Resized to 47% of original (view original)
Artist's commentary
【同人再録】幻想の終わりより、世界の終わりを想像する方が容易い
静岡例大祭で頒布した本です。手元の残部が少なく、現状増刷の予定も無いのでweb再録します。
お手に取ってくれた方はありがとうございます。
この同人誌を読んだ人はこんなアルバムも聞いています!
→https://chilodisc.bandcamp.com/album/unseen-finale
- « ‹ prev Pool: Touhou - The End of the World is Easier to Imagine Than the End of Fantasy (asuzemu) next › »
Hello, this is Asuzemu. I really have no time left before the deadline, so if I had to pick one thing to say, it'd be that this book was a bricolage (or rip-off, if you will) of a number of different works. There were a lot of inspirations, but the biggest would be the album "Unseen Finale" by Mute Channel. They may or may not have a lot of reach in vaporwave circles, but most people picking up this book have likely never heard of them, so please let me proselytize a bit. It's a really great album.
I feel that the theme or "message" of this book is a retelling of some messages already carried by Touhou itself, so hopefully that doesn't feel too trite.
There is a video on NicoNico titled "M.C. Donald Was in a Dance Trance? Last Brutal Jester Donald M. — Played 64 Times Simultaneously".
Just as it says, it's simply that legendary music video "M.C. Donald Was in a Dance Trance? Last Brutal Jester Donald M." played sixty-four times side by side. That old video is displayed on a great number of tiny, tiny screens. It's like something made by Nam June Paik. The view of NicoNico as it was back then spreads out before our eyes, bringing back memories.
On one hand, the music part has become something else altogether. The sound emanating from one's speakers isn't that old remix of "Last Brutal Sister Flandre S." and a Ronald McDonald commercial that we know and love. It can only be described as simple noise.
If anything, the "M.C. Donald Was in a Dance Trance? Last Brutal Jester Donald M." that once made us laugh is nowhere to be found. Those tiny writhing Ronald McDonalds, engulfed in noise that seems more like the soundtrack of a horror film. Indeed, a clown from a horror film is what he reminds us of, bringing on the sensation of a bottomless coldness.
However, by listening closely, we can still hear that distinctive synth from "U.N. Owen Was Her?", as well as McDonald's familiar voice, or at least faint echoes of them. Drifting in that sea of noise is a hazy mamory of something we once liked. Nostalgia.
It's like how the track "Recovery of Memories from Life" from the Touhou cover album "Bugs and Touhou and Hydrogen Cyanide Soda" uses William Basinski's ambient drone "The Disintegration Loops". A nostalgic kind of noise. Not a noise of unwanted contamination, but a soundtrack of the forgotten past, raised from the depths of memory, an only slightly familiar sort of noise...
Watching this video makes one wonder if we really had forgotten this past we enjoyed, and somehow, the feeling is one of comfort.