My 2025 Q2 Roundup

This album is a bit different from what I expected, Mao Sasagawa has a very distinct sound and vocals, which is bit stripped back in this album, so my initial impressions wasn't as great as last album, but this have been slowly growing on me. Just classic Mao Sasagawa magic, with the personal brand of Strange Pop?

More off-kilter pop stuff? Still don't know what genre is this / how to describe this / how to find more stuff that's similar to this album.

So, I somehow haven't heard of Sirpah before (ex-School Food Punishment). Excellent math rock-y instrumentals, with Annabel's vocals that reminds me of older anisongs, check out their newest EP Ghost camp if you haven't listened to them before like me.

I love Azami's vocals, kindda surprised I haven't mentioned Azami here before, but it has been a while since I've listened to her music, the previous song that I remember being from Nov 2023, which is before I started this blog / site thing. Revisiting her older songs, it's amazing how much has changed, definitely need to go through her catalogue again soon.

This was released a few months earlier in their 1st album, but I saw them live recently in May! Pretty amazed how they managed to do a liveshow overseas as a small band. Their energy was absolutely amazing, best live show I've been to (so far, I haven't been to that many live shows tbh).

It was pretty funny how many things went wrong: there was some problem with Taiga's guitar pedal (power issue?) which took a bit to fix; Maki's drum paddle broke twice (!) so had to borrow the one from the preshow band Butterfly Peas; Riku's mic failed at one point, and was walking around and singing into other member's mics. They were pretty apologetic throughout the show, occasionally shouting in English "We are troublemakers!"

But I don't think anybody minded any of the issues, I certainly did not mind, it felt endearing. It was a great show! Check them out live if you ever get the chance.

I also recommend reading this interview with Bloody Mary, or this Japanese interview with Sleep like a pillow.

The Otals continues to be one of my favourite band.

Featured in AVYSS's cover compilation album i.e, and The Otals' newest and the Rules of Summer 4, their 1st album 混乱するアパタイト Confused Apatite is also excellent (is the title spelt that way intentionally tho?).

Definitely a duo to watch for in the future.

My favourite release from Yuka yet, probably because I love shoegaze. Can you tell I like shoegaze? More shoegaze please 🙏

Still, it's tough to choose which song I like the most, between this, Yuka's own ノートには鍵, and the continued collab with pepetterz on THSK.

Just listened to this album few days ago, really loving it at the moment, like candidate for my album of the year, but only time will tell how will I rank this in December.

I think I first heard of this band with this interview with ANGURA, check it out if you haven't.