PID has been near the top of the now-lengthy ‘promising newcomer’ list for a while, so it’s good to see him making some even bigger strides this year. We Are Finally Here is a contender for his strongest track so far, with one of the best structures I’ve seen for a while.

Give it a listen all the way though and if you’re anything like me you’ll be more impressed the longer the track plays, particularly post-halfway. The Nomic influence is there from the start, along with plenty of other touches that point towards various flavours of FINRG. Filters and a strong opening melody are all well and good, but when the breakdown first appeared with some percussion to add interest I was afraid that was where things might start to tail off. Not a bit of it – instead a lovely distorted lead goes straight into a Carbon Based-esque filters-and-kick drop, followed by a new spin on the main melody that has the track flirting with very high level territory.

The production isn’t at those same levels just yet, but this is still an excellent track that bodes well for the future, especially now that PID seems to be thinking about putting together an album of his own material.

Although a heroic effort at turning NRG into an acronym was the first thing I noticed here, Japanese label Masamune’s Neologism Raving Generator might actually be one of the most important freeform albums of the year. It’s also another one that should have decent appeal across the whole scene.

Most encouraging is the sight of some new artists stepping up with some very high quality production – Nizikawa’s Ebrietas might be the track that finds the firmest middle ground between uplifting melodies and the more aggressive stuff. The majority of the tracks have most in common with the sound of the UK scene, though there’s a definite J-Core influence to some of the melodies that comes out especially in a couple of polysha’s collab tracks, Omniverse especially.

Sanaas’ PALLADION sounds like a really impressive uplifting track, while Hyphen’s Meaningless C.O.D.E. is one of his strongest for a while, at least to my ears. Unsurprisingly it’s Morita Yuuhei’s Redemption Song that’s my early favourite – the moment I heard the preview I started running through set ideas. I shall definitely be using that one.

Neologism Raving Generator was released at last weekend’s M3, but it’ll likely follow the lead of Psychic Formers and eventually be available online.

update: The CD is now available via Diverse Direct and the Tano*C Store. I’d recommend the former – just after placing an order I noticed the ‘For Oversea’ section with an unusually clear guide in English. Postage abroad seems pretty steep if you’re only ordering a single CD, mind, so it might be a thought to add a couple more to the basket.

Later this month sees the sudden, surprise release of an very promising remix album, courtesy of Kokomochi. This is actually another freeform take on ZUN’s inspired soundtracks for the Touhou series – the emotional melodies are made for freeforming, as we’ve seen in goodness knows how many past compilations.

Kokomochi looks to have done a spot-on job of adding some aggression to the tracks, thankfully sidestepping the jolly style of some hardcore remixes I’ve heard in the past. Instead there’s plenty of melancholy here (see my first-impressions favourite, White Heron), along with some quality track progression and an impressive level of production. The tone overall strikes the sweet spot between freeform’s various camps, with some UK-style fills and effects combining nicely with nastier Finnish filtering.

As things stand the release is only announced for this month’s M3 event, but I’ll update as and when any other release info turns up.

Remember encode/decode, the album that included ikaruga_nex’s Barbatos? That and other datfile records releases have been available for a while now in digital format – but sound quality sticklers will have to weigh convenience against the fact that the files are 320kbps mp3s only.