expect delay
A large part of Cephalo’s ascent in the ranks of Japanese shoegaze was the rate at which they released material, starting with their debut EP Wind Surfing School in mid-2024 and the full-length Fluorite Code at the end of that year. They followed it up with the Gloaming Point EP last November accompanied by a […]
Ahead of their final show next month, Tokyo dreampoppers AprilBlue have released their final single, 『ヴァージンノイズ』, which translates to “Virgin Noise” and in the words of singer Haruki Funasoko: “These are the lyrics I wrote while questioning the meaning of standing on stage with this band. I’m glad I was able to leave them behind. […]
Tokyo’s musbime are relative newcomers, having been active only since 2024, but have already made an impression with their debut EP 煌めきを凌いで (Brave The Blinding), which came out in late April. Like most of their peers, shoegaze is only one of the genres they’ve absorbed into their sound – there’s math in the guitar lines, […]
It’d be an overstatement to say the spirit of Ryuichi Sakamoto has followed me around on this trip – I’ve actually had very little opportunity to listen to music – but it is noteworthy that I saw the seeing sound, hearing time installation featuring his work at Hong Kong’s M+ gallery, and then when record […]
For most of the world, December – particularly the end of December – is a dead zone for releasing new music but in Japan, it’s business as usual. Hence after a 2025 that was already busy enough with a new EP Seasons in March and album number four – White – coming out in September, […]
I honestly thought that the arrival today of kurayamisaka yori ai wo komete, the debut full-length from Tokyo’s Kurayamisaka, would have come with a little more fanfare, with their 2022 debut EP kimi wo omotte iru being immediately hailed as a classic of the J-gaze genre and starting the buzz that’s been steadily growing for […]
Japanese idol-gaze heroes RAY announced details of their fourth album yesterday, and after 2022’s Camellia, which took their album naming convention towards the floral, they’re back to colours – White will be out on October 1. They’ve expanded their influences since their 2020 debut Pink, which owed more than a debt to their former incarnation […]
Nagoya’s Blurred City Lights released their very good double-EP-slash-second album Utopia/Dystopia earlier this year but today I’m going back not just to last year’s debut 天使のいない街で , but to their second-ever single 「花束」 (aka “Flower”), which they dropped in December of 2022 accompanied by a simple animated video. Why that song, and now? Well this […]
When my listening habits first swung towards Japan, Plastic Girl In Closet from Iwate prefecture was in heavy rotation, in particular their 2014 album Eye Cue Rew See, though I favoured the 2022 remake of that record because… I don’t really know, actually. Advertised as “re-edited, re-recorded, and re-mixed”, presumably it’s better produced and better […]
The day the Next Music From Toyko lineup is announced is kind of like Christmas for me… at least since I started attending last year. So yeah, not that long, but considering that the traveling mini-festival is the only way I’ll get to see any of Japan’s indie rock scene live short of flying over […]
