When Tokyo neo-gazers (their term, which I actually quite like) The Floatings pushed back the release of their debut album Flowering from late May citing “production circumstances”, I didn’t think too much of it. At the time, they were one of a number of new-ish J-gaze bands who had a few interesting or enjoyable singles out, but didn’t necessarily stand out from the herd in a really remarkable way, though their use of socials to share clips of vocalist re:caco and guitarist Naoki Dendo doing short, stripped-down covers of influences like Kinoko Teikoku and Hitsujibungaku certainly did their job of keeping me tuned in and interested.

So when Flowering eventually did drop at the end of September, I was quick to give it a listen and was more than impressed. While I’d already heard about half the record via those previously-released singles, combined with the new material it made for a remarkably consistent yet diverse listen – it’s stayed in heavy enough rotation that it’s a serious year-end list contender. The full-length was initially only available to stream via their Bandcamp and CD sales followed a little while after; finally, a couple weeks ago, Flowering finally made it onto regular streaming services.

The album roll-out didn’t come with any new videos – the only proper clip for “Lily” came out and was blogged about in May – but around the same time they also put out a live performance video for album opener “Colors” recorded at Babel in Kachitawa, Tokyo, albeit with the album audio rather than live, but there a couple of live clips from Angel’s Music Channel that are less visually slick but show they band still sound pretty damn good live.