Dancemania EX × Trance Paradise

Utattemita Anison Speed
Release Date: 7/4/12
Price: 1905 yen

Okay, EMI and AKBK are just straight up trolling now. This has 12 repeats from the original Utattemita J-Pop, and 6 of those are the same BPM as before. What the hell were they thinking when they made this? It’s a shame that all of AKBK’s “Speed” release have been so lazy and disappointing, because I LOVED the Geki Atsu! Drama Euro releases and thought this was going to be a banner year for AKBK. Instead, they’ve been running their repeats into the ground.

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Utattemita Anison Speed
Release Date: 7/4/12
Price: 1905 yen

Somehow I got my copy a day early. I <3 CDJapan so much.

I’ll get the extremely bad, yet entirely unsurprising news out of the way first: there are no new arrangements. The slightly good news is that at least this time AKBK showed some effort by increasing the tempo of some of the songs. The minimum BPM on this album is 160, and a lot of these songs were previously in the 150-155 range, so it’s not a huge difference. However, many songs that were already over 160 BPM, including some that were already featured on the regular Utattemita Anison, are the same tempo as before. Sigh. The return of Dancemania Speed this is not. I’m working on a quick spreadsheet that compares the BPMs, which I’ll hopefully have up in a bit.

I will say that I enjoyed the mixing a lot, and it has my two most-loved AKBK productions ever, one right after the other. Oh, actually, I was lying about there being no new tracks. “Discotheque” is technically a new resing by Shihori. I don’t get why they didn’t just use the existing Prico version since she’s an utaite and would’ve fit perfectly. Also “We Are” is a resing of a track that originally appeared on Akiba Koubou presents Utatte Mita Collection Tsukareta Otoko.

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Campus Summit 2012 meets mixi
Release Date: 8/8/12
Price: 1905 yen

Early list is out, and there’s no Eurobeat in sight. Indeed, it’s mostly J-Pop, K-Pop, Reggae and House songs. The only possible exception is the official event theme song, “Minna My Miku,” which is produced by Delta Partners and will likely be Eurobeat.

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Too Love To Love (Initial P Remix) (Single)
Artist: maria?polo
Release Date: 6/29/12
Price: Free!

A brand new remix of the DJ Command track, originally featured on Toho Euro Flash Vol. 2. It’s available for free at Bandcamp!

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