Here’s the long-awaited news re. Alabaster’s new ‘Lab 4-esque’ tracks, plus a whole new album. Delta Attack is another game-related arrange work, this time concentrating on Final Fantasy and other Square-produced role-playing games. The standout track here is Zable Fuhr, a pounding hard NRG style tune complete with grinding synths and slightly-repetitive-but-addictive lead melodies. Interestingly, the tune is based on a piece of BGM from one of my old favourites, Seiken Densetsu 3 (or Secret of Mana 2), the Super Nintendo classic of yesterdecade. It should be noted however that this album is mixed, with two bonus tracks at the end (neither of which is Zable Fuhr, unfortunately).

Alabaster has also come up with two more Hard NRG tracks which really show his newfound grasp of the genre. The first is Void, as we suspected all along - this one is very pacy with a slightly retro Finnish feel to it, and can be found on the Hardcore Syndrome 2 compilation. The other is Headless, which features some brilliant, almost Hase-esque synth work at a slightly lower bpm. Currently I’m not too sure when/where it’s going to see a release, but I’ll be sure to update this post with any info as soon as I get it.

News has been a bit thin on the ground this week (and the events seem to have dried up until you-know-what arrives next month), but I’ve just noticed that extremely promising dark freeformer Aquanox is part of a small group of Hungarian artists who have their own collective/site, Dezigned 4 Ravers. You can buy some of their best tunes via IMO Download too, including Aquanox’s fantastic Thunderbird, but other recommended tracks include Protonic’s uplifting Kick Da Nation and DJ Flatline’s Hit the Roof and Are You Ready?

I think the site has actually been around for a year or so now, and so I’ll be looking out for more tunes from Aquanox - Thunderbird and Enkera are great tracks, but another year of learning the production ropes will have benefitted him no end, I reckon.

DJ Yousuke has recently uploaded the mix that accompanied the Full Circle Live PA at NRGetic Romancer this month, and it’s another stormer. It’s missing Yousuke’s guitar/Buzzmasta’s taiko and er, laser-thing-that-makes-a-noise (I don’t have a clue what you call it), but you get the gist of things, at least. It was an awesome set live, with a rock gig/hardcore atmosphere that had everyone hooked by the end, and it’s also worth checking out for the remix of Shanty vs Epyx & Cyrez’s Frozen Abyss, which Yousuke has recently been making good use of in his DJ sets.

Tracklist:

1. Full Circle DJs - Things Past
2. Buzzmasta - For Action (Full Circle DJs remix)
3. Full Circle DJs - Break The Enter
4. Shanty vs Epyx & Cyrez - Frozen Abyss (Full Circle DJs remix)
5. Full Circle DJs - Halcyon
6. DJ Rx - Hellfire (Full Circle DJs remix)
7. Full Circle DJs - Gate Crasher

Download here

You might well have seen this one already, but definitely worth mentioning - the last chapter in the Kreatrix Evilution series, this is without a doubt the best tracklist I’ve laid my eyes on for a good while. Nomic, Tyranoid/Stongstream, Micken, Epyx & Cyrez, Substanced….it’s really a roll-call of the new generation’s best artists.

Of extra interest for visitors to this place is the inclusion of Guld’s DragonBall-influenced Solid State Scouter. If you haven’t heard much of it yet, it’s slightly mad, twisted and surprisingly melodic - and seems to be a bit of a slow burner, it’s really become one of my favourites recently, having listened to it for a long while without being totally convinced. Anyway, great news for Guld, who has also seen Requiem get a recent release in Japan, and has just completed another crazed track - brace yourselves for that one.

01 Epyx & Cyrez, Substanced, Twisted Freq, Tyranoid/Strongstream - Intro
02 Substanced & Grimsoul - Harder Than U Think
03 Nomic - Dead Angel
04 Micken - Prophecy
05 Horzi featuring Alchemiist - Life for Freedom (Epyx & Cyrez remix)
06 Grimsoul - Escape Forever
07 Substanced - Why Me (Micken remix)
08 Horzi - Infernal Psycho
09 Guld - Solid State Scouter
10 Twisted Freq & Cyrez - The Edge of Extinction
11 Tyranoid/Strongstream vs Substanced - Still Hope?

It’s time for yet another Touhou arrange album, a sequel of sorts to the ALiCE’S EMOTiON-released Fanatic Hardcore set. Just as the last arrange album saw two of Betwixt & Between’s best new tracks, Wide Awake and Dust to Dust, this compilation sees him contribute a thundering schranz tune, The Moon From Below. Slightly reminiscent of Zusammengehorigkeit, it doesn’t overdose on the melodies but is a really powerful track. Betwixt actually played it on Saturday, and while there’s no way in the world that you could mix it into something like Mirage, his newer tunes are quite often schranz-influenced, and so it worked quite well (actually following Zusammengehorigkeit, if my sketchy memory serves me right).

Putting my neutral observer hat on, it might not really be worth the price of Scarlet Eyes alone, though, and so if your interest doesn’t run as far as the RED ALiCE-style of arrange tunes, it might be best to give this one a miss. It would however be a crime not to mention the brilliant cover artwork, the ALiCE’S EMOTiON label is really setting the standard on that front recently.

An interesting new techno/trance/electronica compilation was released on Saturday, and includes a remix by Betwixt & Between of Dee!’s Leave the Nest. I haven’t heard the original, but I’m guessing it’s a vocal Eurobeat-style number - Betwixt has done a decent job of bringing his own style to the track, but can’t completely smother the happiness of it all.

Other tracks also seem pretty nice from the previews up on the site, and I’m actually quite interested in this release. I’m not a huge fan of Tano*C style J-Core, but this is a lot more eclectic, even if a few of the Tano*C crew have contributed tunes - including M Project, Roughsketch and Thanatos (although Thanatos is really developing his style these days and is becoming one to watch, for sure).

Apologies for the lack of posting last week - I’m back from Kyoto, Gifu and Nagoya now, and just about survived the weekend while somehow managing to get to NRGetic Romancer (with DJ X Lab 4, so well worth the effort).

Now we’re stepping into a time machine, going back, back, back….all the way back to…er, the 14th June. Cogi has kindly provided me with some photos, so here’s a quick sum up of what I can remember from the last but one event (photos/video from last weekend coming soon, I think). By the way, the photo (taken by Cogi) at the top of this post is me - or at least, my t-shirt - it’s become my regular NRGetic Romancer uniform, and will probably get another airing next month while I clang through some tunes at Hell’s Gate.

You might remember that Betwixt & Between had an impossible schedule that weekend, playing at Hardcore Tano*C (if I remember correctly) earlier in the afternoon? Well, he came up with a novel way of coping - er, don’t play at NRGetic Romancer. It wasn’t looking very feasible, really, and so Guld, Cogi and Yousuke raided their tune collections and played for an extra 30-40mins or so each instead.

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ジオさんおかげで、次のヘルズでDJやります！デブユーですからやっぱりちょっと緊張してるけどたくさんリリースされてないフィンランドと日本の曲をかける予定してます。イベントは日曜日ですが月曜日が休みですね。よかったら日本に住んでいる方がいたらぜひ遊びにきて下さい！一生懸命頑張って本当に楽しみしてます！

I still think I’m hallucinating every time I look at the flyer, but thanks to the efforts of Zio I’ll be playing at the next Hell’s Gate! Good grief, eh? A year and a bit after going to my first Japanese event at Studio Cube (May 2007’s NRGetic Romancer), to be playing there is more than incredible, and naturally the nerves will be setting in soon, I reckon. There are a few other DJs making their debuts/second appearance, mind, so I’m not alone.

The plan is to bring a bit of the NRG Monogatari style to a live/event set, but the tunes will be slightly more Finnish than Japanese this time, I think (so a reverse of my usual Japan-promoting mixes, in a way). I’ve already got a few unreleased/brand new tunes from both countries in mind, and now I’m trying to sort out a structure of some sort….it usually takes me an ice age or two to decide on tracks to use in a set - I haven’t got that luxury this time - but I might use a few tunes originally planned for NRG Monogatari 3. Twisted/melodic freeform all the way though, that’s the main idea so far.

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DJ X has got a pretty tough schedule next week - I just heard that he’ll be playing at the New Sentiment event in Osaka on the 15th (Friday), before heading to Tokyo for NRGetic Romancer on the 16th. New Sentiment seems to be more slanted towards Tech Dance and Drum and Bass, so it might well be a very different experience to Saturday’s event. Funnily enough, I’m coming back from Kyoto on Friday (to be back in time for NRGetic Romancer), and so it’s conceivable that I could make it to this event too - Osaka is next door to Kyoto, after all. I think I’ll do the sensible thing though and give this one a miss, the recent batch of events (Bootek tour, Hell’s Gate, Dance or Die) took some recovering from, after all…

I hope everyone enjoyed the week or so without Thank You For The Horse? Sadly (?) the site hasn’t been bought out by a group of freeform loving millionaire Russians, or anything like that - instead, the domain name expired. Oops, eh? Anyway, everything is shipshape now, so I’ll try to catch up on a few things from the last week or so.

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