We’ll end the year with a callback to one of my highlights of the year, seeing Japanese trio Hitsujibungaku play a triumphant show in Yokohama back in April. The show was originally supposed to be released on vinyl in addition to blu-ray, but at some point the audio edition was scrapped and so the live document only exists as a region-specific physical disc, which as much as I’d like to see requires too much hardware I don’t have to make happen.

So hooray for this complete show recording of a decidedly smaller but still notable performance from earlier this month, at the band’s first-ever American show at the 1000-capacity Republik in Honolulu, Hawaii (though not their first North American show, as they played Canada in 2016 as part of Next Music From Tokyo which I missed for having no idea of the band at the time and which we will never speak of again). It’s not a professional multi-camera affair, but for a one-phone recording, it looks and sounds great.

It was also just announced that the band would be playing their second-ever American show in April at Seattle’s Sakura-con anime festival, which makes sense as they’ve written more than a few songs for anime over the years. Does this imply more adventures on this side of the Atlantic? Apparently so!

There’s a Japanese-language interview with the band over at Real Sound where they reflect on what has been a huge year for the them, and mention they’re already into writing their next album.

羊文学「もっと面白いものを作れる予感がする」　アジア＆全国ツアーや創作の変化で高まった自由度 @ Real Sound