My Love/Hate Relationship With IOSYS
So in the last couple of days as I was searching my massive itunes list for something to listen to I decided on IOSYS, a group I hadn’t really listened to at all for the past few months. This mainly had to do with their last album Touhou Suisuisuusuu released at C72. On my first listening of it I thought it was complete garbage. Nothing really stood out to me as catchy or even really good. However, as I’ve been listening to the album again I’ve discovered there are actually quite a few good tracks on, particularly the epic duet 二つの翼 which has quickly become one of my favorite songs from IOSYS. Overall I find the album to be weaker from past albums but still featuring some quite good songs.
Renewed of my faith in IOSYS I downloaded their latest album from C73, tōhō kasokusōchi. Lo and behold I find this album to be even more lacking. There’s only a couple of tracks, 讃えよ我を、祀れ奇跡を and Power of dream, that I really like at all. Maybe I need to listen to it when next comiket comes around to really enjoy it. Overall IOSYS seems to get weaker and less original with every album. Tōhō otomebayashi, my first IOSYS album, is still my favorite, not just for Marisa Stole the Precious Thing but the other excellent vocal and instrumental tracks. Tōhō tsukitōrō is also a very strong album for being all vocal tracks, though it lacks the beautiful instrumentals of the former album. I enjoyed tōhō eijanho less than the other two though it still contains a few very good tracks, like the insanely catchy neko mimi Reimu. IOSYS is a good group who can compose some wonderful remixes and great vocal tracks, though with their later albums it seems like they lean on the vocal tracks too much, leading to mostly hit or miss affairs. I look forward to their next album, hoping I enjoy it more than their latest (though maybe not hoping much).
Since there’s literally hundreds of Touhou remix groups out there, way more than my poor computer can handle, who’s your favorite group, or who you think does the best remixes?
Music ? Phew, i thought you have an MS-DOS problem or something.
Comment on January 3, 2008 @ 4:00 am
I find the best Touhou remixes are the ones sans the myriad of instruments/noises. Much like piano renditions etc.
I’ve yet to patiently sit through all the groups and check them out though. For my Touhou music needs I just listen to the original
Comment on January 3, 2008 @ 5:33 am
I’m not that big on remixes since I think you can’t really improve on perfection, but my #1 choice would be TAMUSIC for his awesome violin renditions of everything. He’s been diversifying as of late to other instruments, and I highly recommend Touhou Violin 6 and 7 for your fix of excellent doujin music.
dBu Music is another good group, and if you’re into Touhou + Final Fantasy mixes, check out mistbell’s Touhou Fantasy - ADVENT CIRNO albums, all three of them. WAVE does orchestral covers if you’re into an epic sound. Those are the ones I’m most acquainted with, and they might be to your taste if you like IOSYS.
Comment on January 3, 2008 @ 6:29 am
I’ve listened to WAVE’s Fate/stay Night remixes and have greatly enjoyed them. I wasn’t aware that they’ve covered any touhou songs.
Comment on January 3, 2008 @ 8:01 am
I actually like the vocal renditions (well, not all of them), sometimes it’s kinda annoying listening to two dozen remixes of the same song with very little difference (identifiable).
personally…either dbu’s or Silver Forest’s. One sticks to the original pretty well, that I like, and the other has pretty good remixes, too (besides, pettan pettan tsurupettan~)
Comment on January 3, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
Yeah, three albums. They’re called Symphonic Caprice Evening Primrose, Symphonic Fantasia Cherry Blossom, and ARCHIV-EAST. Available on #moe if you know how to get there.
Comment on January 4, 2008 @ 1:22 am
Can yougive me link to your first album. I’ve been trying to find it, but no luck at all.
Comment on January 22, 2008 @ 6:42 pm
This should hopefully work: http://rs218.rapidshare.com/files/84649715/_IOSYS_tohootomebayashi.fla
Comment on January 22, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
I’m a big fan of IOSYS, but I have to agree with the love/hate thing - of the six albums I downloaded, I ended up keeping only 11 songs. But those 11 songs are amazingly good. So I think that makes up for it.
Oh, and you can download those six albums here:
http://www.doujinstyle.com/touhoumusic.php
Comment on April 11, 2008 @ 7:40 am