LONG POST IS LONG CONSIDER THIS YOUR WARNINGババア愛してる！ババアまみれの東方アレンジAnyway, here is that godly remix
^ Added to my ever-growing
Cosmic Mind Arrange playlist. Note that the playlist is meant to be thorough as opposed to selective, so there are quite a few "meh" arranges on it, but I think most of the arranges are pretty darn good. Some of my absolute favorites from that list have already been mentioned, but I'm convinced they bear repeating, and so I will list them along with some others (hopefully) not mentioned yet:
>
the erhu arrange by Gyozayahonpo that Formless God linked earlier in the thread - the intro bit (repeated in-between the erhu and other ZUNtune segments) already has me wibbling, only for the erhu to come in and effectively shred my heart into itty bitty pieces. And it all
Hurts. So. Good.> the epic orchestral
Cosmic Line, which I'm pretty sure was linked in some other thread though I haven't seen it in this one yet - I feel like this is Cosmic Mind's answer to that mindblowing WAVE arrange of Sumizome ~ Border of Life; pretty much every listen of this results in HNNNNNNGGGGG for me at some point, especially if that point is ~2:22-3:17.
> I'm completely torn on the three metal arranges by xi-on (linked earlier),
Iron Attack, and
Demetori. I just-- HNNNNNNGGGGG.
>
Four Seasons of Loneliness from TatshMusicCircle's amazing
Far East of East II album, and the previously-linked but not named
star river by IOSYS - nearly all Cosmic Mind vocal arranges are pretty good (at least imo), but even so these stand out among them as some of my absolute favorites, although neither can hold a torch to
> the
cr?me de la cr?me 24-carat-gold standard for Cosmic Mind vocal arranges,
White Lotus - especially the
Piano Version (whoever put that video together with the song is a horrible sadist who enjoys making me burst into tears). For once, something so immensely popular is, in my opinion, not the least bit overrated, for I believe that it is not only
the best Cosmic Mind vocal arrange
of ALL TIME ever, but it is one of the best Cosmic mind arranges period, vocal
or non-vocal, and may also be one of the best vocal arranges of any Touhou song. Precious few other (vocal) arranges - even the others by Liz Trangle - so completely capture the essence of the character behind the ZUN theme without having to slavishly imitate or at least heavily depend on the ZUNtune. In fact,
White Lotus not only avoids using the ZUNtune as a crutch - it openly draws attention to the circle-original segments, then segues so flawlessly from them into the ZUNtune that one feels as if the circle-original melody and the ZUN theme were always meant to be part of the same piece, a piece that exemplifies the poignancy of Byakuren's story even more than the original ZUN theme does on its own.
Note that the aforementioned circle-original-segue-to-ZUNtune structure features prominently in all of Liz Triangle's best vocal arranges, including my other favorites like
Ficus glomerata,
moon light step, and
Heart of Glass. In fact, it also features in many of my other favorite non-Liz Triangle vocal arranges (e.g. star river), though truth be told I love it in non-vocal arranges too - it's just that in my experience, non-vocal arranges seem to prefer mixing two or more different ZUNtunes over mixing a circle-original melody with a ZUNtune.
And, um, since the thread title contains the phrase "General Discussion," I'll assume the following additional teal deer is also appropriate for this particular thread, though you're welcome to ignore it as it contains no links to delishus moosik:
I've noticed that while Border of Life (the Sumizome one, not the final spell one) is my top favorite Touhou theme and Cosmic Mind is in second place by a long shot, I far prefer Cosmic Mind arranges. Maybe it's just the sheer quantity of Sumizome Border of Life arranges that causes me to run into so many "meh"-ish ones, but I generally run into them on the same albums by the same artists who did Cosmic Mind arranges that I really liked. Aside from the oft-mentioned WAVE/Morrigan epic orchestral arrange, some arranges by =Neutral=, and a few vocal arranges, I haven't encountered many other Sumizome arranges that I enjoy listening to repeatedly. Contrast this with the fact that I am addicted to at least 1/4th of the songs on my Cosmic Mind playlist, and can easily stand repeated listens of well over half that list. My guess is that the original Cosmic Mind has just enough flaws to allow for arranges to take a good thing and make it amazing, whereas the original Sumizome Border of Life is just so stunning in terms of musicality and composition that doing ANYTHING with it risks taking it down a notch or two of awesome.
