The Daily Spin, October 17
Anamanaguchi | Endless Fantasy
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Endless Fantasy (2013)
Artist: Anamanaguchi
Link:
Chiptune, digital sixteen-bit music has its place in the world - sure, there are absolutely times I look forward to it, thinking about soundtracks like Celeste, that build around it to flesh out this entire world of sound.
That has to be the backbone of a digital album like this one, and unfortunately, Endless Fantasy lacks it more often than it feels like it’s present. The album excels and even veers on fantastic when it takes the time to properly build out each song and let things crescendo and fall in appropriate time, but those moments are so few and far between, with the rest of an album massively overwrought spectacles, heavy like the stones on Giles Corey in The Crucible.
This is not music you can listen to for extended periods of time, and yet Anamanaguchi have seen fit to blow through 75 minutes of this sound, prolonged and deeply unpleasant over time. The more it goes, the worse it gets, because everything falls into this state of wailing and grating that gets to a point where the best thing you can think is to turn it off. Baffling decisions - what on earth is ‘Meow’ - are paired with sonic decisions that, at best, leave you tapping your feel when your ears aren’t being powerwashed with chiptunes.
Rating: 5.8/10
Best Tracks: Prom Night
Worst Tracks: Meow