It's been out for a good few months now, but I've only just picked it up - I haven't bought any Happy Hardcore for at least a couple of years, although the spine card describes the CD as a "'Techno, Trance, Rock, Pop' true-form Happy Hardcore mash-up", which suggests something fairly eclectic, wouldn't you say?

All the tracks are produced by Buzzmasta and mixed by the ever-excellent DJ Yousuke, and are generally retro-styled old skool hardcore, with plenty of cheeky sampling from various pop tracks. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with pop and rock to know exactly whose copyright they're infringing, but the mix flows very nicely, bringing back many a memory of a wasted youth listening to old Slipmatt sets. A lot of Japanese Happy Hardcore is verging on Makina, so this is a pleasantly 'pure' mix for once.

The tracklist is as follows:

1. Intro - Sparks
2. Loud and Quiet
3. Icecream, Get You!
4. I Miss U
5. Flowers
6. Sppk
7. Like A Sunshine
8.血と骨 (Blood and Bone)
9. Lenny
10. Vision
11. Blue -> Orange
12. Shiawase Version
13. Rainbow 20000

Jeff Minter and Welsh folk will be excited by the slightly incongruously sheep-themed album artwork, too.

Nu Energy is soon to release Alek Szahala's Alanamra, an absolute belter of a tune. It's not as dark as most non-UK freeform, and so sounds a bit (bit) more mainstream, but the main melody is incredible...

Finrg releases are coming with ice-age rapidity at the moment, so this is extremely welcome. As long as the digital release isn't far off too, that is.

Also, here's a 30-ish second clip of Alek Szahala playing Alanamra at Mayhem (Australia) last year. The sooner he comes to Japan, the better - a Zio/B&B/Alek line up would be quite something.



And another 30 second clip of Alek in Canada a couple of months ago. Hopefully someone will have taken some better videos at Mayhem this year..

Long overdue, here's my first mix. It's already been posted everywhere from the Finrg forum to Myspace, and has had a surprising amount of good feedback, considering I'm still very much a beginner. The point of the mix was to promote some of the lesser known Japanese producers (particulary Full Circle DJs and Betwixt & Between), as well as attempt to put together a *cough* seamless mix of Finnish tunes that I'm particularly fond of.

Discord seems to have gone down particularly well, but Reincarnation is undoubtedly one of my favourite tracks at the moment, it's got just about everything. This mix leans towards the dark side, as a lot of Japanese tunes lend themselves to that pretty well - it's a bit less melodic than I might usually play.

Here's the tracklist:

1. Alek Szahala - Vengeance
2. Betwixt & Between - Reincarnation
3. Re-form - Sunstroke
4. Alek Szahala - Timiquizqueh
5. Carbon Based - Xerosis
6. Pain on Creation - V8
7. RaverRose / ThermalForce - al megiddo
8. Lab 4 - Nue Messiah
9. Full Circle DJs - Halcyon
10. Alek Szahala - Ashurnishishi
11. Eryk Orpheus & K Complex - Surrounded by Insanity
12. Betwixt & Between - Discord

And here's the hilariously unpredictable megaupload link:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=20JVEQJ1

Saturday saw my second trip to NRGetic Romancer, where I heard Nish play live for the first time. Coming after Zio, Betwixt & Between and the Full Circle DJs, his set dropped the speed a lot, but was absolutely excellent, and I'm not usually the biggest fan of NuNRG. All the folk attending really know their stuff, and are very friendly - both events have had an extremely nice atmosphere, and are so small scale that they feel more like a gathering of friends (which they effectively are). The next event (with Proteus and Adam Lab 4) might see the numbers increase a bit, I suspect.

I didn't manage to hear all of Zio's set, but he played Alek Szahala's new tune, Lagas, and RX's remix of Eternal Cannon. Betwixt & Between played a couple of new tunes that I haven't heard before, and the Full Circle DJs were very good, once again. Guld wasn't quite up to those standards, overdoing the bass and the volume - but the track selection was as good as expected.

Hello there! I'm currently living in Tokyo, and so TYFTH will be mainly concerned with the Japanese Freeform/NRG scene - whatever interesting info I can come up with, I'll put here. I suppose a useful element might be a discography of Japanese artists, so that'll be something I'll try to organise reasonably quickly. Thinking about it, it'll be useful for me, even if nobody else reads this.... I'll also have a ramble about any other interesting tunes that are released from Finland, the UK and various other places.

According to Wikipedia, Freeform has been around since 1999, but I only discovered it in 2005 after hearing a Betwixt & Between set played at NRGetic Romancer in Tokyo. The set included Supriya by Alek Szahala, and is single-handedly responsible for getting me into both the Japanese and Finnish scenes. Through them I've worked backwards to the UK, finding quality artists like Lab 4 (just as they disbanded...) and Eryk Orpheus. I must admit that on the whole I find UK Freeform to be rather poor, and more like pretentious Happy Hardcore than anything else, but the odd good tune does appear.

Since my early devotion to Intelligent Drum and Bass, I've been keen on melodic electronica with pace and energy, and Alek Szahala's sound is almost exactly what I've been looking for for about 10 years. It's great to see an artist realising the potential of a genre for once, particularly (an offshoot of) one that's been looked down upon musically (probably with good reason) for over a decade.

Incidentally, the image at the top of this post is the flyer for May's NRGetic Romancer, which I attended a whole 2 days after landing in Tokyo. It was absolutely excellent, as was June's event [which may well be the next post].