Cyber Trance – EP
Release Date: 7/24/13
Price: 450 yen
Avex’s recent digital releases don’t stop with Super Best Trance. They also released a single Cyber Trance EP featuring 5 songs.
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Cyber Trance – EP
Release Date: 7/24/13
Price: 450 yen
Avex’s recent digital releases don’t stop with Super Best Trance. They also released a single Cyber Trance EP featuring 5 songs.
Super Best Trance presents X’mas Trance – EP
Release Date: 7/24/13
Price: 450 yen
What better way to celebrate summer than with an X’mas Trance EP? This one mostly has songs that appeared on the Cyber Trance presents X’mas Trance series. For some reason it also has a cover of Blondie’s “Maria,” which is apparently a Christmas carol now?
Anyway, this is the last of the SBT EPs released on July 24th. It remains to be seen if Avex will keep this up and release more SBT EPs in the future.
Super Best Trance presents Summer Trance – EP
Release Date: 7/24/13
Price: 450 yen
What better way to celebrate summer than with a Summer Trance EP? And in typical Avex fashion, it has a repeat! That’s right, for no reason other than to screw people over, this has “Santa Maria (DJ Ten Remix),” even though the second EP already had it.
Super Best Trance presents Overhead Champion – EP
Release Date: 7/24/13
Price: 450 yen
Another SBT EP, this time featuring OHC songs.
Super Best Trance I – EP
Release Date: 7/24/13
Price: 450 yen
HOLY CRAP! It’s been 4 years since the last Super Best Trance release, so it came as quite a shock when I saw a series of new SBT releases on iTunes. Each release has 5 tracks and costs 450 yen for the entire release, which is a steal compared to the prices the vinyls have been going for. The track lists are seemingly random, pulling tracks from various SBT releases over the years. This first one has tracks from SBT V, ZIP Dance Nation, SBT II, SBT presents X’mas Trance, and Ultra Z-Trance 03.
Many Complications (Single)
Artist: Hommarju
Release Date: 6/21/13
Price: $3.98
New single from Exit Trance artist, Hommarju. It seems he’s hooked up with the UK Hardcore Label, Relentless Digital!, and has been featured on some of their compilations over the past year. Available on Beatport and other digital download services. Also recommended is Hardcore Shockwave, which features his apparent BFF, MK.
RTTF Remixes
Release Date: 10/28/12
Price: 1000 yen
It’s RTTF week here at Dancemania EX, where I’ll be placing a spotlight on the indie/doujin Japan label, RTTF.
RTTF’s latest release, featuring remixes of RTTF tracks! East meets West on the lead track, as prolific UK hardcore producer, Jakazid, provides a remix of Hyuji’s “Huge Frontier.”
Maya Akai gives one of my favorites, “Archiving the memory,” a hot new J-core sound, while Tomohiko Togashi and Takahiro Aoki provide remixes for songs by the Exit Trance artists, MK and Hommarju. “Dies Irae” turned out great, but I feel that too much of the original melody was lost in “Jupiter.” Speaking of Hommarju, he appears on the album with a hardcore remix of RedOgre’s “3rd Raid.”
You can visit RTTF’s official website for a crossfade demo. If you’re interested in ordering, DJ Hyuji speaks English and is willing to ship overseas. You can contact him here: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/contact.html Just make sure to turn your ad blocker off if you have one installed, otherwise the form won’t appear.
Run to the Future
Release Date: 4/30/12
Price: 800 yen
It’s RTTF week here at Dancemania EX, where I’ll be placing a spotlight on the indie/doujin Japan label, RTTF.
Quite a bit of epic trance on the follow-up to RTTF’s first release. This 2-disc set is separated into a “Ground Shake Side” and a “Mighty Wings Side.” There’s a pretty good mix of epic trance, J-core and electro spread across the two discs.
Notable tracks on disc 1 include heric’s chiptune song, “Bittune Space,” and the epic trance masterpiece from Yunyun, “Archiving the memory.”
Disc 2 starts off with 4 J-Core tracks ranging from 167-175 BPM. Takahiro Aoki’s “Break Out” is the best of the bunch, with a really catchy melody and great hardcore sound. Disc 2 also has some EDM/electro tracks for fans of those genres.
You can visit RTTF’s official website for a crossfade demo. If you’re interested in ordering, DJ Hyuji speaks English and is willing to ship overseas. You can contact him here: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/contact.html Just make sure to turn your ad blocker off if you have one installed, otherwise the form won’t appear.
Vocal Vitality
Release Date: 4/30/12
Price: 1429 yen
It’s RTTF week here at Dancemania EX, where I’ll be placing a spotlight on the indie/doujin Japan label, RTTF.
Vocal Vitality is a special release from RTTF featuring vocal tracks only. The highlight of the album, at least for Dancemania Speed fans, is easily the new Nancy and the Boys track, “Shine a Light on You,” which also features a rap from Sami. I wish Nancy got a few more lines to sing instead of just repeating the same thing over and over again, but it’s a fun, original tune.
Another guest DJ on the album is DJ Genji, who contributes a fun hardcore song, “Promise.” Meanwhile, the fastest song on the album is DJ Hyuji’s “Stars,” which comes in at 180 BPM and features the lovely vocals of Sanahara.
Also of note is the funky “Miami Booty” song, “Sweet Chocolate.” Hyuji captured the Dancemania Bass sound perfectly. And much like a Dancemania album, Vocal Vitality unfortunately has some repeats. “Night Queen” is a straight repeat from Classical Candy, while “Feel the Sky” from Classical Candy 2 is labeled here as “Ver1.1,” though to be honest I can’t really tell the difference. ^^;
You can visit RTTF’s official website for a crossfade demo. If you’re interested in ordering, DJ Hyuji speaks English and is willing to ship overseas. You can contact him here: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/contact.html Just make sure to turn your ad blocker off if you have one installed, otherwise the form won’t appear.
Classical Candy 2
Release Date: 10/30/11
Price: 1000 yen
It’s RTTF week here at Dancemania EX, where I’ll be placing a spotlight on the indie/doujin Japan label, RTTF.
I’ve covered RTTF’s follow-up to Classical Candy before, but it’s worth revisiting the album now that I’ve listened to it in full.
Of course, Dancemania fans would be most interested in the new track from Chris Bucknall (a.k.a the “C” part of CJ Crew). It’s a 170 BPM arrangement of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s quite lengthy at about 5:52, so he gets a chance to cover a lot more ground than the painfully short edits from classical Speed. There are pianos abound in the track, as well as some nice synth interpretations of the melody.
Speed Synth Symphony is also back with two tracks that lovingly recall the Dancemania SPEED sound. Seriously, if you listen to them you’ll realize that this guy knows and understands Dancemania Speed. DJ Hyuji also has a vocal(!) trance arrangement of “Pomp and Circumstance” on the album, as well as a trance cover of “Polovtsian Dance.”
Hommarju gets the final track on the album, a rousing trance rendition of Mozart’s “Requiem K.626 Dies Irae.” It’s absolutely amazing and makes me mourn the death of non-anime Exit Trance albums even more. It has everything you could possibly want from a trance song: a hard, galloping beat, random vocal samples, epic trance synths, and CHANTING.
Dancemania fans will also be interested to know that the booklet contains an interview (in Japanese) with Chris Bucknall. DJ Hyuji also posted parts of the interview online: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/works/rttf_0004/chris_interviews_web.html
You can visit RTTF’s official website for a crossfade demo. If you’re interested in ordering, DJ Hyuji speaks English and is willing to ship overseas. You can contact him here: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/contact.html Just make sure to turn your ad blocker off if you have one installed, otherwise the form won’t appear.
Classical Candy
Release Date: 5/1/11
Price: 1000 yen
It’s RTTF week here at Dancemania EX, where I’ll be placing a spotlight on the indie/doujin Japan label, RTTF.
RTTF’s Classical Candy releases are probably my favorite from the label. As the title suggests, the album contains new dance arrangements of classical songs, similar to classical Speed or Exit Trance presents TranceMaster.
The opening track, done under DJ Hyuji’s pseudonym, Speed Synth Symphony, is like a love letter to Dancemania Speed. At a staggering 200 BPM, “The Comedian’s Gallop” perfectly encapsulates the SPEED sound and sounds like mix of CJ Crew and Saifam. Also recommended is Hyuji’s “Night Queen,” a cover of Mozart’s “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herze” that comes complete with vocals and hyper techno elements!
Exit Trance fans will be delighted to know that Hommarju and MK both make appearances on the album. Hommarju does something delightfully different with a speed trance cover of the ragtime tune, “Pine Apple Rag.” I officially want a Ragtime Trance album now. Meanwhile, MK contributes a fantastic ethereal trance arrangement of “Jupiter.”
Tadashi Yamamoto offers a serene piano arrangement of “Gymnopedie,” once again with a light dance beat. Meanwhile, DJ Croco’s rock-trance cover of “Amazing Grace” evokes memories of N.O.-SYO. There’s a fantastic amount of variety on this album, so if you’re at all a fan of classical Speed or Exit Trance, I highly recommend it!
You can visit RTTF’s official website for a crossfade demo. If you’re interested in ordering, DJ Hyuji speaks English and is willing to ship overseas. You can contact him here: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/contact.html Just make sure to turn your ad blocker off if you have one installed, otherwise the form won’t appear.
Run to the Future
Release Date: 10/31/10
Price: 800 yen
It’s RTTF week here at Dancemania EX, where I’ll be placing a spotlight on the indie/doujin Japan label, RTTF. Run by DJ Hyuji, RTTF has put out a lot of great dance albums over the past few years, with lots of different sounds ranging from trance to SPEED to house. DJ Hyuji is a HUGE (pun intended) fan of Dancemania, quite possibly one of the most dedicated I’ve ever met, and the influence of Dancemania, and Dancemania Speed in particular, can definitely be heard throughout RTTF’s albums. He’s also managed to round up a varied amount of guest artists for RTTF’s releases, including Chris Bucknall (of CJ Crew fame), JAKAZiD, Hommarju, MK, and many others.
You can visit RTTF’s official website for crossfade demos of both discs. Luckily, DJ Hyuji also speaks English and is willing to ship overseas. If you’re interested in ordering, you can contact him here: http://rttf.eternalbreeze.net/contact.html Make sure you turn your ad blocker off if you have one installed, otherwise the form won’t appear for some reason.
Impressions on the album after the jump.
Plan 8
Artist: Ryu*
Release Date: 7/3/13
Price: 1905 yen
What the hell? Ryu* only had 7 months to get this album together and somehow it still has a greater percentage of new tracks than his previous albums. The only tradeoff is that there are only 15 tracks instead of the usual 20.
Bonus items include an autographed card, rubber strap, pass case, clear file, and poster.
There are also retailer-exclusive bonuses available:
Konami Style
– Muffler Towel
– Smartphone/IC Card Sticker
– Konami Style Limited CD (Plan C (kors k Remix) / Ryu?)
Animate
– Ryu* Special Remix CD (Plan C (Another Infinity Remix / Ryu?)
Tower Records
– Can Badge
Tsutaya Records
– Ryu* Special Remix CD (Plan C (Seiryuu Remix / Ryu?)
Tora no Ana
– Ryu* Special Remix CD (Plan C (Starving Trancer Remix / Ryu?)
Don Quijote
– “Plan 8” Microfiber Cloth
Exit Trance presents Speed Anime Trance Best 19
Release Date: 9/4/13
Price: 1905 yen
The 19th entry in the SATB series will be released in early September, so we’ll definitely be getting 3 releases this year instead of the 2 in 2012. No word on a track list yet. Interestingly, if you look at the catalogue number, QWCE-342, you might notice that it’s a pretty big jump over the next-highest allocated cataloque number, QWCE-309 (for 164’s upcoming album). That means they have at least 30+ other releases already planned. o_O Of course, they’ll probably all be Vocaloid albums anyway.
Pre-order at CDJapan.
Plan 8
Artist: Ryu*
Release Date: 7/3/13
Price: 1905 yen
Album art and early list have been revealed for Ryu*’s upcoming 5th album. According to descriptions sent out to retailers, the album is scheduled to have 15 tracks in all instead of the usual 20. That’s rather disappointing, albeit understandable since this album will come just 7 months since his previous album. I wonder if they’ll try to squeeze in 2 Ryu* albums this year, though? Otherwise I don’t get why they didn’t just wait until December so they could have the usual 20 tracks.