19th July 2024 (20th now because of Akolibed)
Camellia - U.U.F.O.
Hardcore, Japanese, 2021
(This was literally me for 2 whole hours split into two sessions, I'm surprised I don't have a headache)
Holy moly
As many of you probably have, I found Camellia through osu, and have enjoyed many of their songs to the point I will occasionally seek them out to listen to them. However, this was the first time I've ever listened to a full Camellia album.
At two hours long, this is by far the longest album I've listened to on this thread, the rest all being around one hours long. I was pretty intimidated and apprehensive about the length at first, but the album was so rich and full that I was never bored. Maybe the fact that I listened to this album over two different sessions helped as well. I think this was also the first time I've ever stopped listening to an album halfway through and picked up where I left off later. In the future, I'd like to avoid doing this though, I think there would probably be albums where doing this could lessen the experience for me, though this album wasn't one of them.
What really stood out about this album was how whimsical and fun it was. Each track played with it's own, unique, fun idea which you could tell from the title, and they all sounded like Camellia was just having fun exploring all these different ideas. To a song incorporating Russian bass, to a song exploring an alien jungle dance party, to a literal osu meme song and a "furrycore" song, the one thematic throughline through all of this madness was that every track was a fun, mad adventure, and I guess like aliens and other mysterious stuff. It was also really cool to see Camellia really able to capture the vibe of whatever unique ideas they were playing around with.
Adding onto that, there was an incredible amount of variety of this album. It was two hours long, but throughout these two hours Camellia somehow manages to explore like every single fast paced EDM genre in existence, and put his unique Camellia spin on it, a big reason why this album felt so full and never boring.
Another thing that really stood out was the amount of detail that you could gleam and things to engage with as a listener. I feel like a lot of the best music has this aspect, where you kind of cognitively engage with the music instead of just vibing along. Well Camellia isn't exactly Kendrick Lamar or Dvorak in this regard, I found myself having a lot of fun finding details in Camellia's music, from what exactly he did to play with certain ideas/genres, to how tracks 22 and 23 felt like spiritual successors or at least took inspiration from Exit this Earth's Atomosphere and GHOST respectively, two of Camellia's previous tracks, to how you could hear the Toby Fox influence in Myths You Forgot as well as the specific contributions of the other artists featured (the lineup was crazy, he got BTMC to do some vocals? And 8bitdrummer on the drums?), to all of the little sounds making references to certain things, especially in WYSI, and even to a little bit of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in Electromagnetic Stealth Girl Born In Philadelphia (although I may be tripping about this one).
And tying all this together is the fact that Camellia is incredible at composing music. From the highs and lows of the music, to how he plays with different musical ideas, to how he keeps the whole song fresh and changing, to the detail of the instrumentation, to how everything in the song builds up to the patented "Camellia" drop at the end which makes me literally forget that anything else exists, it's all so good.
Yeah uh I liked this album a lot.
9/10
Btw I'm not exactly and EDM expert so I had trouble with what to put as the genre of this album. It also didn't help that Camellia basically listed a different genre for each track. In the end I settled on "J-Core", because looking at other J-Core artists you see artist like T+Pazolite, REDALiCE, LAaur, Kobaryo etc, super rhythm gamey EDM artists that I feel like Camellia would fit into for generalisation purposes. Please enlighten me if this in incorrect or if there's a better way to label this album than just "EDM".
Edit: Changed to "Hardcore".
And I think that this album fully cements the fact that I want to explore more J-Core in the future. I've listened to so much of it just playing osu, and I'm ready to take that next step as an osu gamer.
Camellia - U.U.F.O.
Hardcore, Japanese, 2021
(This was literally me for 2 whole hours split into two sessions, I'm surprised I don't have a headache)
Holy moly
As many of you probably have, I found Camellia through osu, and have enjoyed many of their songs to the point I will occasionally seek them out to listen to them. However, this was the first time I've ever listened to a full Camellia album.
At two hours long, this is by far the longest album I've listened to on this thread, the rest all being around one hours long. I was pretty intimidated and apprehensive about the length at first, but the album was so rich and full that I was never bored. Maybe the fact that I listened to this album over two different sessions helped as well. I think this was also the first time I've ever stopped listening to an album halfway through and picked up where I left off later. In the future, I'd like to avoid doing this though, I think there would probably be albums where doing this could lessen the experience for me, though this album wasn't one of them.
What really stood out about this album was how whimsical and fun it was. Each track played with it's own, unique, fun idea which you could tell from the title, and they all sounded like Camellia was just having fun exploring all these different ideas. To a song incorporating Russian bass, to a song exploring an alien jungle dance party, to a literal osu meme song and a "furrycore" song, the one thematic throughline through all of this madness was that every track was a fun, mad adventure, and I guess like aliens and other mysterious stuff. It was also really cool to see Camellia really able to capture the vibe of whatever unique ideas they were playing around with.
Adding onto that, there was an incredible amount of variety of this album. It was two hours long, but throughout these two hours Camellia somehow manages to explore like every single fast paced EDM genre in existence, and put his unique Camellia spin on it, a big reason why this album felt so full and never boring.
Another thing that really stood out was the amount of detail that you could gleam and things to engage with as a listener. I feel like a lot of the best music has this aspect, where you kind of cognitively engage with the music instead of just vibing along. Well Camellia isn't exactly Kendrick Lamar or Dvorak in this regard, I found myself having a lot of fun finding details in Camellia's music, from what exactly he did to play with certain ideas/genres, to how tracks 22 and 23 felt like spiritual successors or at least took inspiration from Exit this Earth's Atomosphere and GHOST respectively, two of Camellia's previous tracks, to how you could hear the Toby Fox influence in Myths You Forgot as well as the specific contributions of the other artists featured (the lineup was crazy, he got BTMC to do some vocals? And 8bitdrummer on the drums?), to all of the little sounds making references to certain things, especially in WYSI, and even to a little bit of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in Electromagnetic Stealth Girl Born In Philadelphia (although I may be tripping about this one).
And tying all this together is the fact that Camellia is incredible at composing music. From the highs and lows of the music, to how he plays with different musical ideas, to how he keeps the whole song fresh and changing, to the detail of the instrumentation, to how everything in the song builds up to the patented "Camellia" drop at the end which makes me literally forget that anything else exists, it's all so good.
Yeah uh I liked this album a lot.
9/10
Btw I'm not exactly and EDM expert so I had trouble with what to put as the genre of this album. It also didn't help that Camellia basically listed a different genre for each track. In the end I settled on "J-Core", because looking at other J-Core artists you see artist like T+Pazolite, REDALiCE, LAaur, Kobaryo etc, super rhythm gamey EDM artists that I feel like Camellia would fit into for generalisation purposes. Please enlighten me if this in incorrect or if there's a better way to label this album than just "EDM".
Edit: Changed to "Hardcore".
And I think that this album fully cements the fact that I want to explore more J-Core in the future. I've listened to so much of it just playing osu, and I'm ready to take that next step as an osu gamer.
glad i was able to hear your opinion!