Touhou Discussion Thread - Page 31

Track Listing:

• 1. Love-Colored Master Spark
  
• 2. Flowering Night
  
• 3. Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?
  
• 4. Ghostly Band ~ Phantom Ensemble
  
• 5. Doll Judgment ~ The Girl who Played with People's Shapes
  
• 6. Heartfelt Fancy
  
• 7. Bad Apple!!

Right away, I gotta say that I absolutely love this assortment of tracks. A lot of my favorites, and while there's one that I'm not familiar with at all (Heartfelt Fancy), its inclusion lets me learn the song and recognize it more easily, which is a plus.

First up is everyone's favorite magician's theme, Mastah SPARK! It's not the hard-rock sort of deal that I usually hear from LCMS, but that's to be expected from the trance style that Yuuhei Satellite prefers. A fantastic medley of piano, strings, synth, and backup choir all support Senya's (once again) amazing voice. A fairly slow rendition of the theme, but that's not a bad thing. The song alternates from minimalistic instrument use to piano and synth in the bridge, to strings and guitar in the chorus. Around the 3-minute mark, a truly bitchin' guitar solo rocks the house before transitioning into a very subdued vocal section, and finishes with the strings and a piano fadeout. An all-around great track, and perhaps the album highlight.

Flowering Night is a hit-or-miss track for me. Either the circle performs it incredibly awesomely (see Ezel-Ash, IRON ATTACK!), and sometimes it's just meh (Dark PHOENiX). Yuuhei Satellite doesn't exactly nail it here, but the song differs enough from their normal style that it's a noteworthy track. The drum line is far more prominent here than in most of their songs, favoring a rock kit instead of synth drums. The synth is in the background, as always. And Senya? I don't know what she's singing, but it's definitely not Flowering Night. The synth is doing the FN rhythm, but Senya seems to be doing her own thing. It sounds nice, but it's not really what I expected, for better or worse.

And then on to Hiroari. As you might remember from past reviews, I'm generally not fond of this song. But as always, Yuuhei Satellite manages to twist a song so that I don't hate it. Compared to the rest of their songs, though, this one is fairly standard YS material, with a heavier emphasis on vocals, and a notable lack of percussion. The synth here is... I suppose the word is ethereal. It's sort of... floating, I guess. I can't really describe it. Overall, an average track.

Ghostly Band ~ Phantom Ensemble is one of my favorite tracks in the Touhou series, and YS delivers here, making up for Liz Triangle's S4U abomination. It's certainly different, considering I'd never heard a trance variation of GB~PE. I'm starting to notice a trend here, though, where the main synth line follows the original rhythm of the song, and Senya sort of strays off and pseudo-improvises. Everything comes back together in the chorus, though, and the result is great. Again, this track is standard YS fare, but as I've come to learn, standard Senya isn't bad. I like this one, though not as much as Love-Colored Master Spark earlier in the album.

Not many circles manage to do a good Doll Judgment in my experience. Dark PHOENiX, Xi-on, and Ezel-Ash, really. It's definitely different from most of ZUN's normal works, and I suppose that's why Yuuhei Satellite doesn't perform it too well. Just like with Voyage 1969 in Koakuma Ringo, the focus here is more rock-based, and while it works better than in Voyage, it's not my favorite song. The chorus is quite good, but seems... off-rhythm. It sort of wavers and goes helter-skelter. In my opinion, the worst song on the album.

Heartfelt Fancy, as I mentioned earlier, is one of those songs I know nothing about. It's weird too, because I've pretty much memorized every other song in Subterranean Animism (well, except for Walking the Streets of a Former Hell). As a result, I can't really comment on the song as it relates to ZUN's work, because I just don't recognize it, but on its own, it sounds strangely like The Bridge People No Longer Cross. Senya's vocals are sort of intermittent, and the song alternates between her voice and the main synth. They only play simultaneously a couple of times in the track. It's a nice dichotomy... or, it would be, if the synth didn't sound fairly drab. The addition of piano helps strengthen the track, though. Another average song.

And Bad Apple!! returns for a rematch in this album as the closer. It's basically Bad Apple!! from Koakuma Ringo, except with Japanese lyrics, and that improves the song immensely. In Koakuma Ringo, it was a novelty song, and in Tenohira Pianissimo, it's an excellent track. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Japanese vocals make a world of difference in making the song better. In my opinion, it's a tie between this and Master Spark for best track of the album, but either way, this is the second highlight of the album.

Track Listing:

• 1. Mystic Oriental Dream ~ Ancient Temple (Yuki)
  
• 2. Tengu is Watching ~ Black Eyes (ucchi)
  
• 3. Staking Your Life on a Prank (Yuki)
  
• 4. Nemesis' Stronghold (ucchi)
  
• 5. White Flag of Usa Shrine (Yuki)
  
• 6. Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial (ucchi)
  
• 7. Diao ye zong (Withered Leaf) (Yuki)
  
• 8. Eternal Dream ~ Mystic Maple (ucchi)

First up is Ancient Temple with Yuki. You're probably aware of this by now, but I don't like the direction Yuki is going in. Fortunately, this song is good. It's pretty much your typical Yellow Zebra fare, with the cutesy synth sounds accompanied by strings and rhythm guitar. Yuki does her own take on the original rhythm, adding voice inflection in some parts to differ it from ZUN's work. I felt she could have done a better job in those parts, but I have no real complaints here. I'll get to those in a minute.

Now for Black Eyes. I'm starting to realize that if you removed the vocals from most of these songs, they'd sound like the soft-rock stuff you hear on American radio stations. But thanks to ucchi, they kick the crap out of that stuff. ucchi is as strong as ever here. Not much to report, aside from the increased prominence on the guitar. There's nothing groundbreaking here but it's a solid track.

On to Staking Your Life. Really, the winner here is the instrumental portion of the song. It's a very strong strings/guitar/drum line that I can't help but feel should have been released as a bonus instrumental track at the end of the album. Quite nice. Yuki is up to bat again, and while she didn't strike out, she came close.

I know JSH is gonna make fun of me for this, but I have no clue what the hell Nemesis' Stronghold is. I've never heard it, never heard OF it, and have zero idea where it's from. Because of my lack of knowledge of the song, I'm kinda forced to base my opinion on ucchi's performance alone. Not that I have to worry about that, though, because ucchi is a pro at life and makes anything an eargasm. As one might infer from the title, the song itself has a sinister tone; it sort of sounds like what would happen if Dark PHOENiX and Yellow Zebra did a song together. Intermittent synth lines partner up nicely with the constant rhythm guitar; nothing really seems out of place or jarring. A great overall track.

White Flag of Usa Shrine is really good, and Yuki's best song on the album. It's just something about that synth line, but it feels... happy, I guess? You'd have to listen to it to know what I mean, but it's great. And fuck everything I said about Yuki sucking before, because this song totally makes up for it. EXCELLENT vocals here, truly excellent. This is for sure Yuki's album highlight.

Lunar Clock. I do not like this song. I don't know why people like it, but I can say that it's overrated as hell. Unfortunately, even with ucchi here, it's still not too good. I can't really describe why, but regardless, I feel it's the worst ucchi performance on the album. Lunar Clock is meant to be fast-paced, just like ZUN composed it, and the slowness of this song drags it down pretty badly.

+ Show Spoiler +
Okay, it's not that bad, but I wanted an excuse to caps-rage. If Lunar Clock was ucchi's worst song, then Diao ye zong is Yuki's. The vocals just seem off. They don't really match the tone of the instrumentals, which aren't too hot either. Just listen to the chorus and you'll see what I mean. It just doesn't work. C'mon, Yuki, you tried Diao ye zong back when you recorded Smell of Flap, and that wasn't great either. See the pattern?

The final track is Mystic Maple, and is one of those slow songs that ucchi excels at. However, it doesn't stay slow, and has an interesting twist that I like a lot. There's not much going on in this song besides ucchi and the piano, until about halfway through, when the drum line, strings and horns arrive. The difference here is that the piano isn't mellow-sounding; it's fairly jaunty and active, unlike in ESCALATION's piano tracks. The horns really add a lot of flavor and "pep" to the track, kind of like something you might hear in a fancy nightclub. One of the best songs on the album, and ucchi's highlight track.

+ Show Spoiler +

Track Listing:

• 1. Nostalgic Blood of the East ~ Old World
  
• 2. Eternal Night Vignette ~ Eastern Night
  
• 3. Illusionary Night ~ Ghostly Eyes
  
• 4. Stirring an Autumn Moon ~ Mooned Insect
  
• 5. Nostalgic Blood of the East ~ Old World (Yes, there are two.)
  
• 6. Plain Asia
  
• 7. Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome-Kagome
  
• 8. Voyage 1969
  
• 9. Gensokyo Millennium ~ History of the Moon
  
• 10. Flight of the Bamboo Cutter ~ Lunatic Princess
  
• 11. Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke
  
• 12. Love-Colored Master Spark
  
• 13. Eternal Dream ~ Mystic Maple

We start off with the first of two Old World tracks. Very beautiful, slow piano track with subtle strings. Around the 20 second mark, we break into equally slow orchestrated lines. It appears that Foxfactory is most likely an orchestral-based circle. The tune intermittently speeds up, but remains excellent. A very good track, and we've just started!

Next is Eternal Night Vignette, which I believe is the title theme for Imperishable Night. Again, very slow piano and strings to begin, joined shortly by a... xylophone? After that...

You know what, fuck it. I literally stopped writing just to listen to this album in its entirely. This shit is soooooo good. I think I have a new circle to listen to.

I'm not kidding, you guys, this is awesome. I don't even care about the rest of the review. If you don't mind orchestrated songs, give this a listen.

God, I'm such a fucking failure. I'm being completely serious, though. Listen to this.

I know I completely didn't do what I expected for the review, but next time I'll actually use that format and finish the whole review.