Ten years is not a long time, except when it is. If you’re, say, a guy riding into middle age with a little kid it goes by in the blink of an eye but if you’re a four-piece band from Osaka who were foundational in the current Japanese shoegaze scene but have creatively evolved on from that particular stylistic label without abandoning the spirit of it, it can feel like a lifetime.

Yuragi arrived in 2016 with their Bedside and Nightlife EPs, which combined wall of sound with sugary vocals in a way that’s almost boilerplate today but was a breath of fresh air a decade ago. It was a formula that was obviously going to sound great (chocolate AND peanut butter?) but didn’t seem like anyone else was leveraging at the time (not actually true, but still seemed like it). It’s worth noting that they were already on my musical radar well before I dived into the Japanese indie rabbit hole.

They were already expanding on their sound with their next EP, the very on-the-nose-titled Still Dreaming, Still Deafening in 2018, but with each full-length album since they’ve have dialled down the distortion in favour of experimenting with space, structure, and atmosphere beyond the type you get from a reverb pedal. While sometimes I wish there’d be a nod back to the pure dopamine rush of “Night Is Young”, there’s many bands now that work within the space that Yuragi formed and have moved on from, so it’s ultimately more interesting to follow them where they’re going.

To mark their decade, they’ve released a nice mini-documentary In The Comfort Of The Haze – subtitled in English – talking to the band about how they found each other and themselves, creatively. It’s nice to see a band have and appreciate the kind of longevity they’ve had, which is a rarity in the Japanese indie scene.

But while we’re here, let’s remember that glorious Night Life opener from a decade ago:

And even learn to play it: