C77: ARM to unleash denpandemonium with first best album

ARM? I FUCKING LOVE THIS GUY? LIKE YEAH, TOTALLY? ANYHOW!

Well the official IOSYS website was recently updated to reflect their C77 goods, including one of the biggest bombs to drop in the '09. Now you too can nuke a small country of your choice with 「ワァオ！ハイパー電波チャン - ARM商業作品集 -」, ARM's first 100% denpa "best album". Woah! Hyper denpa-chan compiles some of his most memorable eroge/manga/anime theme songs, the majority of which were not available for purchase. They even managed to include ARM's fantastic contribution to last year's anime cover album by 桃井はるこ!

I find it satisfying on many levels that I've been dying for an ARM compilation album and then WHOOMP there it is. Proof that he does read this blog on a daily basis. Too bad he was too shy to proceed with the interview I had in mind for him. Give this 3-minute long sampler a listen and prepare to be blown away. Complete details and credits available at the official website. Here's the absolutely mind-numbingly incredible tracklist for what is sure to become an instant classic. Like your own private little bitch, I've gone ahead and provided links to full versions, except for one of them...

01. ヒステリックソーダ
02. 聖夜のスペシャルシューティングスター
03. エンドレスヘブン
04. ちゃっかり＋ちょっくり＋ななななー　feat.ayumikos
05. 揺れてはじけてあふれちゃう☆魅惑のペンギン娘　1.55倍速electroclash
06. ものがたりを探して
07. あわだっちゃ☆パニクリバニラ
08. ゆっくり揉んでね☆ぱいタッチ！
09. ｳｯｰｳｯｰｳﾏｳﾏ(ﾟ∀ﾟ) (IOSYS REMIX)
10. 乙女ゴコロ×局中法度 ～だんだら shooting MIX～
11. ハッピー☆マテリアル

C77: Well duh, of course there's a new MOSAIC.WAV single

From the like-so-totally-captain-obvious department: MOSAIC.WAV will have a new single for sale at Comiket 77. Nope, your eyes are working just fine, that is a rather plump bulge on this young lady man. Well, traps are the new loli but benefit of the doubt shall be given, as the best MOSAIC.WAV songs usually come out of such twisted situations. Gotta love the cherry hair brooch and banana bag charm, just to make sure the point hits you like a fucking Blackbird.

「おとこの娘のトビラ」 is billed as an exclusive C77 item, but it will be distributed over iTunes in the near future. Just like with their previous mini-album, VIEWS CORPORATION will handle the Comiket distribution. Sadly no samples yet, but they should pop up any day now. There doesn't appear to be any game tied-up to this release, nor is it being promoted as a formal MOSAIC.WAV single... it just appears to be one of those spur of the moment things.

By the way, mi~ko (as サテラ) and her BFF 新堂真弓 (as ヒカリ, clearly the dominant one) have teamed up for a new web radio show titled アキバニュースサテライト (Akiba News Satellite). Fun times to be had by all, not much in terms of news as far as I can tell however. Although this is episode #1, they're not saying when or if the second episode will go up.

作業用A-POP explores the multiple possibilities of Denpa

A new denpa compilation CD (the first of a series?) was officially released on December 4th 2009, with a requisite Ishimaru launch event coming up December 13th. The full title is actually: "【電波系】作業用A - POP【痛サウンド】", square brackets and all. This is the first album produced by 上田紗奈衣 (UEDA Sanae), with the new label PELVIS MUSIC backing her project. Oh, hey, notice anything? She's a she, one of the rare female denpa composers along with Toromi, U and very select few others. Could we eventually witness denpa's answer to Clamp?

So what sets this one apart from the rest? First of all, there exists very little of this so-called rest, so that makes it stand out immediately. But there are a number of other factors. For one, it features completely original songs, no touhou / anime theme covers here. Hearken the two samples below and you'll quickly notice that this isn't your typical eroge-OP-theme type of denpa, nor is it fist-pumping DENPA madness (although it's possible the other tracks are very energetic). There's a distinctly soft feeling to both tracks, no rough edges. Oh and check out that jacket art: it's a loli sitting on two pancakes on top of a record player. Well, that's... creative?

The other major draw to this compilation is the interesting talent that Ueda-san was able to put together for this debut effort. There are three "stand-alone" artists: とろ美 (that's our Toromi!), 木ノ下ゆり and 天宮ゆめか, as well as the five girls from ふたば☆ (えい, 小麦, ミナミ, 夢眠ねむ and 霧島若歌). The latter are staff of the DearStage club in Akihabara, a store / live club / bar which opened about a year ago and spawned a few in-house units such as the highly energetic and wotagei-friendly ピヨラビ. Either way it's a solid combination of guerrilla live smarts and debutante innocence that should make every song unique.

As far as I can tell, this is more or less completely out of the blue, so I hope unprepared denpa fans won't be caught too off-guard by this sudden release. Perhaps they wanted to beat the C77 rush, but a little more internet promotion elbow grease wouldn't have hurt getting the word out. Filthy gaijin pro-tip: YesAsia has it on the cheap. Here's the track listing, notice how they classified each song into a denpa category such as Vocaloid, Nostalgic, ElectroFuture and so on.

★収録曲
・イントロダクション
・君だけのもの(ボーカロイド電波)
・狂気でしょでしょ？(ノスタルジィ電波)
・魔法少女プリンセス・ファンシードOP(アイドル電波)
・蒼き少女隊(戦隊ポップ電波)
・-ぶれいくたいむ-(毒電波)
・あんみちゅ(エレクトロフューチャー電波)
・逃げて！レアリア(毒電波)
・密会(クラシカル毒電波)
・ディスプレイの向こうから(アイドル電波)

逃げて！レアリア -short ver.- (毒電波)


君だけのもの-game tone mix-short ver. (ボーカロイド電波)

Blip Festival 2009 reminder, full schedule

Friendly reminder for you folks: the final countdown to BlipFest 2009 is on, with mere days to go until 32 artists from around the globe hit the Bell House stage in Brooklyn on Dec 17-19 2009. Of course we have the fantastic regs such as Nullsleep, Bit Shifter and Bubblyfish, but I'd highly recommend newcomers Rainbowdragoneyes (a.k.a Eric, who gave me my first LittleSound DJ lessons a couple years ago) and The Hunters (a trippy trio straight out of Tokyo, highly active in the LoBit Playground scene). Here is the complete schedule:

// 12 17 • THURSDAY /////////////////////
8:00 pm · Silent Requiem · Jean Y. Kim
8:40 pm · failotron · Paris
9:20 pm · Leeni · VBLANK
10:00 pm · minusbaby · Enso
10:40 pm · Chromix · The C-Men
11:20 pm · Je Deviens DJ en 3 Jours · NO CARRIER
12:00 md · Albino Ghost Monkey · outpt
12:40 am · Eat Rabbit · Rosa Menkman

// 12 18 • FRIDAY ///////////////////////
1:00 pm · screening: _Reformat The Planet_
2:00 pm · workshop: SID chip synthesis workshop with VBLANK
--
8:00 pm · Disasterpeace · Enso
8:40 pm · Starscream · Jean Y. Kim
9:20 pm · Fighter X · outpt
10:00 pm · little-scale · Rosa Menkman
10:40 pm · I, Cactus · VBLANK
11:20 pm · Nullsleep · Rosa Menkman & Paris
12:00 md · Rainbowdragoneyes · The C-Men
12:40 am · Patric C · NO CARRIER

// 12 19 • SATURDAY /////////////////////
2:00 pm · screening: _Reformat The Planet 1.5_ + selected videos
2:00 pm · presentation: Classic Sound Chips to Virtual Instruments
3:00 pm · workshop: Open Source Solutions for Live Visuals
--
8:00 pm · The J. Arthur Keenes Band · Rosa Menkman & Enso
8:40 pm · tRasH cAn maN · Jean Y. Kim & Paris
9:20 pm · Bubblyfish · NO CARRIER & outpt
10:00 pm · The Hunters (music & visuals)
10:40 pm · glomag · The C-Men & VBLANK
11:20 pm · Bit Shifter · outpt & Enso
12:00 md · David Sugar · NO CARRIER & VBLANK
12:40 am · Psilodump · Paris & The C-Men

For full details, descriptions, & admission information, visit:
http://blipfestival.org/2009/schedule

I would love to attend the Open Source Visuals workshop, but I've decided to spend my vacation over in Death Valley this year. Yeah, no, for real. Oh that reminds me, I have some short videos of Sulumi and Bubblyfish from the 2008 event. Sulumi was by far the highlight of the event as far as I'm concerned, what a crazy guy!!!

C77: More U for you this winter

It's not a winter Comiket if there isn't a new U single for all of us to enjoy. This year is no different, as GWAVE recently announced two new songs will be released in late December 2009. Interestingly, the attention-grabbing promotional image above lists Koike-aniki as "guitar", meaning he actually plays both songs. Well that's what's assumed right now anyway, otherwise he should have been credited as "fuckin' awesome guest" or something.

GWAVE says sample MP3s are coming December 14th. This will be a release limited to C77, but odds are that the two songs will be featured on a full-length album somewhere down the line so no reason to panic. Additionally, they mention that the genre is "denpa&moe" and that the name of the two songs ("NicoNico" and "BabyBaby") should be enough to describe the contents. Huh. I'm thinking the gratuitous panchira will also be a strong selling point.

Recently, U opened a members-only section to which yours truly has been granted access. Unfortunately I am bound by HI-MI-TSU law not to reveal the login procedure (I wish to retain my testicles, thankyouverymuch). Ah who am I kidding, of course I'll expose her (hopefully indecent) exclusive material as soon as it pops up online. At the very least, she is promising some early demos and other unreleased material.



In related news, idoling's tenth single comes out on December 16th 2009 with our dear U credited as composer/arranger/overlord. Just take a quick gander at the video for the A-song 「ラブマジックフィーバー」 and you'll quickly notice that it really does sound like a U song. Actually, 実は, she has been writing songs for this popular idol program (as well as a couple AKB48 tracks) for the past couple years via her general-purpose (i.e. no porn) sound unit Funta. The duo hasn't really been mentioned at all on this blog before, but are definitely worth checking out, even if that other guitarist dude is totally not as cool as big brother.

Hey Jack! Don't forget about COSMODRIVER's new album

October 2009 saw the release of the first full length album from コスモドライバー (cosMoDRIVER), a brand new chip-pop duo featuring two highly active niconico artists. HIGEDRIVER was briefly mentioned late last year when he composed a song on Saori@destiny's first album, as well as contributed tracks to the superb Picomoe compilation series. It's hard not to like the dude with such great chiptune skills and his iconic image borrowed from Super Mario Bros. He has quite a number of songs up for download, but one of my favourites is this year's ukigumo. He's teamed up with cosMo, a similar artist, albeit one mostly known for his expertise with all things Hatsune Miku. He is behind the reaaaaaally fast (and kinda sad) "Disappearance of Hatsune Miku" among other things.

But those of you allergic to the virtual diva will be pleased to know that their first album 「コスモドライバー∞UP」 only barely features her voice (about four seconds, to be precise). It's mostly these two guys singing along with some sampling (moemoemoe...). Without getting into details, the album's a great mix of pop/rock/chiptune and even some pretty intense prog-rock à la Yes. Close To The Edge, chiptune style? I think my dad would enjoy that. And let's not forget about the third player on the visual front: SasakureP took care of the jacket art and the unit's first PV as seen above. Dream teams like this only last so long, but I'm already looking forward to a second album!