I feel like it’s too soon to call it “coming full circle.” It sounds too final. We’re back to Jerico’s Law; we haven’t been back since the very first TTMR, in fact. (Note: TTMR 001 was not published on GR)
This time, we’re opening one of my favorite albums, perhaps of my entire collection, if not just my favorite Jerico album at all: East Side Reincarnation. Let’s talk about it, and then the Phantom Ensemble arrange in it.
The Jerico Sound
Jerico has always been one to experiment with their sound. While there’s a distinctive Jerico style and a particular approach to composition I once described as “chaotic high-energy” in TTMR 001, the one thing you can be sure of is that you can never know what to expect.
East Side Reincarnation is the earlier of the two albums Jerico released in 2013, just before Arrenged Explosion. It continues what is now a tradition Jerico has established since they hit the scene in 2010: don’t ever stay confined to one genre and play as hard as you possibly can.
You’ll find a sampler of just about everything in this album.
The surprisingly mellow, reggae-like beats and disjointed melodies of Green Eyed Acidizz (an arrange of, you guessed it, Parsee’s theme Green-Eyed Jealousy)…
A more by-the-book progressive techno riff on Retrospective Kyoto with Retro Bullet…
A dip into heavy metal guitars, and an aggressive, thumping beatline that seems to channel Flandre’s most destructive impulses with Catadioptric, which remixes U.N. Owen Was Her…
A foreboding electro arrange of Centennial Festival for Magical Girls with Magic Presentation…
Really, if you had to have just one Jerico album, I recommend this one just for the sheer range it has to show. I’m not gonna showcase everything; this is my recommendation to please check out the whole album.
Character pieces
Before I go over the track I wanted to talk about, lemme go on a brief tangent. It’s going somewhere, I promise.
The most obvious sentence in the world: I love Touhou music.
But if I had to define what my favorite Touhou music is like, I’d say I really love whatever feels like a character piece, or evokes a particular vibe or atmosphere that really fits with a character. With Touhou, there’s hundreds - literally! - of opportunities to do that when most of the soundtrack is effectively stage and boss themes associated with specific characters.
Earlier, I mentioned Catadioptric from the same album; this is an example of what I mean. Aggressive, relentless instrumentation that evokes something Flandre can easily become; aggressive and relentless.
Maybe it’s because in its own way, what I call a “character” piece is telling a story. You don’t need lyrics to convey a mood, and with the right composition, you can portray a character in a particular light.
Interestingly, I think many of the most famous Touhou arrange songs have done the opposite. I don’t want to throw shade at IOSYS or Innocent Key, but Marisa Stole the Precious Thing and Cirno’s Perfect Math Class aren’t character pieces so much as they are overriding, character-redefining. Their enduring popularity is such that if these tracks are your only exposure to Touhou, it only solidifies an impression of the characters they portray that just… isn’t what they are normally.
Not to start a canon/fanon discussion, but there is something to be said about popularity being the solidifier of fanon. The only difference between a headcanon and fanon is how many people agree with your headcanon.
Even more amusing to me is the most popular Touhou arrange in history, Bad Apple feat. nomico courtesy of Alstroemeria Records, has, by osmosis and through the spread of the well-known music video, become synonymous with Touhou in general, with all of its characters rather than just one.
And the craziest part is the ZUN original Bad Apple is a remix of is just one of the many PC-98 tracks Alstro is so fond of remixing. The ZUN original Bad Apple!! is the stage 3 theme from Lotus Land Story; the corresponding boss is Elly, a blonde with a scythe and perhaps the precursor to the other scythe girl, Komachi Onozuka.
You know.
That dork?
And yet, the Bad Apple’s PV doesn’t feature Elly as a main character.
You find Reimu, Marisa, Patchouli, Remilia, Sakuya, Flandre, Youmu, Yuyuko, Komachi, Eiki Shiki, Mokou, Keine, Eirin, Kaguya, the Prismriver Sisters (we’ll talk about those dorks below), Chen, Ran, Reisen in quick succession, Momiji, Sanae, Hina, Kanako, Suwako, Yukari, Tenshi, Aya, Suika, Alice and one of her dolls, Nitori, and Yuuka first.
3 minutes 15 seconds in, the PV remembers what song this is a remix of and finally, finally, we see Elly for a couple of seconds… Then Reimu and Marisa again, and the song ends on the Yin-Yang symbol.
If the lyrics are meant to be from Elly’s point of view, then it only makes it even sadder that the most well-known thing (the animation in the PV) associated with the song doesn’t put Elly front and center… But then again, if it did, it wouldn’t have become this universal anthem of everything Touhou.
The order in which these characters are presented feel like a who’s who of everyone who was popular in the fandom circa 2012. Many hadn’t even been introduced yet when the song originally released on Lovelight.
All this to say, Bad Apple is the anti-character theme. It’s the anthem of the fandom - and it is about no-one in particular in Gensokyo.
Melancholic and Maniac
You see THESE three dorks?
Experience the Ensemble is very much a character piece. Today’s song is EXTREMELY, ABSOLUTELY, and COMPLETELY about them.
It comes the closest to getting what the Prismrivers are in spirit, and appropriately so, it does it in music. These three don’t get a whole lot of love anymore, not as much as they did earlier in the fandom’s history, but at least we have tracks like these.
It opens on a thundering drum solo, quickly joined by cymbals, then after a digitized voice invites you to…
ｅｘｐｅｒｉｅｎｃｅ ｔｈｅ ｗｏｒｌｄ！
…we’re off. Your ears are assaulted with all kinds of instruments, many all at once; a slap guitar, a buzzy lead synth, hints of an organ, a trance-y pad near the middle, many sound effects and samples… It’s a lot.
The Prismriver Sisters are described as playing music that sounds almost scattered and disconnected at first; it feels like a cacophony, an assault on the senses, but it turns out entrancing, beautiful. Their music gets its grips into you.
In lore, they do it because of the illusory notes they are capable of playing; magic music, essentially, that exists in two forms: melancholic for sounds that calm and soothe, and maniac for sounds that enhance emotions.
Jerico’s sound in its entirety feels like the concentrated spirit of the energy behind these principles. Experience the Ensemble feels like a summary of Jerico’s sound, but it’s also unmistakably in the spirit of the Prismrivers.
It’s loud. It’s fast. It’s over in 3 minutes and a half.
It’s also unashamedly…
Fun?
Earnest?
A hint of sassiness, even? There’s no way this track isn’t self-aware. There’s no way Jerico doesn’t know what they were doing here. And that’s the genius part.
It feels exactly like the sort of music the Sisters would play at a concert. There’s even the kind of drums Raiko would play, even though she joined the band years after this album came out. So we’ll call it a happy coincidence - but it only reinforces the feeling that this is a character piece.
This, by far, is the reason why Experience the Ensemble is my favorite track on this album and one of the defining reasons why I love this album. It wasn’t enough that it’s a 14-track CD full of incredibly good arranges, it wasn’t enough to have an absolutely sick cover art; it had to go up a notch and have one of my all-time favorite Jerico tracks too.
Man, I love Touhou music.
Song details
Song title: Experience The Ensemble
Artist: Jerico
Album: East Side Reincarnation (Track 10)
Circle: ジェリコの法則 (Jerico’s Law)
Release date: 2013/05/26 (Reitaisai 10)
Touhou originals remixed:
- Phantom Band ~ Phantom Ensemble ; 幽霊楽団 ～ Phantom Ensemble (Perfect Cherry Blossom, Stage 4 boss theme; Lunasa, Lyrica, and Merlin Prismriver)