Review Summary: Finally we have an answer to the eternal question: "what if Babymetal did EDM?"
Ok, deep breath; this is going to require some explanation. In the exotic and inscrutable orient, there are few scenes more exotic and inscrutable than that of the Touhou Doujinsi arrangements most closely associated with Reitaisai and Comiket. If that word salad meant nothing to you, congratulations! I hope you're happy wearing pastel colors while drinking malt liquor with the other vaguely attractive 18-35 sexhavers. For now, kick back and enjoy this minority report from the other side of the row.
Let's break it down piece by piece. Touhou―or "2hu", as it's known by the cool kids―is basically Galaga for autists. It has repetitive gameplay, punishing difficulty, a setting of the past so romanticized it borders on pastiche, and waifubait cast in the hundreds. Basically, it's everything you want to get on when you're on the spectrum. Doujinsi/Doujinshi/Doujin basically means "self-published" and refers to artistic works, usually comics where the artist eats the publishing cost themself. Cultural differences or whatever mean that doujin artists generally get a free pass to use copyrighted material without permission in their work, and there's a thriving gray market for everything from videogames to cosplay (costume play) photo shoots. Naturally, music figures big into the equation. As for Comiket and Reitaisai, they're pretty much Comic-con, only more so. In this colorful scene 2hu reigns supreme, and in 2hu Alstroemeria Records casts a very long shadow.
Brainchild of Masayoshi Minoshima―or is it Minoshima Masayoshi? I can't tell. Whichever it is MM and his pet label Alstroemeria Records are the big man on this subsection of a niche of a department of campus. About Alstroemeria the boilerplate is EDM remixes of 2hu music, some with vocals. Beyond that there's many things I could say to set the stage, but I think just one is sufficient. Every record is numbered and Alstroemeria's most recent (as of writing) is #78. 78 releases! It's right there on the cover, plain as day! You might be inclined to assume that MM himself has hit triple digits, that he shook hands with Commodore Perry and his early work is gramophone exclusive, but no. He's been doing this for "only" 15 years, which pegs him at more than 5 records a year! (most of them album length!) Has your favorite artist released 5 albums yet? That kind of productivity isn't just impressive, it's nearly unheard of!
But enough of the maths lesson, any stoner can release an album longer than the universe. Why this? Why Alstroemeria, and of all albums why this one? What even is it?
HAUNTED DANCEHALL, #35 is the first of the
DANCEHALL series, a 15-album-and-growing set that emphasizes the "D" in EDM. It's also for my money the best entry point into this corpus of work. The tracks are varied yet stylistically consistent, catchy, and carry a strong House vibe that just makes everything better. In a word, they're representative, even archetypal. It also represents a good bridge between styles in that earlier work tends toward a lighter electronica vibe while successive work is much heavier and more beat-driven, at times even bordering dubstep.
In any creative work the most important part is the opening, and MM's taken this lesson to heart as he opens with one of the strongest hooks of the album, a tune―according to the sleeve―derived from "東方妖々夢 − Ancient Temple − 東方妖々夢". I didn't notice the connection, but if you're into that kind of thing there it is. The whole thing works well and flows better, the tune carrying seamlessly through the second and third track. Indeed if you're not looking at the seek time in your music player you might not even notice that it's actually three separate tracks. Then again, the vocals might give you a clue.
Ah yes, the vocals. I should probably mention those, seeing as how they're the most...peculiar part of the music. I've heard a lot a dance music and I've heard a lot of lyrical music, but I don't think I've ever heard an admixture quite like this. Like most electronic artists, MM takes a collab approach to vocalists on his music, but unlike most he largely works with just four. They fill out the majority of the vocal tunes on any given album while the flavour of the month tends to take whatever remains. It bears special mention because despite its House sensibilities this is very definitely vocal driven music. Only three of the ten tracks are instrumental, and two of those are bridges. But that's not the peculiar part.
The peculiar part is ~the way~ the vocals are handled. Unlike pretty much every other electronic artist the 2hu scene seems to design its music around the lyrics, and this can make for some pretty surreal moments when you hear a Kyary Kyary Pamyu mewing over something like "Neo Tokyo" or "Death Squad". It's a little like Perfume if Perfume had to license all their music from Deadmau5. Mind it's all in moonspeak and you're not really missing anything, mostly just purple prose to fit a very purple setting, but damn if it sure doesn't SOUND different. The vocalists and their voices are also about as purple as you'd expect. While they aren't quite in that "am I kawaii uguu~" moe*** pandering level, they've certainly got that schoolgirl aesthetic the nips are so obsessed with down pat. Drinking game: take a shot every time someone says 「夢」"yume" (dream). I've got 20 quid that says you can't finish the album.
Once you've finished the first three or four tracks you should be in a pretty good position to decide if you actually ~like~ this youkai's brew of quixotic dance music. The rest of it, like most dance, is the same thing done differently. Or if that's not paradoxical enough for ya, the rest of the album is all the same, but different. If you're unsure, the album really hits its stride around the sixth cut, Little Love Girl. After there it hits the wall of most high energy music as it starts to flag and eventually collapses under expectations on the close, a somehow suitably oddball remix of some track from like a dozen albums ago.
Based on the last paragraph I feel like I should list some specific highlights for people to sample, but I can't really do so in good faith because to do so would be missing the forest for the trees. Alstroemeria's records flow really well, and listening to individual tracks atomically in some kind of top40 "sound of summer" mixtape is a crime against good taste. But whatever. However you do it, do
HAUNTED DANCEHALL or some other Alstroemeria piece and you'll come out of it with, at worst, a novel story about "this one time I tried some foreign import music". At best, you've found the lifetime's worth of magical girl dance music you never knew you wanted.
