用户Wiki:Demobanker/2020 music recommendations

Intro attempt 2, written October 2025:

I got an intro written in 2021-22 and then I abandoned it cuz of various reasons and I never really got much writing done on the actual entries. I tidied that up and put it in the collapsable below as a snapshot of where I was at back then. There's so much optimism there that I lost over the years because that future I thought would happen... didn't happen.

But then again, that optimism is also what got me doing so much work for this wiki. The English Touhou wiki was lagging way behind in terms of music and fangames, and didn't even bother covering the vast amounts of doujinshi out there. Clearly, past me thought, if THBWiki covered even more works, then people would see that this wiki is the go-to place for looking up Touhou fanworks. Which in retrospect assumed that non-Chinese people would actually care about what happens in China lmao. Still, a huge thank you to the non-Chinese editors working the wiki over the years! This place would not be nearly as comprehensive if it weren't for your contributions.

Anyways, this is basically a list of releases without commentary. I personally don't think uncommentated lists are all that good for recommendation purposes because you don't get why the recommender liked it, but maybe you'll still get something out of this. Maybe I'll finish the commentary in the future.

Collapsable - click to toggle ->

Might as well go backwards from 2021.

Unfortunately, I didn't listen to many releases from 2020. Blame the pandemic, I guess, but it's not the main reason. Still, I've been financially limited for a while and can't really support people with cash as I used to. As you'd expect, this is the first time where I didn't buy any CDs from the Chinese Touhou scene. At least I didn't catch COVID, and neither did my relatives.

The main reason is that I've been spending time exploring a lot of non-Touhou music. Like, way more than I usually do. I've been active on a certain breakcore server and got to meet people from around the world, and it felt surreal to actually chat music with artists because I recognized their name from a collab or something they made with a funny title. While the new wave of artists following in the steps of Sewerslvt have been controversial, I think there's probably a lot of cool ideas to be found there and I'd like to shine a light on them if possible. (2025 update: that server is now dead and another server I jumped to was deleted. I never go to do what I said in the last sentence, though I think most artists have been doing fine regardless.)

Also, thanks to the Holmgang ov Gensokyo server, I've finally decided to get a RateYourMusic account! Which I use by not rating any music. lmao. But I've always been using the site to discover stuff, to read about genres and dig into lists about local scenes, even if I'm ultimately not into the music.

And as usual, I've been digging into a lot of different releases. It's a constant reminder of what is possible, both in the musical content and how it's distributed. But it's also a constant reminder that this scene, despite its utopian promises, is still quite insular and obsessively retro.

On the flipside, 2020 was the first time that I felt like I belong to a Touhou-related community. It's a fun place, and I managed to blow some people's minds with Gonin-Ish's 2020 album 死人贊歌. Pandemic sucks, but at least I can chat with people across the world about it. And with all the new internet-based artists and scenes popping up due to lockdown, I'm looking forward to the super wild directions Touhou music will go in the next few years.

As usual, all albums/EPs on here are 3/5 or above for me, unless it's something that I highly recommend despite disliking it. I'll also note any non-Touhou music I link to so you can try finding it on another site. Expect releases that aren't the usual tastes and aesthetics of Touhou/doujin music fans, but don't expect everything to be in that category. I have my own interests, after all.

2019 <-- | 2020 | --> 2021 | 2022

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1.5 ~ NIGHT FESTIVAL OF TEN-THOUSAND DEMONS (2020-10-02) Circolo：Holmgang Ov Gensokyo extreme progressive metal/metalcore, technical metal, djent 🌐 Biased? Sure, but these guys are actually pushing the boundaries of Touhou prog metal beyond the power metal and Dream Theater aspirations of the 00s. If anything, this is a great showcase of the creativity of 2010s prog metal underground. Of course, there's inspirations from inside the scene too - my favorite track here, Hourai Hunter, would not happen if it weren't for BLANKFIELD's unique twisty and chaotic take on metalcore and djent.
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海芋花 (2020-05-01) Circolo：DualInsomiNa djentcore, progressive metalcore 🇨🇳 The title track is utterly gorgeous. I'm a sucker for stormy, oceanic atmospheres, and combining that with Rigel Theatre tier new age is such a brilliant idea. It's like if you took the atmosphere and emotional feel of Kardashev's The Almanac, one of my favorite progressive metalcore releases of all time, added the Rigel Theatre elements, and then condensed it to the structure of 2010s djentcore that was heavily influenced by Erra. The fact that a song like this exists even as the popularity of this "standard djentcore" sound declines shows that there's still potential in it. Which in itself I feel is DualInsomiNa's biggest strength - although I never was big into Erracore, they certainly explore a lot within this framework. The other two songs, in comparison, is much less good. The second track is the type of poppy mainstream metalcore that I just don't like. 解毒剂 attempts to do Hacktivist's unique blend of djent, rap metal and grime (last one especially noticeable with the electronic bits), which falls flat because the circle is just not experienced with writing hip hop. That title track, though, is legit one of my favorite Touhou metal songs of all time. The circle really hit on something magical with this one, and if they focus on developing even a small EP with that sound, they could easily become a legend in this niche.
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连林铃音 (2020-12-20) Circolo：上东研 various electronics 🇨🇳
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October Harvest Yokai Festival (2020-10-18) Circolo：Tuck V ZUNstyle 🇺🇸 (listened in 2025) Made for the year's Yokaitober event, which if you're not familiar with, is a grassroots spinoff of the Drawtober event where artists have a prompt for every day of October and the goal is to make some sort of art related to the prompt of the day. Yokaitober 2020 was hosted by the artist Cloudie who makes cartoony art of Touhou characters (along with characters from other works). The album features imaginary themes for the youkai prompts, and a few of them are even made for other people's original characters. Musically, I'm really liking the melodies, which has a great grasp of ZUN's jazz fusion roots. What really surprised me though is the rhythmic complexity on tracks like Bolt of Black Light ~ Blacklight Shimmer (Tengu) where there's tons of syncopated beats. It's like Touhou music from an alternate universe where ZUN got really into Bangs & Works. I've said a lot about how ZUN has a weird sense of rhythm, but this is the closest that a ZUNstyle album really dug into that aspect of his music.
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RADIANT (2020-01-18) Circolo：Norowareta Night electropop 🇩🇪 first Touhou release listened in 2020
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ICONOCLASM (2020-08-09) Circolo：梶迫小道具店 tribal house 🇯🇵
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Galactic Destroyer (2020-11-24) Circolo：Kommisar chiptune EDM 🇨🇦
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Mirage Cadence EP (2020-09-30) Circolo：Araecelis contemporary classical 🇺🇸 Four delicate piano versions of the artist's house arrangements, which I linked on the album page because they unfortunately aren't available in an "I can make a wiki page for this" form. Of these, my favorite is Glacial Midsummer ("Solstice" ver.) which turns the sunny, colorful, future-bass-y joy of the original arrangement into a sentimental waltz. The original Glacial Midsummer is my favorite out of the four and this vastly different rendition compliments it super well. I also like Turn in or Turn Up (Twirling ver.) for its interplay between the two arranged themes.
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あなた (2020-03-22) Circolo：深夜放送 noise rock, post-hardcore 🇯🇵