# Introduction
2024 have been bit of a weird year for me, musically speaking.
## I've been listening less?
According to Spotify, I only have 20k minutes listened compared to last year's 36k minutes. And it does feel like I've been listening less stuff this year, and spent less time actively discovering new music, and more often falling back to the same few albums that I liked.
But, on the other hand, I've been...
## Reading other people's writing
Because I'm interested in writing about the music I like, and I wanted to read how other people write about music, professionally and "properly".
Well, I'm not sure I can get to that level. I stuggle a lot in writing more than just "This sounds good" and "I like this". I'm not a good communicator, and it's really amazing to me how many different words and different ways other people have to describe music.
But does this really matter? It's not like I'm trying to become a professional writer. I'm only doing this to note down the music I like, and trying to describe what I like about them, and so even though my words aren't that great, I hope it's good enough for you, my future self.
## BTW, I think my music taste have changed a bit
Typically, I only listen to j-rock / alt rock / some jpop. Mostly.
But, well, you'll see...
# Honourable Mentions
I wanted my list to be "around 10 entries long".
Before I started writing down my list, I was worried I don't have enough stuff to put on the list, felt like I haven't been listening much this year. But at the end, it was pretty tough deciding which of the last few entries to include / exclude.
## Q. / E. / D.
Enfants
I have listened to Enfants a lot this year, and their older band LAMP IN TERREN too.
Even though this is 3 separate EPs, spanning April 2023 to July 2024, that's not really a problem, I can include whatever I want. But at the end it just didn't fit in.
## pothos
雪国 Yukiguni
## Φ
mol-74
# Your Favorite Things
柴田聡子 Satoko Shibata
Don't know what to write about this one.
I like it. It's nice. I kept coming back to it since it released in February.
For me, a good album needs to sound coherent, instead of just a collection of individual songs. But at the same time, it needs to vary enough that the album is not boring, interesting enough that I want to come back and listen to it again.
This is probably true for everyone, but each person's threshold will be different, and it's hard to describe where exactly is the line, other than just listing out examples of what you like and don't like.
For me, Your Favorite Things really hits that sweet spot.
# pointillism
明くる夜の羊 Akuruyo no Hitsuji
## Girls Band Cry
Perhaps due to the success of Bocchi the Rock, this year we had two excellent drama-filled anime about girls band: Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night, with their take on a more modern internet based music project; and Girls Band Cry, showcasing a young club-based rock band.
I really liked Girls Band Cry, even though it has its problems. 3D animation takes a bit to get used to, but it's really nice looking once I got used to it. Some people though the character's too annoying, but I find them to be immature but endearing. The ending is... alright...
My biggest problem with Girls Band Cry is, suprisingly, the music. I thought it is decent, but just not quite good enough. Probably because I have listened to a lot of shout-y, heavier rock music, I felt it was bit disappointing that in such an emotional, dramatic, captivating anime about rock music, the actual music I got was... merely decent.
To be fair, it's probably difficult to be both a great Voice Actor and a great Musician. And it's probably extra unfair to expect them to make music that suits my personal expectations, that I personally like. But it is what it is.
## oh yeah, pointillism
If I have to choose an album to describe what I'm looking for, it'll be this album pointillism.
The mood is completely wrong, pointillism is super poisitive and bright, the opposite of Girls Band Cry, but this album is so overfilling with energy, that its emotions is actually infectious. The phrase "putting a smile on your face" gets thrown around a lot, but I don't recall when was the last time that actually happened to me. Maybe I'm just a stoic person and I really like music.
Again, it's probably wrong to expect an anime to have potentially album-of-the-year level of music, but man would it amazing.
Thanks to Leap for first putting this album on my radar.
# ジュブナイルのあとがき Epilogue Of Juvenile
帰りの会 Kaerinokai
I still don't really like the intro track. It sounds too messy.
I still haven't heard any other people talking about this mini-album. How?
Part of the reason I like this release so much is that the final track is a decent long, winding, wistful song. Having a 10/10 final track does leave a better, more lasting impression on me.
# 陽のかけら Hi no Kakera
inuha
I nearly forgot about this EP, partly because this released back in early January, and partly because inuha also released their first album in August.
I didn't quite like the album, have listened much actually, so can't tell you why. And then somehow I just kindda stopped listening to inuha for a bit?
Which is a real shame, re-listening to this EP again I really like it, I need to put this back on my rotation, and revisit the album some day.
# There Must Be Something Here
acloudyskye
Just putting this here to show that I don't exclusively listen to Japanese music /s
acloudyskye kept getting mentioned in weird places, like in a youtube video about anime (that I can't find anymore), or in random discord discussions. So I decided to give this a listen, and it is really good.
btw I also really like this live video recording.
# Destroy My Memory
The Otals
My favourite band currently.
I really loved their album U MUST BELIEVE IN GIRLFRIEND last year, their beautifully harmonizing duet vocals, on top of their fuzzy shoegazey tracks, The Otals is still my number one band.
On their youtube profile, they self describe their music as "Dream Pop, Twee Pop", I've been listening to a lot of shoegaze / dream pop, but I had no idea what is this "twee pop" thing, andI didn't bother to look it up (I don't care about genres). That's it, until June this year, when this EP Destroy My Memory was released.
I remember being weirded out at first. I had a very basic (flawed) understanding of "dream pop", I have a mental image of a spectrum from "heavy shoegaze" on one end to "dream pop" on another, and The Otals is pretty far on the dream pop side, and I really didn't expect them to push even further in that direction, to dial up the cuteness even more. And I really didn't expect that I'll get used to this style so quickly, and really grew to like it.
# 知らない魂 Shiranai Tamashii
Limre
I had a pretty strong distaste for "autotuned" vocals. I thought it's cheap, lazy, insincere, and just awful to listen to.
Maybe because this EP is from a "solo bedroom rock band", making this vocal style a lot more palatable to me. The heavily vocoded vocals somehow do sound very emotional, very human. This is especially clear in the contrast between the more standard vocals in M2 泣いてしまう Naiteshimau, and my favourite track M3 柔らかい針 Yawarakai Hari.
I missed out on TEMPLIME x HOSHIMIYA TOTO's 2023 album POP-AID, because I was only lukewarm on their previous works, and I think this was my biggest miss of last year. I'm quite glad that I managed to catch this EP by Limre, solo project of KBSNK, who is half of the duo TEMPLIME.
This short four-track EP is genuinely one of my album-of-the-year contender.
# 魔法学校 Mahōgakkō
長谷川白紙 Hakushi Hasegawa
I thought for sure this will be my album of the year when I first listened to this.
## Pushing Boundaries
My album of 2023 is Mao Sasagawa's Welcome to Sunnyside. Mao has a fairly unique off-kilter sound, and the album's pop-er production smooths off some of the edges, but still retaining Mao's distinctive identity, it's a perfect balance between uniquely weird and comfortable pop.
In contrast, Hakushi Hasegawa's Mahōgakkō sits at the edge of barely comfortable.
The album just keeps on constantly throws intersting sounds and textures at you, keeps throwing more notes and words at you, and somehow in the messy sea of sounds, to me, it sounds... beautiful.
## Jazz
I have a very basic and liberal understanding of what is "Jazz". There is a wide spectrum of "Jazz spiciness", from cafe jazz. which is that it's about "tension and release". And it's just that instead of mostly operating with the melody and rhythm, Hakushi Hasegawa is also injecting interesting sound textures and production to further spice things up.
And it's not like you can just throw some random sounds together thoughtlessly, and just call it "spicy jazz". There still needs to be a structure, a direction for all the noise to "points towards" together, in order for there to be a feeling of tension.
The easiest way to illustrate this is with M6 恐怖の星 KYŌFUNOHOSHI. It has some real jazzy brass instruments, some overblown bass / percussion, layers of Hakushi Hasegawa's unique vocals, some air horn thrown in there for good measure, and the supporting keyboard, which actually is the hidden star of the track, because amongst all the messy sounds, you can hear there always is an underlying melody through the entire thing. It may distorted, and buried under 10 other layers, but it is there, and you can hear it more strongly at times (e.g. 1:44), but then always quickly re-buried with more new sounds. And it's just a very long tug-of-war between the main melody, against the flood of other noise, until it finally resolves at end, with only the harmonized melody playing, imperfect, but clear and confident.
I think it's absolutely beautiful.
# see you, frail angel. sea adore you.
Homecomings
I did like last year's New Neighbours, it's a very comfortable listen, but I felt like it wasn't doing enough for me. I was in the mood for something heavier, shoegazey, even.
But then as 2024 passes, I started to listen to a bigger variety of stuff, and the more I listeng to New Neighbours, the more I appreciate it.
I really loved the song Moon Shaped when it came out in May. So I thought I was ready to sit down and enjoy another soft, harmwarming Homecomings album when see you, frail angel. sea adore you. releases in December.
And then M4 blue poetry starts playing.
It's funny how when I was searching for heavier stuff last year, Homecomings put out the comfortably warm New Neighbours, and now that I grew to really that album, and have been listening to edm or pop-er stuff, or just lighter stuff in general, now Homecomings put out a heavier sounding album.
It's hard to tell how much do I like this album only because of recency bias. At the same time, if my music this year is more similar than previous years, I most probably would have chosen this as my album of the year. But instead, I've chosen...
# Love Flutter
Pasocom Music Club
My album of the year.
I only really started listening to more edm / this kind of music recently, so how am I suppose to judge how good is a synthpop album, when I know so little? I can't, but I do know that I really like this album, and it is my album of the year.
It's amazing how Pasocom manages to get all these other great artists together, featuring Satoko Shibata's soothing vocals, featuring the well known tofubeats for a more energetic bop, and featuring rapper MFS to make a hiphop track that I actually like (or maybe I just still don't listen to any hiphop).
And even though each track has its own distinctive identity, it's amazing how Pasocom manages to take on so many different styles at once, and still making it feels like one consistent album, none of it feeling out of place. Is it because of the interleaving of instrumental tracks between the main vocal tracks? More people should do that.
Wrapping up the album is my favourite Empty feat. Le Makeup. The moody midnight feels, autotuned vocals but sentimental, it's simply perfect.
10/10