Welcome to another new Music Highlights post in a long time! This time, the theme is characters and genres! All of the songs I'm featuring in this post have fictional characters of varying degrees.
Hanakuma Chifuyu Complextro
Xyris caught my attention because their combining of Artcore and Hanakuma Chifuyu, and now, apparently Hanakuma Chifuyu goes really well with Dubstep and Complextro?
BASS ICONS is very reminiscent of an earlier era in electronic doujin music for me, but what really caught my attention is the usage of Hanakuma Chifuyu. Every song Xyris releases with this Synthesizer V voice somehow always opened my eyes to SynthV usage outside music that you'd normally hear as Vocaloid music.
Misuzu Hataya Melodic Dubstep
For an iDOLM@STER branch, Gakuen iDOLM@STER is quite up to date with modern trends, pulling composers representative of such a modern age. For the rivals, interestingly, they decided to pull what I would call 'classic' composers. Ume Hanami got Takafumi Sato, responsible for many anthemic and denpa songs in iM@S, and Sena Juo got Go Shiina, the orchestral specialist of iM@S. For such a seemingly calm character as Misuzu Hataya, however, she got mifumei, known for bass-heavy dance music! The keyword is 'seemingly', and the bass music makes sense in context of her character.
Tsuki no Kame is also a departure from mifumei's usual repertoire in iM@S, because for Misuzu, the genre chosen is melodic dubstep. Like, actual melodic dubstep structure. This can especially be sensed at point 3:15, where is goes full melodic. His signature vocal chops could also be heard shortly after, and is an especially well-made one too.
Furthermore, the visuals, courtesy of CG Producer ICHIGORINAHAMU (?!), really leans into Neo Y2K aesthetics, sometimes diving into visual staples of rhythm games such as BEMANI (mysterious objects in space, anyone?).
Phoebe Future Bass
The musical direction of Wuthering Waves in the 2.x patch series has been quite interesting. From digging up a 14 year olddoujin release to be featured as Rinascita's opening soundtrack, and now, commissioning Empty old City, a name that I first found out from last year's YouTube Music Weekend, for Phoebe's image song.
Daisy Crown showcases composer Neuron's very clean music production, minimizing the quantity of sounds, in exchange for immense quality in each sound. On top of this base, vocalist kahoca, who sings for both the Japanese and English versions of this song, shines, her clear vocals complementing the song well, and also, in my opinion, fits well for Phoebe too.
Hasunosora has consistently delivered very interesting music since the beginning, but this time, DOLLCHESTRA has something very interesting in store from them.
Birdcage caught my attention because it was arranged by Shoichiro Hirata. Yes, this is Hasunosora's Believe the Rainbow. As a song for a more mainstream series, however, the song also incorporated some strings to make it feel more like anisong. Personally, I really like how the intro and outro synths sounded.
Pepe Future Bass
I would be remiss to not mention a somewhat viral sensation back in its home country, and something of an unexpected connection between two things I did not think could be connected this way.
Mystic Light Quest is the theme song for the operator Pepe from Arknights. When it was revealed on a stream, my ears were immediately familiar with one of the pulsed synths, and immediately got suspicious of who made the song. When the song is released on streaming services, my suspicions were confirmed: KOTONOHOUSE was in charge of production! Complete with RANASOL on the lyrics department too. Pepe being from Sargon, the song incorporated a few 'stereotypical' middle-east sounds, but otherwise is basically a KOTONOHOUSE song. The visuals reflect this too, being quite heavily inspired from video games.
Closing thoughts
Electronic music has been more pervasive in fandoms I follow lately, and this is reflected in this post's song picks having strong electronic flavour. I am watching this space with great interest.
Welcome to another new Music Highlights post in a long time! This time, the theme is characters and genres! All of the songs I'm featuring in this post have fictional characters of varying degrees.
Hanakuma Chifuyu Complextro
Xyris caught my attention because their combining of Artcore and Hanakuma Chifuyu, and now, apparently Hanakuma Chifuyu goes really well with Dubstep and Complextro?
BASS ICONS is very reminiscent of an earlier era in electronic doujin music for me, but what really caught my attention is the usage of Hanakuma Chifuyu. Every song Xyris releases with this Synthesizer V voice somehow always opened my eyes to SynthV usage outside music that you'd normally hear as Vocaloid music.
Misuzu Hataya Melodic Dubstep
For an iDOLM@STER branch, Gakuen iDOLM@STER is quite up to date with modern trends, pulling composers representative of such a modern age. For the rivals, interestingly, they decided to pull what I would call 'classic' composers. Ume Hanami got Takafumi Sato, responsible for many anthemic and denpa songs in iM@S, and Sena Juo got Go Shiina, the orchestral specialist of iM@S. For such a seemingly calm character as Misuzu Hataya, however, she got mifumei, known for bass-heavy dance music! The keyword is 'seemingly', and the bass music makes sense in context of her character.
Tsuki no Kame is also a departure from mifumei's usual repertoire in iM@S, because for Misuzu, the genre chosen is melodic dubstep. Like, actual melodic dubstep structure. This can especially be sensed at point 3:15, where is goes full melodic. His signature vocal chops could also be heard shortly after, and is an especially well-made one too.
Furthermore, the visuals, courtesy of CG Producer ICHIGORINAHAMU (?!), really leans into Neo Y2K aesthetics, sometimes diving into visual staples of rhythm games such as BEMANI (mysterious objects in space, anyone?).
Phoebe Future Bass
The musical direction of Wuthering Waves in the 2.x patch series has been quite interesting. From digging up a 14 year old doujin release to be featured as Rinascita's opening soundtrack, and now, commissioning Empty old City, a name that I first found out from last year's YouTube Music Weekend, for Phoebe's image song.
Daisy Crown showcases composer Neuron's very clean music production, minimizing the quantity of sounds, in exchange for immense quality in each sound. On top of this base, vocalist kahoca, who sings for both the Japanese and English versions of this song, shines, her clear vocals complementing the song well, and also, in my opinion, fits well for Phoebe too.
PS: Yuuna covered this song. Highly recommended listen!
DOLLCHESTRA Future House
Hasunosora has consistently delivered very interesting music since the beginning, but this time, DOLLCHESTRA has something very interesting in store from them.
Birdcage caught my attention because it was arranged by Shoichiro Hirata. Yes, this is Hasunosora's Believe the Rainbow. As a song for a more mainstream series, however, the song also incorporated some strings to make it feel more like anisong. Personally, I really like how the intro and outro synths sounded.
Pepe Future Bass
I would be remiss to not mention a somewhat viral sensation back in its home country, and something of an unexpected connection between two things I did not think could be connected this way.
Mystic Light Quest is the theme song for the operator Pepe from Arknights. When it was revealed on a stream, my ears were immediately familiar with one of the pulsed synths, and immediately got suspicious of who made the song. When the song is released on streaming services, my suspicions were confirmed: KOTONOHOUSE was in charge of production! Complete with RANASOL on the lyrics department too. Pepe being from Sargon, the song incorporated a few 'stereotypical' middle-east sounds, but otherwise is basically a KOTONOHOUSE song. The visuals reflect this too, being quite heavily inspired from video games.
Closing thoughts
Electronic music has been more pervasive in fandoms I follow lately, and this is reflected in this post's song picks having strong electronic flavour. I am watching this space with great interest.