Doujin Music from Comikets 70 & 71

Over the past couple weeks, doujin music albums from Comiket 71 have been surfacing and some of them are pretty good. I listened to about ten albums from Comiket 70 from last year and will probably listen to about the same number regarding ones from #71. Not all the music produced is anime- or game-related but that seems to be the case for most of them. After the jump: my three favorite doujin music works from each of the past two festivals.

From Comiket 70:


* FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (nanosounds):
The style of the six songs contained in this album ranges from relaxing strings to jazz to synthesizer alongside a flute. “Midnight Circle” is nice and funky while “500 miles from embrassing” reassures the listener that everything’s fine with violin and soft piano playing.

“Midnight Circle” (Junichi Nakatsuru):

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* nanosweep3 (SuperSweep & nanosounds):
This one has more obvious electronica elements in it and features works from seven different artists. For example, “Moksha” gives the listener the feeling they’re in a chase scene, waking up to an beeping alarm, hearing crows cawing and making one’s way through street traffic and a busy train station.

“Moksha” (Yousuke Yasui):

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* Touhou no Tsume Awase (L’ARCHANGE):
Piano playing, electronic beats, and rocking guitars are unavoidable in this compilation of songs from the more recent iterations in the Touhou series. Specifically, the games covered in the album are Imperishable Night, Perfect Cherry Blossom, and Shoot the Bullet. Here is more information from the composer as well as its sale page on Toranoana. However, they don’t do international shipping so I guess the second link might not be useful for many people.

“Lunatic Princess” from Imperishable Night:

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From Comiket 71:


* Haruhigurashi (@RYOUKI):
Reimaginings of themes and insert songs from Higurashi and MoSH.

Higurashi’s opener sounds scarier with static and glass breaking, “Hare Hare” gets a little too cute, and “Lost my music” adds a cheering audience. The clever fusing of names is a plus and all the tracks except one are great. “Koi no Nagato Densetsu” is the unfortunate rendition that leaves a sour note in my eardrum because, although it has “Yuki” singing, she almost sounds like an electronic voice, and the occasional cheers of encouragement from “Haruhi” become annoying halfway through the song.

“Higurashi no naku goro ni” (Ruou Ryouki):

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* Fool on the Stage (Terminal-Heaven):
A collection of unofficial image songs for Kaleidostar.

I really liked this one despite having only seen one episode of the anime (from a Newtype preview DVD) and therefore not being able to guess which songs related to which characters. Luckily, the jacket has the name of each imaged character above its respective lyrics. There are 7 actual image songs along with 5 different versions of “Yakusoku no Basho e”, one that features all four vocalists and one of each doing their individual verisons.

“Fire Bird” (MAIKO), which corresponds to Layla Hamilton:

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* CLOVER ALBUM (Clock Music):
Songs inspired by Honey & Clover.

This group released a single containing four tracks called CLOVER SINGS during C70 and debuted this 11-song album at C71. The first track, “Sings Clover”, would be a good fill-in for the opening theme with its spritely strings and the ones that follow could easily enter H&C’s rotation of insert songs.

“Shi” (chata):

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* Touhou Violin 3 (TAMUSIC):
If you have been counting along, this is my fourth pick from C71 and earlier I said I’d choose three from each C70 and C71. But, I just couldn’t leave this out or substitute it for one of the other three so I decided to bend my own rules and include it. As you may have guessed from the title, this album contains songs from the Touhou series on the violin. (You know, I’m starting to think this is a VERY popular game series within the doujin community…) Anyway, I’m a sucker for violin and cello music especially if there is an electronic beat behind them like the final track, “silentensemble”:

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