For all you Overwatch fans, the good people over at Gamechops have released a new remix of music from the game. The single “The World Could Always Use More Heroes“, created by Curly, mastered by Steven “bLiNd” Silo and master by DJ Cutman, also comes with a special extra music video with animations from PlayOverwatch.
As always you can find more remixes (including future Overwatch arrangements) over on the Gamechops Youtube page.
When it comes to Touhou Project, there seems to be an endless stream of music coming out on the doujin music scene every year. A cursory look inside stores specializing in doujin products in Akihabara reveal large swaths of retail space dedicated to all types of Touhou Project music. Monthly sales ranking from shops such as Toranoana also reflect the dominance of Touhou Project although Vocaloid-related music appears from time to time to shake up things up. Nevertheless, it becomes a bit of a workout to sort through the horde of music out there, especially for the uninitiated.
Enter Arte Refact’s GensouYuugikan -Fantastic Casino-. Released originally during Reitaisai 10, the annual doujin event dedicated to Touhou Project, the 10 track album featuring a veritable who’s who of major doujin music groups with Touhou Project being there common link. This concept album’s theme centers around the idea of what it would be like if Gensokyo, the place central to the Touhou Project series, had a game center in it. Alongside this theme is the character, Marisa Kirisame’s adventures through said game center. The anachronistic theme aside, I had rather high expectations for this album given the star power driving it. As mentioned before, with such a wide variety of arranges, remixes and so forth out on the market, it can be difficult finding a gem in an endless sea of music.
Did Arte Refact nail it on their release? Or perhaps this is simply the case of more of the same? Hit the jump and find out! (more…)
Over 150 game, anime, and related albums were released this past August at Comiket 82. That’s a lot of music: I’ll never hear 95% of it.
But I sit up and pay attention to the second album in a new original works / demo series from Pinokiti Records, “Fruited Vagabond.” Featuring music from some of Namco’s best in-house composers, as well as some new faces that generally only work in the doujin scene, these albums feature some really enjoyable dance/electronic music.
After the jump, we have the Soundcloud demo reel for the album, as well as my impressions of all five tracks. (more…)
Every six months, Comiket sweeps Japan, and a boatload of doujin music albums are released (alongside some legitimate game and anime soundtracks, as well).
Generally, it’s just too much for one person to take in. You could easily spend $1000 there and still miss something cool. Especially if you’re down with all things Touhou-related.
Recently, one of our friends at SEMO (Don Kotowski) pointed us in the direction of “Fruited Vagabond.” It’s essentially a demo reel of music made in FL Studio, one track per composer, and the composers being some of Namco’s greatest assets (AJURIKA, Ryo Watanabe, Hiroshi Okubo, etc).
Tomorrow, we’ll have a review of the album newly released “Fruited Vagabond Vol.2” from Comiket 82. But before that, we have a review of the first album, which is four tracks and runs 24 minutes. After the jump, our review (alongside some soundcloud samples, hurray!). (more…)
And it’s not Touhou!
About a decade ago, one-man studio Aeju Murasame created a trilogy of shmups. They were Gundemonium, GundeadliGne, and Hitogata Happa. The first two were horizontal (side-scrolling) shmups that took place in chronological sequence. The last was a very interesting prequel that was a vertical scrolling shmup and also featured a unique system that required kamikaze attacks, sacrificing precious (limited) lives for your dolls to move forward.
I’d have never played these games had it not been for localization firm / publisher Rockin’ Android, who released the trilogy as the Gundemonium Collection in 2011. To make the deal even sweeter, purchasing this trilogy on Steam will bring the customer a free bonus: full soundtracks for all three games, both in their original forms (from Murasame himself), and the new remixes from DM Ashura and Woofle.
I’m going to do a little compare ‘n’ contrast after the jump. Won’t you join me? (more…)
Judging by all the music releases from the last few Comikets, the Touhou shmup franchise is still going on strong. That said, it’s been awhile since I’ve found a video release related to the doujin franchise to be as absorbing as the shadow art extravaganza of the popular Bad Apple video that Patrick mentioned awhile back. Thankfully, last September put a stop to that dry spell with manpukujinjya’s video titled Touhou Genso Mangekyo ~The Memories of Phantasm~.
Set to Iceon’s arrangement of “The Gensōkyō the Gods Loved” from Touhou Fūjinroku ~ Mountain of Faith, manpukujinjya’s video is gloriously animated and it’s almost a shame that his work won’t see life beyond being just a music video because he does an excellent job all around. The music is solid too, featuring an artist who calls herself senya singing a short, but sweet ballad that carries with it a tinge of regret. Together, the two components of the video sync up well and it does make you ponder the possibilities if manpukujinjya were to pursue things further.
For those of you more interested in the music used in the video, you could always check out the doujin music circle Yuuhei Satellite. The song, titled “Though the Scent Lingers, the Flower Scattered” can be found in its entirety as the first track on their very first album.
If you thought the bullets in Touhou games were hard to dodge, well then try dodging the amount of releases coming out of this event, because it’s pretty much equal number. Reitaisai is an annual event much like M3 and Comiket that has a more specific approach towards Touhou Project, the world famous doujin shooter that goes back to PC-98 and all the way up to today on regular PC. The series, which spans 12 or so official games, is made by one man named ZUN, and is today a media franchise which doesn’t seem to ever stop losing steam. The Reitaisai event started out as an event for ZUN to release new editions of his games, but today, it’s grown to be a central hub for Touhou releases of all kinds.
So far, there are 75+ CDs announced to be released there, and that’s just music albums mind you, you can expect an even higher amount of doujinshi (comics), fan games and fan-art collections being released there, not to mention that the announcements will keep coming until the day of the event, making it impossible to even consider catching all the releases. Some familiar names who are releasing CDs are TAMUSIC, IRON ATTACK!, XL Project, DDBY, IOSYS and ALiCE’S EMOTiON.
Reitaisai 7 takes place at the Tokyo Big Sight on March 14th.
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