3 AVTechNO! — 初音ミク TEAR

Oh man, the last post on Miku;Zen is almost one month ago...

But the Vocaloid spirit lives on! Zeneraith here. It's been a while, but do allow me to slowly make a comeback on my blog by introducing to you one of AVTechNO's more recent E.P. Released during VoM@s18, this is 初音ミク TEAR.

Advanced Techno

AVTechNO is one of the Vocaloid producers who I've posted more about here on Miku;Zen. Just search for his tag and you can see he's tagged in a handful of posts here — it's not all that many posts, but he does seem to appear more often compared to other producers. (:

He's been around for quite a long time, and it is to good to see him still being active in the world of Vocaloids. He has released a number of full length albums, and numerous — I repeat — numerous singles. A handful of his releases are remixes and rearrangements of his previous songs, and many times he also switches his Vocaloids around in order to spice things up.

Just from his name alone, you should be able to tell that AVTechNO specializes comfortably in the techno genre, so if that's your cup of tea, this is one producer you should definitely check out.

Crossfade

Tracklist

#	Track title (J)	Track title (R)
1.	tear	tear
2.	---	---
3.	ブラックインザ	Black In The
4.	Blue/Green IIXII	Blue/Green IIXII
5.	Black in the... (inst ver)	Black in the... (inst ver)
6.	tear (off vocal)	tear (off vocal)

Yes, the album is actually named 初音ミクTEAR, as you can see over at the Hatsune Miku Wiki.

For more detailed information, head over to VocaDB and have a look!

Tears of joy

I've got a confession to make — this E.P. from AVTechNO actually had some difficulty grabbing my attention in the beginning. I'm not all too sure, but perhaps I was tired when I tried to give this E.P a go, and gave up after the first track.

Fast forward a few weeks later, I stumbled upon one of the songs in this E.P. through my music player's shuffle mode. The song was finally able to grab me, and I knew I had to give the whole E.P a proper listen.

Let's go over the songs one by one, shall we?

1. tear

Alright, so we start off immediately with the main track for the E.P. tear's introduction clearly sets the electronic sound signature that will be apparent throughout a decent portion of the E.P; following its intro, the song immediately jumps into the main chorus. This makes it impressionable, but somehow I get the feeling that the melody of the song is quite repetitive, and this causes it to lose a little of its charm.

tear is a good opener for the E.P, but personally I feel that the rest of the E.P outshines this track.

2. ---

--- is the second track for the E.P, and I have no idea how I'm suppose to read the song title. It seems that KarenT list its title as "Kodoku," but I'll refer to it as --- anyway.

--- starts with an ambient opener, slowly introducing the melody as the song progresses. When the song does begin, I realize that it leans toward a more melodious, slow-rock kind of sound. I really like this from AVTechNO; it reminds me of his other songs, Plus and Minus, both of which sound more rock/metal than techno.

Also, I love the way Miku sounds during the chorus, and is what sold me to this song. I feel it's well done, and I think it shows that AVTechNO is able to handle Miku's voice well when he needs to.

3. ブラックインザ
Black In The

In this third track, the electronic sounds make a comeback. I kinda like that Black In The keeps it a little low profile during the first half — then around 1:30, it kicks things up a notch, though not by all that much. Somehow I seem to have a preference to this kind of songs, where there is a build-up of some sort that leads into the juicy bits of the music.

4. Blue/Green IIXII

As mentioned while introducing AVTechNO, he likes to rearrange and breath new life into his old creations. Blue/Green happens to be one of them, and the contrast between the original version and this updated one is quite stark.

If I were to put it into words, I would say that Blue/Green was originally more airy; it really had an indie/amateur feel to it. It definitely reflects AVTechNO's earlier style of techno, and that is no surprise, considering how Blue/Green was uploaded in April 2009, making it one of AVTechNO's rather early songs.

However, now it is back, and Blue/Green IIXII feels like a more focused song with higher quality production — sounds are cleaner now, Miku's voice is now handled better, and most notably, the overall layers of sounds are now arranged better, allowing Miku's voice to be more prominent.

It is also this track that made me think "I've got to listen to the rest of the songs."

5. Black in the...

Here's the fifth and final track of the E.P (unless you got the version that has the off vocals of tear). If you've noticed, this has the same title as the third track, Black In The, except the third track is written in katakana, while this track is written in English. But, more importantly, this is the instrumental version of the third track!

I actually couldn't tell at first, because it isn't immediately obvious. For one, I believe there are differences in their arrangement, not to mention that this track is almost double the original's duration! Double the length, double the goodness, perhaps? Whatever it is, though, I really enjoy listening to this instrumental version — it has a pretty different experience to it, as it allows me to further savour the melody of the song.

Overall

On the whole I feel this is a very satisfying E.P from AVTechNO — as expected from one of my favourite producers! It might only be 5 tracks long, but these are 5 tracks that are definitely worth adding into your library of Vocaloid music. Heck, I can't even pick a personal favourite out of all of them, because I really do enjoy all the songs in this E.P.

As usual, you can get 初音ミクTEAR from MikuDB. MikuDB's copy lacks the sixth track though — if you really want it, someone's posted a link to it in the comments, so do have a look, and be sure to thank Zakudono!

If you like this E.P from AVTechNO but haven't heard any of his other music, you might want to give his second album, AVTechNO↑ a try. (:

Hope you enjoyed this, and see you all next post!