用户Wiki:Demobanker/2025 music recommendations

New year, new list! I've changed the title from "listening logs and recommendations" to "music recommendations" because these aren't really listening logs, which involve putting down everything I listen to regardless of how much I like or dislike it.

Quick introduction for those unfamiliar: this is where I talk about Touhou music from this year that I liked, or at least found interesting to talk about. Most of them will be from lesser-known circles or artists. As usual, you can check here for an uncommented list of other music which I enjoyed (and a few I didn't) from this year. Also feel free to peep my sandbox for drafts.

2023 | 2024 <-- | 2025 | --> 2026

The List

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Solvorement （2025-07-18） 社团：Yumi Sakata progressive metal, math metal (influence), progressive deathcore (influence) 🇺🇸 Yumi writes in the Bandcamp description a small tale of Utsuho devouring the earth, but man, I'm imagining the a Metal Gear-esque solo descent into a Dyson sphere. The EP's most complex moments harken back to the early 00s math metal era of djent, which intensified the mechanized, groove-forward sound of 90s metal to new levels of complexity. Adding to the atmosphere are industrial elements like beeps and synths, though unlike said 00s era these elements are cleaner and more spacious, fitting the quiet background sounds of a space station.
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Across to higan EP （2025-10-19） 社团：Yayoi Softworks dubstep, future garage 🇯🇵 this is just a placeholder since I haven't finished writing about it, but it is my second favorite release from this year so far after Solvorement and I want to note it down somewhere
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Extra Nightmare （2025-05-05） 社团：Adust Rain note: best-of remastered album electronicore, 2010s mainstream metalcore 🇯🇵 Killer best-of, with the only major misstep being the lack of Secret Traveler. The weird "glass transformer" sound effect that keeps getting used in the Traumatic Syndrome and Imperfect Cherry Blossom remaster is also a bit distracting because I associate that more with sound design centric music.
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東方近状況 ～ Falsified Wonders. （2025-08-13） 社团：Consonances&Dissonances ZUNstyle (imaginary game soundtrack with characters and story booklet), jazz fusion (influence) 🌐 Inspired by a tumblr post about Touhou 20's demo, C&D made this album and game document as a prediction, or to imagine what the full game might be like in plot and characters. The ZUNstyle genre is no stranger to making soundtracks for imaginary games, though making one for an upcoming official game is a novel concept. C&D has does something similar for Touhou 19 (they provide a download link in the text file that comes with the album), but that one was limited to music and only had a few tracks. The overall sound palette of the music is lush and piano-heavy, with light synth additions that sound futuristic while also feeling lush and soft. I love the small touches like the quiet laughing sounds on ゲラゲラのドブ川 (A Guffawing Gutter) that stops being subtle in the end and just jumps out at you, or the sudden detuning on デーモン不変条件 (Daemon Invariant). The compositions are also quite complex and jazz fusiony, with tracks like 龍石ルミナリエ (Dragon Stone Luminarie), 無限聖都の絶対値 (Absolute Value of the Infinite Sacred Capital)　〜 Integral Utopia and 彗星のベンベン (Cometary Benben) punching way above the level of technicality that ZUN typically shows in his recent soundtracks. I think a lot of that comes from Ocha's musical background - I checked out their Cascading Stars EP and was blasted with some delicious jazzy future bass. bebn legg's Super Mario World arrangement of デーモン不変条件 (Daemon Invariant) is a neat bonus track, and I think also makes them another ZUNstyle musician that's also in the SMW romhack music scene (see: sincx and Hooded Edge). Compositionally this is amazing, but there is one issue that ruins my enjoyment a lot, and it's that most tracks just cut out instead of fading out. I thought maybe those tracks were meant to be looped, but experimenting with the repeat song option in my MusicBee shows that it's not the case.
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SNOOZE MODE （2025-08-17） 社团：dat file records Jersey club 🇯🇵, 🇮🇩 (tr. 4) finally a followup to girls in caps e.p Hits all the Jersey club essentials (the grooves ofc, but also squeaky bed samples) while also having a lot of creativity on top of that. There's noticeable clipping on some tracks, but this is one of the genres where that rawness is part of its appeal. Nowhere else is that rawness more apparent than Ide_Co's nightflower, which sounds like a haphazardous skirmish of gun sounds and percussive vocal samples. As for other highlights: the first two tracks and BAWANG's Found U! are fun examples of how the genre is connected to kawaii future bass. M4tt's ALICE in flips the FM synth original with delay effects and turns it into glittery chip dressing. On the more "mainstream" side, Tengu Corp's bassy orchestral hits and hip hop samples makes Starry Brick City sound like a buffed up, Joyryde-fied spin on the genre, though I feel like it could use some more bass. The big galaxy brain move of the album, in my opinion, has to be the UK drill switchup in Qreme Logic's bad apple.... Both genres are linked by a heavy use of syncopated, triplet percussive grooves, and I'm honestly surprised I haven't heard of something linking the two until now (note: this is because I don't listen to a ton of Jersey club).
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Crab Crab Chapter5 （2025-10-12） 社团：Crab Crab Club post-hardcore, pop rock, math pop (somewhat), funk rock (on 黄昏と物憂い and Perverse) 🇯🇵 Shoutouts to Yumi for the circle rec! Solid poppy rock with dynamic songs and a bit of twinkly-mathy technicality to keep things interesting. The sheer sense of speed on Brain Diagram is hella satifying, and the funky and mathy Perverse is a fun highlight.
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地-JIGOKUBI （2025-08-09） 社团：TsuBaKi alternative metal, alt-djent 🇨🇳 TsuBaKi is one of the biggest circles in the Chinese Touhou scene, having been there since the 2016 wave that formed the idea of a Chinese Touhou music scene in the first place. They're also one of few the circles from this scene that has gotten recognition in Japan, and for good reasons. While they mainly make alt metal with a few dips into djent and post-hardcore, they're not limited to rock music, and even in terms of rock, they're stylistically all over the place. For 地-JIGOKUBI, themed after Subterranean Animism, they more or less continue the lush, acoustics-heavy alt metal/djent sound they've had on 花-MABOROSHI. Putting the negatives out of the way first: as ambitious as the album is, there are arrangement choices that feels tacked on and at odds with the overall mood of the music surrounding it. Blooming is the standout example: it follows an all-acoustic new age song and start with trap beats. A listener might get really into the beautiful atmosphere of the song before, before being jolted by said trap beats. It also sets up an expectation that the song might be in the style of contemporary alt metal with poppy, punchy hip hop production. Now, I'm glad the circle didn't do that, but the rest of the song never picks up on the trap bit again. In fact, when electronic elements reappear as the main part of the song, it's in the form of mainstream, EDM festival tier psytrance which clashes badly with the album's overall lush sound. I'm not gonna blame the circle for not realizing that there's plenty of psytrance that aim to sound organic through its sound design or using acoustic instruments, since they make mostly rock and pop music. I do think they should make these EDM elements more integrated with the songs rather than being one-off moments. A smaller but also jarring moment is the rap section on the first track 鬼想天涯. Beyond that, if you like the lush sounds of 花-MABOROSHI and 海芋花's title track, as I do, you'll find a lot to like about 地-JIGOKUBI. I love the narrative on 情動メビウス expressed through the ASMR-ish spoken word section. I love the dramatic gothic atmosphere of プロミネンス, a guest arrangement by 平茸 of alt rock circle Aftergrow that's surprisingly uncharacteristic of their usual work and instead feels like a stylistic reference to Grand-Guignol. And of course I love the new age song mentioned last paragraph, 往昔地霊譚, which is utterly beautiful. If TsuBaKi keeps honing in on this sound they developed while also making their songs more focused, I can see them making an excellent album. (At least to me. They already have accolades from Japanese Touhou music listeners, and that's way more important than appearing on here. Still, with an album like this, I feel it wouldn't be long until something comes to supplant 38万キロの裏側 as my favorite album from the Chinese scene.)
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Crossed × Melody （2025-10-19） 社团：ギャラクティック・リボルバー, UNKNOWN BEATS pop rock (tr. 1), trap (tr. 2-4), UK drill and UK garage (tr. 4) 🇯🇵 Uh, I'm in a weird situation here where I like the EP overall, but think the collab is not well balanced. Being a collaboration between the rock circle ギャラクティック・リボルバー (Galactic Revolver) and trap circle Unknown Beats, I was expecting a mixture of rock and hip hop, but only the first song, the title track, is rock, and it's specifically rap rock without any hip hop beats. What makes Unknown Beats great to me is their embrace of contemporary hip hop beats, which the Touhou hip hop scene before only lightly touched. Making them rap on rock music without any trap addition feels like not using them to their full potential. As the result the song just feels like another J-pop rock tune. If you told me it was actually a collab between Galactic Revolver and a rap rock circle like 言ノ刃幻想鍛刀地, I would believe you. The two Unknown Beats retakes on Galactic Revolver's songs on the other hand, lack rock elements. The only sampled parts from the originals are the vocals, with no attempt to even sample and mess around with the guitars. I like these songs and the vocal sampling is legit cool, but as a fan of Unknown Beats it feels to me that Galactic Revolver didn't get much out of this collab. Consider this my most weirdly negative 3.5/5 review ever?
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Stella（nekka.） （2025-05-05） 社团：nekka. djent, progressive metal 🇯🇵 In the same vein of melodic bedroom djent like the Pandorabox EP below but with less good production, though I like the arrangements slightly more. The emphasis on post-hardcore-y power chords and use of twinkly post-rock guitars is also pretty played out during that era, but I can't deny that it's an emotionally powerful combination. Mathy guitar runs on 永夜抄 and the midtempo feel of 竹取飛翔 bring some variety to the instrumentation, and the vocal versions are solid additions and give a new way to look at the arrangements.
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Phantom（Pandorabox） （2025-05-05） 社团：Pandorabox djent, progressive metal 🇯🇵 pre-listening impressions: Pretty much sounds like melodic bedroom djent that I'd see a lot browsing got-djent in 2012 but I'll indulge in a bit of this type of nostalgia kinda funny that I'm adding this for nostalgia reasons even though a few hours ago I was gushing about the crazy interpolations on the new Panzerballett album and how they'd be a god-tier VGM metal arrangement group Yeah, pretty nice throwback to the bedroom djent era. Cleanly produced instrumental music with fusiony melodies (though that's kind of a given because ZUN's compositions are influenced by jazz fusion), with lighter moments featuring a ringing, glassy guitar tone that traces all the way back to TesseracT's 2007 demo. Only needs a bit of glitchy electronics and future/space aesthetics for 16 year old me to proclaim it as the future of Touhou metal. With that in mind, the crossfade saying it's modern metal is kinda ironic, as this EP's sound is more than a decade old. I'm gonna be real, this is only up here because I'm a sucker for the style. It's the popular sound during that era, and while it's not the most interesting music to come out of the bedroom djent movement, I'm also not tired of it. If you wish Herbivora was still making Touhou arrangements, listen to this.
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20 Years of Dawn （2025-02-08） 社团：Silhouette Dance EDM grabbag 🇰🇷 I'm always iffy checking out EDM comps without a specific topic since they're usually a mixed bag of genres I like and genres I don't like, but this one is consistently on the side of genres I like. Personal highlights are the UK garage June Bug and the multi-genre Lunarfall and ever-maple.
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Alice in 7 Colors （2025-10-30） 社团：hell raven hardcore techno, trancecore [no location, artist prefers not to reveal it] First off, shoutout to 用户:UnknownReposts〈走在夜晚的莲台野〉 for talking about how this is underrated which is why I knew about this in the first place, thanks for your hard work with wiki contributions. Something I weirdly neglected to talk about in the entry for hell raven's album last year was the track commentaries. I love when albums have some sort of commentary or liner notes, and unfortunately it's not something you tend to see in Touhou music due to various reasons. Which is a bummer, cuz these let me understand the album just a slight bit better. Even if I dislike a piece of art, I can still appreciate reading how the artist developed the art through the commentary, and maybe even see it from a different point of view. I like the MIDI/FM synths that's used prominently on DevilWorld, manufactured mind and DOLLCRAFT - it gives these songs a shmup-y feel. I thought DevilWorld in particular took influence from Manabu Namiki's Detroit techno-influenced FM soundtrack to Battle Garegga (1996) or Kou Hayashi and Daisuke Nagata's techno soundtrack to Radirgy Noa (2009), but reading the commentary it turns out I was overthinking it, the main inspiration was from MA.S ATTACK which makes a lot of sense. Hopefully it got a few people to check that circle out. IMO, this album shines best when it plays around with video gamey synths rather than trance synths, but also I'm The Complainer Who Complains About Trance Oversaturation In Touhou Music so like, yeah I would say that about the album. Even then, End of doll. is a hella ambitious trance closer with a delicate piano intro, a speed-up to introduce harder elements, a whole bunch of breakbeats and more delicate pianos to bookend the song. hell raven's commentary says that the track's main inspiration is from zts, who I find to be one of the more distinct artists in the doujin trance scene. That was nice to know and made me enjoy the song a bit more. Beyond that, the bitcrushed breakcore on that book that i hate is an inspired choice, and makes me wish that the hexD genre (which involves bitcrushing as a technique to achieve a hazy but digital production reminiscent of compressed audio in low quality mp3s or Youtube videos in the 2000s) that became internet-popularized during the COVID lockdown era actually had an impact on Touhou music.
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Hastverk är lastverk （2025-12-07） 社团：Lumpy Quail Orchestra ambient techno, IDM, breakbeat 🇯🇵 Atmospheric, breakbeaty techno with constant granular (sometimes trap-esque) sounds. You can tell this is a case where the arranger found a cool sound and decided to make a bunch of arrangements with it. The album can get boring, but I recognize that it's because it reminds me of the chiller side of 90s IDM which I don't particularly care for. I do like how they just went all-in on the techno repetitiveness on the aptly named Bloatware, where even the arrangement is minimal and consists of playing the first few notes of 明日ハレの日、ケの昨日 slowly. On a side note, is Anti-Pattern really a Reverse Ideology arrangement? Because I can't recognize it and I don't know if it's just super abstracted or the artist forgot to export the melody layer or something. (recommended)

Writing about these!

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異変の花々～ Flowers of Incident （2025-07-22） 社团：Medoi The Maid metalcore, thall 🇷🇺
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Across to higan EP （2025-10-19） 社团：Yayoi Softworks dubstep, future garage 🇯🇵 pre-listening notes: I was listening to Access to Arasaka's dubstep tracks while editing the list and was wondering why "Access to higan EP" wasn't linking even though I was on its wiki page hours earlier lmao anyways, as much as I love brostep's maximalism, I also like dubstep's focus on atmosphere and actually having prominent bass. And from the preview I hear some cool sound design. pretty cool collection of tunes. the EP's overall mood is subdued, but that doesn't stop kotoi from injecting a bit of color and warmth into it, like the colour bass segment at the end of Clocked out or just most of Brambles and briars. Also I'm pretty sure Drifting out's synth choices take influence from MA.S ATTACK.

Interested in listening

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TIMELESS （2025-02-08） 社团：동방！ 재즈재즈 대작전！ various jazz styles 🇰🇷 While I was making the wiki page for this album I checked the translation of the originals multiple times because I was heavily doubting that I was identifying them correctly (I was correct for everything except track 1, which I couldn't figure out from the preview). I love jazz arrangements that really expand on the originals like this.
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Touhou Guit. Mix （2025-02-08） 社团：Mirai illusion future rock 🇰🇷 Very Whitefists-esque in its combination of metal and 2010s EDM, and the EDM parts are pretty exciting too.
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BLACK PARSE （2025-05-05） 社团：UNKNOWN BEATS trap 🇯🇵 I really do need to listen to this circle more. Even though I'm hopelessly unequipped to talk about modern hip hop these guys are basically pioneering an actual wave of Touhou hip hop, moving it beyond Tamaonsen's long-dominant brand of fun but corny EDM pop rap. I'd rather people listen to them than a certain posse that launders watered down underground sounds (I can't tell the difference but people who's more knowledgeable about underground rap has claimed that) through Cool&Create tier fandombaiting meme garbage. Anyways go read what I wrote about FAKE KILL in the 2024 list.
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東方 REC at DNA （2025-03-23） 社团：紅月蝶 trap 🇯🇵 Another circle from this hip hop wave, and the first track with its UK drill and rage-influenced instrumental certainly makes an impression.
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Never Die （2025-05-05） 社团：ハコビバ pop rap 🇯🇵 Going from the preview, this circle seems to be partly from Tamaonsen's lineage of EDM pop rap and partly from the lineage of hip hop circles influenced by Unknown Beats (seriously, I was not expecting the preview to start with Jersey club beats).
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WE ONLY LIVE TWICE （2025-05-05） 社团：ついったー東方部 post-bop 🇯🇵
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Gensokyo Party Vol. 6 Border in Stasis （2025-05-05） 社团：KodamaSounds various genres, mostly EDM 🌐 I feel like KodamaSounds really doesn't get enough credit from the English-speaking doujin music crowd. Outside of some minor quibbles, I've heard nothing but good things about them from a few artists I've talked to. The circle's focus on a variety in genres and them actually releasing at M3 with Japanese translations also distinguishes them from the vast majority of collaborative doujin circles based outside of Japan, which tend to specialize in EDM and are either effectively a netlabel or only releases at local events of their doujin culture analogue. Their newly launched (as of 2025) sublabel/sibling circle Counterfest Records, with its emphasis on sampling and bootleg culture, brings to mind the free-spiritedness of 90s/00s doujin music culture represented by nerdcore techno and video game musicians at major companies forming their own music circles. In fact, you could probably draw comparisons between Counterfest and Allkore, a US-based circle/label started in 2009 that aimed to spread nerdcore techno around the world, and released compilations at Japanese events featuring artists both from and outside Japan. The fact that KodamaSounds releases at M3 and have Japanese translations is enough to convince cynics who think English-speaking circles are run by ignorant osu players. Even beyond that, the circle is run by people passionate and knowledgeable about doujin music and its culture. Comparable to Allkore's founder DJ SpeedBeatz, a nerdcore techno historian who wrote an encyclopedia covering its artists, KodamaSounds' founder Fivda is a long-time contributor at VGMdb and has added a vast amount of doujin music info there. I can tell you from experience that any music database contributors working at that level requires an intricate level of knowledge about the subject matter that you can only get through research and experience. okay maybe this is what I need to actually listen to the circle's Touhou albums. something to contexturalize the circle, which is more important than you'd expect at a glance.
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TOUHOU ACID SOUNDS 001 （2025-05-05） 社团：Yayoi Softworks bass music 🇯🇵 I'm a big fan of G Jones and EPROM's Acid Disk series, which puts the popular 90s acid bass sound in a late 2010s bass music context, resulting in some really gnarly headbanging tunes. And guess what this EP references on its cover?
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The Ascension （2025-04-27） 社团：ジェリコの法則 EDM 🇯🇵 Despite liking Jerico's stuff a lot when I first got into Touhou music, I haven't listened to them in a really long time. Putting this here as a reminder to do that.
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Touhou Colours： Emerald （2025-05-03） 社团：Chroma Sounds colour bass 🇨🇳 Gonna be real here, the inclusion of trance this time feels a bit like an regression to the mean, like the circle wasn't confident that Touhou music fans would want to check out an comp that's all colour bass and decided to add some trance to make it closer to a typical Touhou EDM album. Still, there's some intriguing genre combos here, like the 3 tracks that try to combine speedcore and colour bass. Plus, the announcement says they've got someone from Rushdown (which is THE colour bass label!) on the album, which is an amazing pull.
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Wakaremichi （2025-05-05） 社团：Alice At Last various genres 🇺🇸 I came across their music on Bandcamp while going thru the Touhou tag and finding Eiyasyou Synthetic, a unique percussive take on synthwave. Fast forward a few years and they actually have an album out! There's some nice fantasy music going on and some industrial stuff, as well as other styles.
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Dark Magic Tragedy （2025-06-14） 社团：Antares Enigma synthwave, darksynth 🌐 I tend to dislike most synthwave outside of the darksynth subgenre, but I'll still consider checking the genre out if it's related to artists I like. For reference, my favorite synthwave projects are Astrophysics and Boucle Infinie, both of which are much better known for their non-synthwave music (Astrophysics being one of the notable artists from the dreambreak/2020s wave of internet-based breaks scene, and Boucle Infinie being the side project of EDM-djent pioneer The Algorithm). In terms of labels, I've found Telefuture's output to be consistently interesting, perhaps helped by it being founded by chiptune artists who are interested in pushing the boundaries of the genre rather than indulging in 80s nostalgia. I also love 幻想郷深夜ドライブ Vol.1, and Antares Enigma seems to be The circle that's trying to push Touhou synthwave to the next level, so I figured I'd give them a try. All of this is to say, this is an attempt to get out of my comfort zone a bit, and I'm going into it aware that I might end up not liking it. Still, about half of the album is darksynth, and it has a ZUNstyle remix of Carpenter Brut, so I'm probably gonna have a good time.
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Neon Realms LP （2025-05-24） 社团：Alter Synth, Hakurei Haven EDM grabbag 🇮🇩 I'll probably miss out a lot without the accompanying zine (which the Bandcamp says is in Indonesian) but getting to listen to EDM bangers is still nice. The zine not only showcases Touhous in futuristic streetwear designs that the album is themed around, but it also has interviews relating to the Indonesian Touhou fandom. From what I gather from the announcement those interviews are with the huge Old Adam Bar community, as well as NATSUKI RECORDS, an early circle in the country's scene that released an album as far back as Comic Frontier 2. Even if EDM is not your thing, this is at least intersting from a history perspective.
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Gensokyo Piano （2025-08-17） 社团：氷結幻想 piano, jazz 🇨🇳 Their piano albums have been consistently fantastic and this one sounds like it'll be more of that. Plus, they started again after a 6 year hiatus!
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new melancholy etiquette （2025-05-05） 社团：magic red kids shoegaze, dream pop 🇯🇵
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華麗烏羽～Resplendent Raven Plumage （2025-08-09） 社团：蜂幽音声 gothic EDM/hardcore 🇨🇳 by gothic I mean "ornate harpsichords and choirs" gothic rather than the goth rock or futurepop type of gothic. was gonna call it Castlevania gothic but Castlevania music is actually more varied than that. anyways this is basically a modern doujin J-core album with gothic dressing and as someone who likes Camellia - GHOST and other similar tracks, the preview sounds pretty neat and is full of ear candy production so I'm probably gonna like it.
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Side:0 （2025-10-19） 社团：Arrule dub techno, ambient 🇯🇵 pinging all Deepdream of Doppelganger fans for this one
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Coup de Touhou （2025-10-12） 社团：HIDDEN TREASURE alternative rock 🇯🇵 so, fun fact: I've encountered a number of fanworks that are tributes to the band syrup16g (you can search the band's name in the wiki) which is quite influential to underground Japanese rock! While my experience with them is only limited to listening to Hell-See and Delayedead this year, I figure this was interesting enough to check out.
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echoes（少年ヴィヴィッド） （2025-10-12） 社团：少年ヴィヴィッド indie rock, post-hardcore 🇯🇵 another "I like the circle's other albums and should actually keep up with them" entry
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Here to Hear(t) （2025-10-12） 社团：ノーストリリア shoegaze 🇯🇵 concept album too! there's some variety in the genres probably because of that, there's one track that's outright dancey pop rock
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虚数十星 ～ Aversante Magno Arbor Sapientae （2025-05-05） 社团：最も憂鬱な僕 ZUNstyle 🇯🇵 mfw Dolls in Pseudo Paradise 2 dropped
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繪送誄歌 ～ Imagined Maidens between Frame and Score （2025-08-17） 社团：stella Maris ZUNstyle 🇯🇵 mfw Dolls in Pseudo Paradise 3 dropped
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FAST TRAVEL Pt.2 （2025-12-31） 社团：dat file records hardcore EDM grabbag 🇯🇵 place your bets on if I'm gonna be disappointed by the "hyperflip" tracks this time! will 餅屋 actually do digicore or is it bait for people who consider themselves more tapped in than your regular Touhou music listener? even if they turn out to be duds, there's still 5 other tracks that I like from the preview, so hopefully the album does a little better than the first Fast Travel. regardless of how accurate the hyperflip and dariacore tags are, you owe it to yourselves to at least listen to notable Japanese artists that are making these styles, like the ばくわら小学校 collective for hyperflip and lilbesh ramko for digicore.
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Psychologia： Fragments （2025-12-31） 社团：The Last Battalion progressive metal, djent 🇯🇵 not a bedroom djent nostalgia add this time. I'll actually have something interesting to say!
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Dance of the Nightly Sakura （2025-03-21） 社团：ProfPrac ZUNstyle 🇮🇳
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shortfilm2 （2025-10-12） 社团：アリスミア・アリスメア light math, post-rock 🇯🇵 another case of "I like the circle's other albums and should actually keep up with them". I love the vocal synth spoken word on 帰駅に咲く (which is available on the circle's channel). Its poetic delivery is straight out of the J-screamo playbook as a lot of these bands also have plenty of post-rock influences, but the fact that it's delivered using a vocal synth makes me think more of the avant-vocalsynth circle アメリカ民謡研究会, but with light math instrumentals rather than noise rock.
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弃乐园 （2025-08-01） 社团：ごんばこんなか vaporwave 🇯🇵 I haven't been keeping up with torash's further adventures in vaporwave, which is something 2020 me would be surprised by. or maybe not, since past me is already be aware how scattershot my musical interests are. either way, I'm putting them here so people are aware that he's still making vaporwave.
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シャングリラ（同人专辑） （2025-09-05） 社团：ごんばこんなか vaporwave 🇯🇵 see above

Extras

check out this movie called remilia perez, I watch it once every few days and get amazed by all the details

also, some Chinese doujin/tongren scene releases from this year I liked:

• TN163 - 无为主义者的寻幽。 - subdued, electronic-infused jazz in the vein of GoGo Penguin or Mouse on the Keys with vocal synth poetry reading. as someone who's mostly ambivalent about chill jazz, I thought this had a lot of interesting things to keep my attention.
• Vow's Voice - vow - EP centered around an 8.5 minute track that tells a story with its unstable drums and gothic atmosphere.

also a bit of self-promo, this year I published an ongoing writing project about a wide range of music that I affectionally call "not breakcore". While it's meant as a companion piece to another writing project of mine, I think it has some of my favorite writing about music so far while skipping most of the baggage of my early (pre-2022) attempts at music crit. I'd love it if you can give it a read and check out the music featured!