[Music CD]s that mimic ZUN games: Smells Like Beer vol. 1 by Useless!

[Popcioslav]

I originally made this thread for Uncreatable Idea seen below, however with more and more Music albums coming with high quality, but not being really games thus ending up overshadowed I've decided to give them a place in case anyone appreciates them as much as I do. If you found any music CDs like this or Elemental Quintet. please post them here, I'm really curious!



Once again, I'm not sure if this is the best place to share this, but user named Burnyho made a pretty nice replication of standard Touhou game formula, with story, music... well only without actual gameplay. The character art is made Ringo Nosuke. As of right it was released with 15 (16?) tracks and 6 stages with strong hints of extra stage being released soon. The project was written in japanese so I honestly have no clue what's going on in the plot, but I'm pretty sure the theme seems to be medicine/artificial people/science or how the author put it "I wonder if it's good to bring European science into the East" ?

Link to the first part (Stages 1~3): Youtube , Nico
Link to the second part (Stage 4~6):  Youtube , Nico
Also here's Soundcloud account with each individual song and nico one.

The titles of the songs:

1. Fantasy Research Laboratory                                                                             (Title screen theme)
2. Gensokyo in Silence ~ Silent Incident                                                                (Stage 1 theme)
3. Singing Mandragora ~ Lunatic Song                                                                  (Nasu Kanoko's theme)
4. An Utterly Unprecedented Bizarre Case                                                           (Stage 2 theme)
5. Inscrutible Tea Party ~ Strange Teaparty                                                          (Theophilia Cinnabar's theme)
6. Fantastic Night Flight Behind the Shrine Grounds                                          (Stage 3 theme)
7. Melusina of Subservience ~ Dragonmaid                                                         (Melusina Brittany's theme)
8. Lakebed Shoot-Out                                                                                               (Stage 4 theme)
9. Chemical Trigger happy                                                                                        (Kabino A. Hekiko's theme)
10. The Fantasy Philosophy that the Girl Sang of ~ Fantastic Neoplatonism  (Stage 5 theme)
11. White-Coated Creator God ~ Dream of Dr. Jaldabaoth                                (Phillipa A.T.B. von Hohenheim's theme)
12. The Truth Casts a Shadow on the World of Reality                                       (Final Stage theme)
13. Perfect Human ~ Dream of Humanity                                                             (Hinoide Ai's theme)
14. Eastern Postscript Story ~ An Utterly Unchanging and Stimulating Daily Life        (Extra stage theme)
15. Can the Corpus Delicti be Proven?                                                                   (Theophilia's second theme)
16. Knowing Not Love, Humans Know Grief                                                         (Ending theme)
17. Reverie Pursuit Laboratory                                                                                (Staff Roll theme)
18. Player's Waltz                                                                                                       (Game Over theme)

Just wanted to share these and ask if anyone would like to help translating this? I'm legit curious about the story and I really love the soundtrack.
EDIT: Scroll down for mp3 download link and Gilde's summary

[Shizzo]

Whoooa, this is really cool!  and the music's pretty awesome.  Thanks for sharing!  I'm loving what I'm listening to so far!

[gilde]

(stomps into the room w/ one leg real heavily like a sumo wrestler) heLLO

i wrote up a summary of the story + char.title/bgm/stage title/spell translations yesterday, here u go:

https://pastebin.com/1qMWZLeV

(some of the song titles are different bc of TL Accuracy Reasons and some of them are different for 'i just phrased it that way w/o thinking too hard about it' reasons )

[Shizzo]

(stomps into the room w/ one leg real heavily like a sumo wrestler) heLLO

i wrote up a summary of the story + char.title/bgm/stage title/spell translations yesterday, here u go:

https://pastebin.com/1qMWZLeV

(some of the song titles are different bc of TL Accuracy Reasons and some of them are different for 'i just phrased it that way w/o thinking too hard about it' reasons )

Thank you as ever for the translations Gilde! ♥  Oh man, I can't wait for the EX stage now.

[Popcioslav]

(stomps into the room w/ one leg real heavily like a sumo wrestler) heLLO

i wrote up a summary of the story + char.title/bgm/stage title/spell translations yesterday, here u go:

https://pastebin.com/1qMWZLeV

(some of the song titles are different bc of TL Accuracy Reasons and some of them are different for 'i just phrased it that way w/o thinking too hard about it' reasons )

Thank you GIlde, this is amazing! Can't believe it just took you so little time.

The fact that stage 5 boss truly is the mastermind was kind of a cool detail that reminded me of SA and DDC...huh ...
Also again, totally my fault, but thanks for clarifying final boss' full name. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to Ai (as in A.I.) or Al (as in Alphred/Alfred - since there were so many european names in this already). Also the plot kind of sounds like Touhou Forever - no youkai incident? HMMMM... I'm actually not surprised Reimu's the only main character this time. Marisa probably is still resting until youkai will start acting again.

And also huge thanks for the bgm translation correction. To tell you the truth, I just took most of them from here thinking if author/someone translated it for Burnyuho it must be right. The only issue being the last two tracks, which I had to look up from soundcloud links and such. I'm really terrible with japanese as you see, but thank you.

EDIT: Also in case anyone would be interested (I know I was before I just converted them myself) the creator/burnyuho/Uzuki Neigh prepared mp3 download for songs in this album (the password is: idea). Now it's actually a music CD ^^;

Also game over theme is there and it's title is " プレイヤーズワルツ " ... "Player's Waltz" ? Google translate can't save me here

[Popcioslav]

First things first: Extra stage to 東方人哀篇　～ Uncreatable Idea. has been released by Burnyuho. It's a pretty good way to end an already good package. If you liked the story and characters of the originals you might especially enjoy one character making a return. Oh and stage theme seems to be a remix of few ZUN songs already, pretty cool. No idea how to translate theme titles though.

seriously I wonder why Mrs. Cinnabar is back, I do get that she's supposed to author's avatar of some sorts, but she felt like the only unrelated character in the story, that being said, now the description of her species makes sense


Secondly - and the reason this is appearently not just Uncreatable Idea thread anymore, artist known as khirio partnered together with his pal Nokisaki Furin and also tried something similar with their trial release of Touhou Shukanto ～ Brilliant Works:


You can find individual songs here on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/khirio/sets/brilliant-works-trial-ver
And individual art on pixiv: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=70850484

Ost names seem to be:

1. Candlelight Bridge
 2. Vermilion Sky
 3. White Messenger
 4. Wickedest Forest
 5. Blustery Staccato
 6. Foggy Twilight
 7. Silhouette in the Dusk

[Shizzo]

Whooa, this is really cool!  Thanks for sharing Popcioslav! 

Do you know if Brilliant Works will be a proper fangame or just a fan album?

[Popcioslav]

Do you know if Brilliant Works will be a proper fangame or just a fan album?

Everything I shared and will share here is for 99,9% going to just stay as fan albums, just with fangame disguise.
 Book of Star Mythology is the only fan album to be turned into a fangame as far as I know.

[gilde]

Uncreatable EX summaryyyy. voila!

Summary of Brilliant Works:

For some reason the evening glow has been stretching on for hours each day. Weird!! Let's go investigate!!

• Stage 1 boss is Wakaba Yahata, a carrier pigeon youkai. The Stage 2 boss slashed her mailbag and now she's dropping letters everywhere whoops
• Stage 2 boss is Kazari Kamakura, a kamaitachi. ...That's about it! She's just a plain ol' kamaitachi without any quirky twist or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
• Stage 3 boss is Yu Mikage, a youkai responsible for urban legends of "shadow people". Her shadow powers are strongest at sunset, so she's been enjoying the incident... but as she informs the protagonist, it's not real sunset. The flow of time hasn't been affected or anything; it's just that someone's emitting a huge amount of light well into nighttime. Off we go to find them!

Also here's what the original JP titles for some of the songs are (the ones not listed are the same as the official English alt titles, just in katakana).

• 1. Bridge of Dreams, Lit by the Setting Evening Sun
  (*the "setting evening sun" part (夕日のさして) is taken from one of Sei Shonagon's poems in the Pillow Book, specifically the same poem about the seasons that ZUN drew the "youyou" part of PCB's title from)
• 4. Enchanted by the Forest's Magic
  (*the phrasing used here (魔法にかけられて) is the same as the JP title of the 2007 movie Enchanted?? not sure whether coincidence or not :U)
• 5. Staccato of Strong Gales
• 7. Silhouette Floating in the Dusk
  (*these two are just splitting hairs really)

(i love it whenever a tracklist comes with simplified or even wholly different english titles like with ZUN's music CDs)

[Shizzo]

Thank you a lot for the summary, gilde!  Always awesome to read your translations! ♥

 That being said, huh, the Ex boss sure has a lot of obscure references to her spellcards.  Most of them which I couldn't even find through google-fu.  Still, that OST is 10/10, I'm loving it and the new album's too!

[Popcioslav]

Few things I've gotta hit on.
Personally to me I don't mind weird references on Theophilia after all. Actually I really like the idea of Crime/Investigation involving youkais since due to their inhuman and often impossible powers they indeed would be capable of Perfect Crime, I wish something like that was done again, but better (I know White Names Spoiled Past did that, but again, I felt like it could've been handled better).
Regarding the reference, I don't think the creator is like that, Theophilia most likely however. Even in the teaser before the extra video he posted this, which seems to be containing parts of "The Corpus Delicti" novel. All those references make her seem like someone who would be in an episode of "Making a Murderer" and I think it's interesting idea nonetheless? Someone appearing as a social stage 2 boss, there's no way they are actually a cold-blooded killer above the law, is there? I do think showcasing that truly the most powerful and disturbing things in Gensokyo are those small fries is a good narrative point. I was kind of hoping with ZUN doing this with Eternity after implying she's a Tokoyo no Kami, but he didn't really do anything of the sort so far.

I would normally say I look forward to the creator's next work... but Burnyuho already posted a teaser for it appearently?: https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm34227604
Ancient Times except Nature. seems to be another Music album mimicing ZUN's games, music and artstyle. I'm not good at translating so I don't know anything else, but hey, it's something I suppose? Kind of weird for them to not post it on Youtube like he did with Uncreatable Idea. but I'm happy nonetheless


Also I was kind of hoping to learn more about Kazari because I did realize she was a kamaitachi even at the first glance, but I was kind of hoping there would be more to her. Ah well, at least it's funny she and stage 1 boss have some kind of relationship. I hope there will be more things like that with future game/album stories. Like stage 2 boss was a victim of stage 3 boss, which in return works for stage 4 boss and so fourth. It helps imo. Like in UC's case, the story is solid, but after reading the translation, Ai kind of came out of nowhere and the only relation to the plot she had was the she was mastermind's creation.

[gilde]

Stages 4 through 6 of Brilliant Works are oooouuuuut. (In art form, at least! Music will presumably be done at a later date.)

Stage 4 boss is Ukyou Izumi, an entertainer from the Human Village who unwittingly became a magician in the process of honing her craft. She's particularly good with mizugei (traditional performance involving water sprays). The stage 6 boss is her protégé, who she's on her way to meet.

Stage 5 boss is Shizuka Udzuki, an owl youkai with the ability to erase sound. Unlike Luna, though, her powers obey the laws of thermodynamics, so the sound gets converted into light energy. This is the source of the massive light; there's been so much noise coming from the other end of the woods that Shizuka can't get any reading done, so she's been erasing it with her powers. (It's served as a nice reading lamp, in her opinion.) After beating her, she agrees to turn off her powers if we deal with whatever's been making the noise.

Stage 6 boss is Ukyou's protégé Shushu Hinoya. She's a candle tsukumogami with the power to manipulate fire, and started studying fireworks (the source of all the noise) under Ukyou's guidance so she could make people happy in a way that she couldn't as an old, unused candle. Her fight with the protagonists is just a fun fireworks rehearsal from her perspective, but either way, it satisfies her enough to take a break from her current location and go practice elsewhere.

BGM:
8. Rest in the Flow of a River Bathed in Light
9. Magic Hour of Clear Streams
10. Shining Silence of a Remote Land
11. Solitary Silent Hunter
12. The Sound of Flowers Echoing in the Night Sky
13. Gleaming Flowers that Fill the Sky ~ Brilliant Bouquet

[Popcioslav]

Stages 4 through 6 of Brilliant Works are oooouuuuut. (In art form, at least! Music will presumably be done at a later date.)

Yeah seen it already, but didn't know if it's alright to post it seeing as there's no music for now.
Still it's kind of cool to imagine what kind of songs these characters will have. ESPECIALLY Shushu Hinoya's.

[Popcioslav]

Uncreatable Idea became a full on album... for free of course. Also new cool cover art

sorry for a lil' bump there

[not ZUNs wife]

Uncreatable Idea is very memorable and fun

[Popcioslav]

SO THERE'S A NEW COMPOSING LORD IN THE RING

I don't feel like there's a need to introduce Useless, but in short if you follow modern fanmade ZUNlike music, you probably heard his work. He's probably most well known for Shunned Child and the fake Touhou 17 main menu theme. So he has made a very ZUN-like album CD. And by that you can tell it's very clearly Touhou 17 inspired. They're not straightforward arranges mind you. If you like the modern instruments in Th16/17 but not necessarily the melodies, you might still love this.

https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm35165326 - Trailer video
https://ichigo-paprika.booth.pm/items/1383477 - Album free to DL here.

Waiting for the clean translation before posting the track list and names.

[KaiserKnuckle]

Ooooh hot diggity!! Glad to see this is still being updated with new music. still waiting for that full version of brilliant works though. khirio please

Useless has been a musician I have been keeping an eye on, because their tracks have been quite awesome; aside from their fake WBaWC title theme, they have also done a WBaWC-type arrangement of Hartmann's Youkai Girl and a mashup of Doll Judgment and No More Going Through Doors.

Speaking of WBaWC, that is the main influence you can hear in basically every track, almost as if this album is almost a reinterpretation of the game's OST, Track 4 uses Urumi's theme's 808 synths as a stage theme, which works to a greatly melancholy effect.

東方風研究　～ Smells Like Beer. vol.1 (Tōhō Fukenkyū, "Eastern Fan Research") (東方風 is the Japanese signifier of Touhou-style fan content you can find on Nicovideo and Pixiv)

1.   消えた博麗の巫女
   The Disappearance of the Hakurei Shrine's Miko

2.   霧の冥界
    Foggy Netherworld

3.   ロスト・コープス
    Lost Corpse

4.   最も地上に近い地下
    The Ground Closest to the Underground

5.   歪んだ割り算
    Distorted Division

6.   地中の青い空
    The Underground's Blue Sky

7.   第三次境界大戦
    The Third Boundary War Dai sanji kyōkai taisen; pun on 第二次世界大戦 (Dai niji sekai taisen, World War II)

The story, as made apparent by the first track/title theme's name, is that Reimu has up and disappeared, which is causing an uproar in Gensokyo as the Hakurei Barrier is soon to be thrown into disarray due to her being missing, leaving Marisa and Yukari to trudge out to the Netherworld in order to find her.

Notably, no boss names or anything of that sort are mentioned at all for the story (aside from, presumably, Yuyuko, who is mentioned in the second track), only being a single continuous string of sentences for each time the music comments would be there.

[Shizzo]

Oh my god, he REALLY nailed the Th17 style!  That's so impressive!  Amazing album!

[Shizzo]

Sorry for the double post, but this deserves an announcement of its' own! 

Burnyuho (the guy behind Uncreatable Idea) just released a mini album of his own!

雛鳥曼然樂　～ Unrecognized Error in Fantasy.


Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuzarjsa6Lg
Full Album free download link: https://hina-chro.booth.pm/items/1340653

Hype!!

[not ZUNs wife]

SO THERE'S A NEW COMPOSING LORD IN THE RING

Useless did a great job exploring that Touhou 17 sound! stage 3 boss theme is great, makes you imagine an elegant but eccentric character there

Burnyuho (the guy behind Uncreatable Idea) just released a mini album of his own!

just listening to this now, hype!