, I'll warn you ahead of time that I'm not a big fan of them with the exception of No Crap on Tap! - those instruments are mostly sidelined into playing the original melodies without much room for derivations, and the EDM parts feel lackluster because they're written with the expectation that the melody is handled by the folk parts. Pretty much in the "not bad, but could do much more with the concept" zone for me.

DS-10 Series

Covers albums made using the KORG DS-10 VST on the Nintendo DS. Includes ARAM DS-10 REMIXES and the TechStylus series. Recommended if you're interested in chiptune made with unconventional (as in, not made using the NES or Game Boy, and in this fandom's context also not made to sound like PC-98) means.

The DS-10 had its time in the limelight from 2008 to 2011, and I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend スタジオネネム's first few albums.

Uncategorized

Every other album that's not in a series whatsoever. These will mostly be variety EDM comps.

曲目信息
Rigid Footwork （2012-10-07） 社团：荒御灵 Jan 19, 2024 It's an okay non-standard footwork EP. The thing with footwork, as with breakcore, is that both genres are based on a relatively loose rhythmic framework, and no limits to what you can put on top of that. As a result there are a lot of mavericks with distinct musical approaches. (Though I do want to make clear that there's nothing wrong with oldschool styles of both genres or attempts to make "pure" versions of these genres.) This is by no means a pure example - it doesn't have the hip hop/r&b sampling of the OG Chicago scene. Its main gimmick is the glitchy, stuttery piano which I don't find interesting. The grooves are solid so I'm still enjoying it. 3.5/5
曲目信息
Empathy Subliminal Psychokinesis （2018-12-30） 社团：荒御灵 Jan 19, 2024 A mix of techno/house and more beat-y genres. Probably wouldn't be surprising but my favorite tracks are all the beat stuff. Psychological Kinesiology feels like an outtake from Goth-Trad's excellent dubstep/breakbeat album Mad Raver's Dance Floor. I'm probably underrating this because I love that album a lot, so I'm putting it up as the main highlight. Primal Strangeness does a fun development where it takes the beat it's been using for a while and layer some atmospheric synths on top after a breakdown. It puts the beat in a new light. Similarly, Pyrogenesis Plasma takes a footwork base and alternates putting old rave and abstract IDM sounds on top. 3.5/5

that one area of Touhou rock

Putting this here to hopefully get a better understanding of why I like this beyond finding this sound. The best way to understand is to listen to these examples, but here are some common characteristics I've noticed:

• clean and melodic vocals; not sure how to classify the vocal style but it feels indie-ish. The vocals can be poppy but not to the extent of something you'd hear in epic anime pop rock, power metal or mainstream metalcore/post-hardcore.
• somewhat complex guitar lines that are influenced by post-hardcore, math rock or sometimes funk rock; the guitar tone is similarly the type of jangly tone you'd find in math rock and post-hardcore. In terms of non-Touhou Japanese music, think of 凛として時雨, Cö shu Nie or early 9mm Parabellum Bullet.
• rhythmically loose drumming, though this doesn't preclude the music having 4-on-the-floor or basic rock/punk drum rhythms once in a while

As you'd expect from the point about guitar lines, music in this area are mostly classified as post-hardcore, math rock or math pop, and to a lesser extent indie rock, funk rock, alternative rock and pop rock. However, influences from post-rock, shoegaze, emo and skramz are also possible.

This is not part of 用户Wiki:Demobanker/keeping track of some up-and-coming genres I'm interested in because this is not a genre but a classification I made up. Also note that this isn't meant to be comprehensive, but a list of releases (and some songs) that I like the most and are representative of this style.

曲目信息
ノスタルジック幻想状態 （2008-12-29） 社团：鉄腕トカゲ探知機 The earliest release I've heard that fits this area. Not my favorite of this circle, but it shows that this style existed as far back as 2008.
曲目信息
極東アウトブレイク （2010-03-14） 社团：極東アウトブレイク対策本部 It isn't surprising that the first Touhou indie rock compilation album would have tracks that fit in this area, specifically フェヒナーの色, 紬糸, 春風の行方 and to a lesser extent missimagine.
曲目信息
少女地獄 （2010-06-27） 社团：猫型牛肉 Kinda borderline, plus they're an instrumental circle. This album as well as the follow up sounds like a less experimental/noisy version of 深夜放送.
曲目信息
極東アウトブレイク 弐 （2011-03-13） 社团：極東アウトブレイク対策本部 Specifically in a cycle (figured), noizydays, 物語の消費空間における魔女という記号, 蠢々流我 and to a lesser extent spica.
曲目信息
セイントキャッチャー （2011-03-13） 社团：鉄腕トカゲ探知機
曲目信息
幻想世界 （2011-12-30） 社团：Girl's short hair
曲目信息
枯れ岸に咲く [03:13] 枯れ岸に咲く （2012-05-27） 社团：少年ヴィヴィッド 编曲：イチ 演唱：イチ 作词：イチ 原曲：彼岸帰航　～ Riverside View Specifically the title track of this single. The circle's post-hardcore stuff is more straightforward and a bit indie pop punky in the style of Human Error or 404 Not Founds, but there are some borderline songs like 濁った透明 from O2 (2011) or 針音アンバランス from rem (2015)
Gensou Drag EP. （2013-05-26） 社团：Marmalade butcher Their original releases are also good examples of this style outside of Touhou music, and are also examples of how this style can go well with IDM and drill and bass.
suck la sakura （2014-05-11） 社团：※liquid lilly's liar
hello and, again, （2014-10-12） 社团：liquid lime-light instrumental
Border on Blossom （2016-05-08） 社团：少女理論観測所 the poppiest album on here and also fairly eclectic
NARCOLEPSY （2016-05-08） 社团：8686m Specifically the tracks dazzle, 憧れ (second half) and afterimage. Other applicable songs by this circle are さとられ from FLOWERTONE (2014), and canon and marshmallow from TAKE TOO, TAKE TWO (2017).
モジャの輪 （2017-05-07） 社团：モジャン棒
碧落の百鬼夜行 （2018-10-14） 社团：天狗ノ舞
cirno day 2019 （2019-09-09） 社团：霊夢（同人社团） Here's an example from United States, and an example that crosses over with skramz. This single features the Uruguayan guitarist Tenchio on the cover art, who also makes original music that's stylistically in this area.
shortfilm （2019-10-06） 社团：アリスミア・アリスメア

genre list drafts

drafts for 用户Wiki:Demobanker/keeping track of some up-and-coming genres I'm interested in

HexD

The thing is I'm not very knowledgable about the genre despite liking the few releases of what I heard of it so far, so you should just read the Rate Your Music genre page instead.

Okay, you finished reading the full description? Then you already know that there's a lot of possibilities in this genre, and also that its aesthetics crosses over with video game and anime. In fact, Dismiss Yourself's Surge Compilation Vol. 1, a snapshot of the state of the genre in 2020 by the Youtube channel that popularized it, has PC-98 Reimu being crucified on its cover. Which probably makes this the 2020s Touhou hijack equivalent of goreshit putting Cirno and Aya on his hugely popular lolicore albums.

曲目信息
Death Denpa （2020-09-21） 社团：EASYMODER +hardcore, denpa (location unknown) basically a hexd mix of various songs, including Touhou tunes by circles you already know about
曲目信息
¥／ 0 U TR Y T00 HA RD T0 3E C00｜＿： T0UH0U LXIX （2020-10-30） 社团：Yung Aether +cloud rap, experimental hip hop, nerdcore hip hop 🇺🇸 The second half of is basically an EoSD self-insert fic in weird rap form.
曲目信息
Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles （2021-02-14） 社团：AERO GROS M +cloud rap, experimental hip hop 🇺🇸 (though the artist herself is Mexican) References Touhou in the lyrics. This album was positively received and actually got fairly big, but I would recommand not seeking it out - it was disowned by the artist and was made in horrible circumstances of her life.
曲目信息
Kuso AKA Kx $ 0 the Mixtape： "God of Darkness, breathing clouds in the fantasy landscape, etc." （2021-12-22） 社团：Yung Aether +cloud rap, experimental hip hop References Touhou in the lyrics.

• stuff I like

Dreambreak/Breakgaze

There's actually not a page on RYM for them so hopefully this description is accurate. IMO both terms refers to the same style of music, a subgenre of atmospheric drum and bass with a focus on layered atmospheres, usually with an ethereal or hazy washed-out sound, and drum choppage ranging from simple amen loops to more complex sequencing influenced by jungle and modern (from 00s onwards) breakcore. This sound was popularized by the (now-disgraced) Australian artist Sewerslvt, whose 2020 album Draining Love Story became hugely popular and inspired a generation of producers to make similar music. However, the album has also became controversial for musical reasons as it was miscategorized as breakcore despite its lack of hardcore influences. Luckily, these two terms exists so there could be a common way to refer to the sound without calling it breakcore or using the Spotify-generated term glitchbreak which actually lumps in other unrelated genres like industrial hip hop and footwork. The difference here is that I see the former term more in English discussions and the latter in Japanese discussions.

The term dreambreak was brought to a larger audience with American musician Duskfall's 2020 mix Dreambreak Vol. 1, released on the Dismiss Yourself channel. You can read her commentary on the mix which includes a definition of the term. While she never released a follow-up mix, artists like Brazil's Starmoon has picked up this term to describe their music.

On the other side of the equation, the term breakgaze was popularized by Japanese music writer/digger Tsunaki Kadowaki to refer to depressive breakcore and atmospheric drum and bass with a shoegaze-like (or, "shoegazement") feel. They have a Spotify playlist for this sound.

Some Chinese artists making this genre: PostmodernHippie (on BREAKCON, which combines the genre with shoegaze).

曲目信息
Genso Tour （2022-08-20） 社团：Gutterpink 🇧🇷 In the pretty and ethereal side of the genre.

• Stuff I like. There's one tagged daymarebreak because it's noiser and more hostile compared to normal dreambreak, and I didn't want to call it "nightmarebreak" because that sounds too clunky.
  • Also see the releases I tagged as genre secondary (appears for around 25-50% of the release, notable but I wouldn't call them a genre release) and tertiary (appears like maybe on part of a track or an interlude, basically just there to keep track of the small stuff. also I didn't realize until writing this that the three releases there are all metal lmao. btw coffret is by Alice from some of the later HoGs, just an extra bonus connection here)

Witch House

when there are witches in a house blah blah just check the rym genre page

曲目信息
E T E R N ▲ L S L E E P [04:41] Paranoia Moon （2016-09-14） 社团：Flick！ 编曲：Flick！ 原曲：永遠の春夢 🇳🇱 Only two tracks apply from this LoLK themed album, but each track covers different aspects of the genre. This track's atmosphere is relatively light with a soft synthy break about 3 minutes in, and uses stuttery drum rhythms derived from old school glitch hop.
F⏀R†UɴE †URɴIɴG ⏀VER [04:17] Paranoia Moon （2016-09-14） 社团：Flick！ 编曲：Flick！ 原曲：逆転するホイールオブフォーチュン In contrast, this track is heavier, with a prominent bass section, dissonant clashing synths, and trap-influenced rhythms.

• Neppu Tennouboshi (f.k.a. Scarlet Dreamer) - Locked Girl ~ The Girl's Secret Room (reuploaded on 2020-10-05)

Stuff I like (basic bitch taste but I gotta start somewhere)

Baile Funk / Funk (Brazil)

you can't even tag the regular type of funk on this wiki but okay

this isn't a post-2000s music genre, its history goes back to the 1980s, but heck it, shoutouts to Brazil. they just call it funk over there

not to be confused with the drift phonk/phonk house area of music, which has different sounds and origins.

曲目信息
my creativity is dead [02:57] 東方超核破壊祭 （2023-04-30） 社团：CXR Record 编曲：前澤 原曲：ラストリモート

• AXELERATOR - nomico vs MC Kitinho - Bad Apple!!(AXLRTR DRIFT RMX) (2023-02-08) - Japanese producer btw
• DJ RaMeMes - BAD APPLE DO FLAMENGO (2023-07-18)
• AXELERATOR - touhou_funk.mp3 (2023-12-03)
• AXELERATOR - Bad Apple (axlrtr 2.5 Final Mix +) (2024-05-22)
  • This and the previous track are collected on this bootleg album

Bonus:

• not posting my rym collection for this one because it sucks and because I take recs from this guy's tweets anyways
• What I said about Astrophysics on the main list applies here too.