Hello!
I go by Leap and, as you might have guessed, I’m a Japanese music fan!
- artwork by @Jellybeam_ji
My writing is mainly hosted on Wordpress (leap250.blog*), and in an attempt to branch out my readership further, I have now started a Substack newsletter where I host The J-Music Advance Party!
What is The J-Music Advance Party?
The J-Music Advance Party is a monthly publication where I talk about bands and artists that I personally plan on listening to this month (and subsequently recommend that you too as well) in advance of their upcoming albums and releases in the style of a ‘pre’-launch party of sorts. These could be bands who have an album coming out that I’m excited for, or they could also be an artist whose discography I feel warrants further exploring starting with their new EP. Whatever the case may be, these are releases that I’m both looking forward to and that I hope to put on your guys’ radar if they weren’t there already.
*About Leap250.Blog
Longtime followers of mine would know this but “Leap250’s Blog” when it first launched used to be primarily a blog that focused more on anime-related content. While I still do enjoy watching anime on a regular basis, over the years (and as the sort of shift in the kind of content I create would suggest) I found myself becoming increasingly entrenched in the world of Japanese music.
What has since become my main sort of project is the Monthly Recommendation Roundup series which I started back in 2018. The “Roundups” are posts that I put out on my blog at the end of each month where I feature songs that I would personally recommend others to check out.
Other projects I do on there are: the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft, where I put Spotify’s recommending abilities to the test by seeing how well it’s able to recommend songs that I would like to me; as well as the J-Music/Exchange Rate which is a tandem album review series between myself and Al who does his writing here on Substack via *his* newsletter, Omunibasu.
