This release is another which epitomizes what I love about Toy Label Releases. What you can expect: dissonant, droning staticy synths paired with slow drum. looping, repetitive, meditative arpeggios and drum loops. playfulness with BPM. atmospheric sounds, but ones that don’t really try to be atmospheric. And all of this packaged in some familiar dance beat patterns and playful drum machine knob twirling.
Check out what the label has to say about the album at the bottom of the page, right below the DL. Directly below you can see my track by track impressions. My favorite track by far is bath torale by yataregion, so you can stream that track as well.
MADMAN - A DANGER
This song sets the mood for the album with a long detuned and atmospheric synth chord and chorus vocal to go with it, very similar to a Zelda dungeon. We’ll see more of this sound alter on the album. Taking it’s time, a slow deep bass hit eventually comes in. This is a very ominous and minimal intro track.
Fun fact: If you listen closely you can hear a break in the vocal track, I believe it’s a symptom of the vocal being a soundbyte copy pasted. It’s clunky but it works perfectly and adds to the charm of the track
Z80A - Redimensioned Array (DS-3 mix)
On a surface level, the fast-paced artificial sounding drum loop on this track, sounding like dialing a phone number, may seem to ruin the mood constructed by the last track. However this track actually benefits from the tone of the previous track in the long run: the loops functions more as a meditative background sound rather than a beat. This is the percussive side of the album, still keeping a simple and repetitive nature.
If you choose to pay attention to the track, you will notice subtle alterations of the several other drum beats that come in and out. If you leave it in the background, it is just a nice meditative rhythm.
The structure of this song relies on the initial loop at the beginning and slowly builds up, deconstructs, and build up again for a final goodbye. The entireity of the track is about playing with layered drum loops. It’s energizing. Despite the many layers, it feels unpretentious and playful.
yataregion - bath torale || FAVORITE
This track takes the rhythmic approach of the previous track but adds a focus point in the form of a strange windy synth. It literally sounds like going through a tunnel. I’ll let me listening at 1:45 AM explain:
“is it a synth? no. it's a windy sound. a train passing by, now you're sitting in the tunnel riding the train. but then the train becomes a midi instrument going up and down chromatically(?). it sounds kind of like a fishtank, but when it's constant it again becomes a windy tunnel resonant timbre.”
This synth travel all along the range of frequencies from deep bass to high pitched “I accidentally left the window open 1cm on the freeway”. It plays with your perception in an uncanny valley of timbre and it stays interesting with a constant kick and a playful ever-changing snare[?] to accompany it.
One last thing I will say about why I love this track: there are only two layers. The drum and the synth. It stays interesting by playing with your perception and changing the drum beat constantly. In my experience, this combination of characteristics is rare in electronic music: a combination of high effort & attention put into instrumentation & composition, and a lack of overengineered sound through methodical mastering and indeterminable layers of sound. Usually a song is either a dance song, and has very few layers and no changes and not much interesting. Or it is like, IDM, and is very technical and layered. Or it is extremely concerned with atmosphere, overengineering/using tons of layers. I hope songs like this, transparent in composition and still interesting to listen to, influence more electronic musicians.
“you can hear it clip a little on some of the notes, but who teh fuck cares! its a sick ass preSET! and im here for that. we love a good LFO. and then the lfo become quite high frequency , i believe. causing a very noisy sound.
ending is a cop out. i don tliek it. i understand theat they are trying to have som evariety on thsi alvum tho. ”
Z80A - include
This one is very similar to z80a’s first song on the album in it’s focus on repetitive loops. Here though, we get some knob twiddling which sounds very “circuit-bendy”. The pattern is obscured, distorted, cut up, but the rhythm of it stays there.
This has that evolving feeling that a good house or techno set has, where the beat slowly evolves into a different one, but in a more dissonant and irritating way. The track eventually flat out falls apart like many songs one doesn’t know how to end properly.
tl;dr this song sounds like a crash in SNES F-Zero.
MADMAN - record switch
A simple and clean four on the floor beat and some synths. This is an average, simple dance track. but the synth chords match the ones MADMAN used on the opening track and fit that mood but in a more upbeat way.
Near the ¾ mark a different synth comes in which is more spooky, it doesn’t really fit but, whatever.
CHRONO - GAMMALEVEL:2nd
I can’t write anything better than exhausted 2am me did honestly:
“drum macine
then r2d2 does a freestyle on the track!”
This track is similar to Redimensioned Array in sound, as well as in it’s purpose of providing a more rhythmic contrast to the MADMAN track which preceded it. Following the overall storyline/trend of the album, this song is more dancy and less repetitive than Redimensional Array.
yataregion - gosh
Clean, relaxing, sleepy synths. Feels less harsh and more subtle, clean, properly mesmerizing than other tracks on the album. Helps get rid of the tension other tracks on the album cause. An arpeggio dances around octaves and carries the listener through the rolling drums.
If “include” was F-Zero, this track is Green Hill Zone with a couple beers on a summer day.
CHRONO - FACULA
A nice intro using that liquidy weird noise.. I dunno what that shit’s called man. A bunch of neat trebly electronic noises flutter around, then a rather irritating beat comes in and harshes the vibe twice in the song. It draws your attention back to the song so you pay attention to the final song on the album, as well as making the track feel more cohesive with everything else on the album. But it’s still annoying as fuck when you just want to relax as this mildly-grating album finishes. The first time it comes in it overstays it’s welcome, but the second time its more tolerable. Once it’s gone there is just fun circuitboard noises and ticking as the song concludes unceremoniously.
Oh, and there’s a siren/train type noise, which is very satisfying for some reason. I believe it might be the same chord but many octaves higher as on MADMAN’s tracks.
Download
[ENGLISH THX 2 GOOGLE TRANSLATE]
[Compilation cassette]
First memorable work. It is mostly made mainly by Onodera. Even though Techno Label, it does not change at all in that it does not link with the club / DJ scenes at all, even now. At
that time, myself who had only MSX yet, was determined to buy it
immediately as Onodera who freely manipulates the "three techno sacred
treasures", sampler, analog synth and single body sequencer. It is made quite straight as a work, and even if it says that he is doing techno, there is still little discomfort. (Nakajima)
The title and Jake which came up when I saw the page of underground art collection collection. Liner, preset to MSX printer
I think that I wanted to make fonts, bindings, or anything like the initial TRANSONIC.
On
the eve of a color copy machine on convenience store, cut dirty
monochrome copy material with scissors, paste with glue, and copy again.
Degradation remarkable. Mass production based on the cassette composed by dubbing the cassette to the master. Degradation remarkable.
MADMAN's
song, originally stereo, but because of the balance of the whole and
because of my own recording environment at the time I am making it
monophonic. In the early period, there are many such things. I think that it was bad. "bath torale" of yataregion (DJ Shiitake) is an early masterpiece that is in line with "tamasiirettsha".
Sounds like "Kang, Kang, Kang" rim shot and snare never go on endlessly, cold like ice is cool.
In the Z80A "Include", "Rakasuka Acid" was developed, which became a topic in part at the time. A masterpiece that implied a crash crash accident of Chiptune far before the word chiptune was born. CHRONO is influenced by the word experimental,
It is the impression of now that I was doing endless techno which was incompressible. The composition of "FACULA" is not bad.
Overall, I think that it is a well-made comp.
Digression. When
listening to the CD "ELECTRO DYNAMIC VOL.1" issued by TRANSONIC RECORDS
in 2004, I was surprised to think that it is "TOWERTYPE!"
Digression. There
was a person named Niko when I met at Onodera's house in making this
work but never participated after I came home on the way. A few years later, he debuted from a label named HYU called Childisc. (Onodera)
[ORIGINAL JAPANESE]
[コンピレーションカセット]
記念すべき第１作目。ほとんど小野寺主体で作られる。テクノレーベルとは言えど、全くといってクラブ/DJなシーンとはリンクしないという点では、今もこの当時も変わらない。この当時、まだMSXしか持っていなかった自分は、サンプラーとアナログシンセと単体シーケンサーという「テクノ3種の神器」を自在に操る小野寺が非常に羨ましかったので、すぐに買うことを決意する。作品としては相当まっすぐに作られており、テクノやっていますと言ってもまだ違和感は少ない。
(Nakajima)
アングラアート作品集のあるページを見て思いついたタイトルとジャケ。ライナー、MSXのプリンターにプリセットの
フォント、装丁、とにかく初期のTRANSONICみたいにしたかったんだと思う。
コンビニにカラーコピー機が登場する前夜、汚いモノクロコピーの素材をハサミで切って糊で貼って、またコピー。劣化著しい。音はカセットをマスターにダビングして構成したカセットを元に量産。劣化著しい。
MADMANの曲、元はステレオなのに全体のバランスを取る為と当時の自分の録音環境の所為でモノラルにしてる。最初期はこういうのが多い。悪いことしたと思う。yataregion（DJ椎茸）の「bath
torale」は「tamasiirettsha」と並ぶ初期傑作。
「カンッ、カンッ、カンッ」っていうリムショットともスネアともつかない音が延々と続く、氷のような寒さが格好良い。
Z80A「Include」において「ラジカセアシッド」を展開してて、これが当時一部で話題になった。チップチューンという言葉が生まれる遥か前にチップチューンの暴走激突事故を暗示してた名曲。CHRONOはエクスペリメンタルという言葉に影響され、
どっちつかずなテクノを延々とやってたなあというのが今の感想。「FACULA」の構成は悪くない。
全体的に、よく出来たコンピだと思う。
余談。TRANSONIC RECORDSが2004年に出したCD「ELECTRO DYNAMIC VOL.1」を聴いた時に「TOWERTYPEだ！」と思って驚いた。
余談。本作を作るにあたって小野寺宅でミーティングした時に日宇君という人がいたが途中で帰ってしまい以後参加することはなかった。数年後、HYUという名でChildiscというレーベルからデビューしている。(Onodera)
