Amidst the flurry of band dissolution announcements last week, I was alarmed to see this Twitter thread from Tokyo shoegazers COLLAPSE (not to be confused with Tokyo Shoegazer, although singer Shoko Inoue was once part of Tokyo Shoegazer, as you know), announcing: “As of April 2026, Gt.YU will be leaving the band, and going forward, we plan to hold live performances with support guitarists as needed”.

I had the good fortune to see COLLAPSE live in April 2024 at that month’s Total Feedback at Koenji High, and so in my mind Yu, he of the goth-metal V-kei vibe and mammoth pedalboard, was a key part of the band and wondered what his departure might mean for their future. But after a little digging into their bio – or just reading it – I was surprised to see that he only joined the band in November 2022 as a replacement for their previous lead guitarist Satoshi, whose playing can be heard on their full-length debut Black Sheep Is Still Dreaming, which had been released in June of that year.

In saluting his service with the band, I’m sharing Yu’s complete recorded output with the band – their July 2023 single, “Path”, which was accompanied by a video that really works in the otherwise reviled but now standard vertical format.