The J-Music Advance Party (April 2024)

This month's releases aren't fooling around.

Hello! Good to see you again! Allow me of course to welcome you once again to the one and only J-Music Advance Party! I see you have your invitation with you, so by all means please do go on ahead, and we will begin momentarily after a quick word to our new party goers over here.

If you believe that to be you, you might be thinking to yourself -

What is The J-Music Advance Party?

The J-Music Advance Party is a monthly publication where I quite simply 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 an album “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.

Make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet by hitting the button underneath and save yourself a spot!

This month’s party ended up being a bit further along into April than I would’ve liked (I typically schedule these on the first weekend of the new month) so as a result we have a couple albums here that have actually already dropped. That being said, if you weren’t aware of them or didn’t know that they have since come out, feel free to treat this as your reminder as well to check them out!

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▸ Furui Riho

Setting the tone for the night’s festivities is gonna be our first featured artist, Soul/R&B singer-songwriter Furui Riho.

She first made waves with the release of her debut single Rebirth back in 2019, with fans quickly being introduced to what she would eventually be best known for in her groovy Electro-R&B sound and her infectiously energetic vocals. After the successful follow up singles in I’m Free and Purpose continued to push her popularity up to even further heights, Furui Riho would double down on these musical sensibilities with the launch of her first album Green Light in 2022, further solidifying her position as a promising mainstay for the genre.

All that being said, if you go on over to Furui Riho’s artist profile on her official website, she talks about how she sees her roots not so much in R&B but as being in Gospel music stemming from her involvement with a Gospel choir since childhood. In hindsight knowing that now, you do catch glimpses of that particular background of hers being applied in those earlier works, particularly in her strong vibrato which is otherwise a staple of that style. What’s interesting about this is that she seems to be wanting to go back to said roots in her more recent outings, going so far as busting out Gospel-style piano for the song LOA (“Love One Another” linked above; also the name of her upcoming album).

She seems to also just be looking to mellow out in general, with songs like Friends and here being a stark contrast to the kind of sounds that can be found in her earlier work. Whether or not this new album is going to be a total departure from her Electro-R&B style is definitely a question I’m personally looking forward to know the answer to (I mean, the album is already out so at this point in time I *should* already know the answer to that myself). She might be taking a huge risk here in that regard going with a sound that’s completely different than the one fans came to know her for, but if this is Furui Riho choosing to write and perform the music that she truly wants (as opposed to the music that would “sell”) then hey, I’m all for it.

Love One Another came out just this past week on April 3, 2024 (check it out now!)

▸ CLAN QUEEN

Up next is “Creative Neo Rock” three-piece CLAN QUEEN; a band that I’ve been very much excited for these past couple of months.

If I had to say, more than anything else, I think it’s CLAN QUEEN’s penchant for catchy blowout choruses that appeals to me the most. Something I found fascinating with regard to that is across virtually all their releases thus far, you’ll notice too that in the comments section of their PVs on YouTube, Japanese fans have also shown great appreciation for what they refer to as the “sabi”. It’s a very loose slang that in the context of Japanese music is meant to refer to as “the catchy part/s” of a song. The closest approximation we have of that in English would be the chorus or the hook but depending on the song structure it can also be the refrain. Like for instance, in Odorakuen (linked above), the line ‘koi tte iu kara, ai ni kittan datte’ (bars, btw) at the 2:19 mark is treated as a sabi despite it occurring only once in the song. I supposed a better way of putting it would be calling it the “best” parts of a song to which again the band seem to have a knack for making the most out of.

I would attribute most of that mainly to vocalist yowa’s unique timbre and just the way she sings in general. I find that her vocals have a very rich and harmonic quality to them that’s greatly emphasized by her inflections and intonations when she sings certain words and syllables. This, coupled with the CLAN QUEEN’s loud and emphatic instrumentation that works in a lot of brass, as well as the occasional verse from guitarist AOi, make for a lot of opportunities to produce those big moments that the band has since made themselves known for.

The band has come out with their debut first album this past week as well and while I’ve been looking forward to them doing so, I do feel some sense of trepidation knowing that seven of the nine songs on this release are song that have already been out (basically all their previous singles). If the band was able to squeeze in maybe just one or two more album original tracks I’d be a bit more confident in it. As it stands, well, having the songs all in one place in a sense is a boon in itself. Something to note is in lieu of an album original we are instead getting what appears to be a re-recording of Pluto (linked above). Now, I’ve voiced my apprehension about album re-recordings in other places in the past (most recently in my review of POLKADOT’s STINGRAY’s Zenchi Zennou) so expect me to pay close attention to that.

VeiL came out earlier this month as well, also on April 3, 2024 (listen to it here!)

▸ SHISHAMO

Coming up next on the Advance Party stage is none other than *the* three-piece Girls Rock band, SHISHAMO; fresh off the heels of their 10-year anniversary.

In what felt like a year-long celebration that saw to a myriad of commemorative releases - including a series of concept albums, a Blu-Ray concert release, and even an acoustic album - coinciding with the band going on a nationwide tour, the trio from Kanagawa are looking to get back into the swing of things with another addition to their discography with their eighth full album, the aptly named SHISHAMO 8.

Because 2023 ended up being such a busy year for them, this actually marks the longest span of time that SHISHAMO have put out one of their “mainline” albums, with SHISHAMO 7 having been released all the way back in 2021 (prior to this the band had actually released albums almost yearly dating to 2013). As a direct consequence, based on the tracks that we will be getting for this upcoming release (check out the album digest video here), it appears as though we are going to be revisiting most of the band’s previously released singles (of which there have already been a decent handful) since that time.

Some notable ones for me personally are Watashi no Uchuu and Nantonaku here, the latter in particular I feel might’ve been a bit overlooked amidst the festivities despite otherwise being an interesting take and direction for SHISHAMO whose sound have greatly matured over the years.

SHISHAMO 8 is set to come out on April 10, 2024, and will also include the tracks Happy End and Haru ni Mayoikonde, as well as their most recent single Saikou Sokudo.

▸ ウォルピスカーター (wolpis carter)

Following that is Wolpis Carter; a longtime utaite who made his debut in 2012, and who has since then garnered a reputation within his fanbase as “[the] guy who likes to hit high notes” (‘kouon dashitai-kei danshi’).

There’s a good chance that those of you who are only be familiar with his songs and not much in the way of his artist background might be finding out about this fact for the first time here, but I do believe that to more so be a credit to just how convincing he has made his feminine singing voice to be. Some might say it’s one of those things where, once you’re made aware of it, you can no longer “unsee” (or I suppose in this case “unhear”) it, and while that definitely is a thing that can happen, I do think he does just as well of a job making you forget most of the time. This I would attribute to just how captivating and thought-provoking his voice can be, where one might be so conditioned into thinking that male voices don’t normally go that high that it leaves them in a baffled state, when he does hit and sustain those notes like the ones here in his songs Raincoat or Oil Lighter here.

Of course, if the singing by itself *sounds* good, it shouldn’t really matter in my opinion barring any particular preference for one type of voice over the other (though I do know that there’s also a subset of people too who like the idea of a someone having the ability to “switch” how they are perceived as). In as much as Wolpis Carter has made this his calling card with how much he has leaned into being “[the] guy who likes to hit high notes”, he does still sing with a more masculine tone every now and again. I’ve actually been wanting him to explore that side to his artistry a bit more, maybe even do a twin vocal song with himself as he is very much uniquely positioned to do that given his capabilities.

At the very least, that’s what I was looking to see in his upcoming album Yozai, which comes out on April 10, 2024.

▸ @onefive

Last up to the Advance Party stage for this month are the young four-member idol group @onefive.

The members who make up @onefive (Fujihira ‘KANO’ Kano, Yoshida ‘SOYO’ Soyoka, Aritomo ‘GUMI’ Tsugumi, and Mori ‘MOMO’ Momoe) are all “graduates” or former members of the idol group Sakura Gakuin under the Amuse Inc. entertainment production company. The project was itself a “feeder program” of sorts with its own system designed to help prepare young talents and prospective idols for the entertainment industry, with girls being eligible to join the group as early as only their fifth year of elementary school (or 10~ years old in terms of age). As its name would suggest, the group thematically functioned like a school, most notably having its members all graduate once they reached their last year of compulsory education, which is also right around the time that they all reach the age of 15.

I thought this to be something to note here for mainly two reasons. The first being that this is more or less the origin of the group’s name, with “one five” being in reference to the members’ collective ages after they graduated from Sakura Gakuin, from which they were all from the same graduating batch. Their involvement with Sakura Gakuin and Amuse Inc. by extension also explains a lot of the polish and production value that you see in @onefive’s songs and overall performances, which to me at least feels much further along than what you would expect from such a young-looking group, when the reality is they’ve put in the work a long time ago and are anything but greenhorns at this point in their careers. If anything they’re only now just coming into their own, with their more recent outings like in Chocolove giving us some promising new looks

The group is set to make their major first album debut Classy Crush with Avex Inc. under its avex trax lebel on April 17, 2024, which will include other noteworthy tracks such as F.A.F.O. (wild title btw) and Ring Donuts (a personal favorite of mine).

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That’s gonna do it for The J-Music Advance Party for April!

Here’s a quick recap of all the releases featured for this month:

Which release are you most excited for this month? Likewise, which bands and artists are you looking to listen these next couple of weeks? Let me know all of that down in the comments!

The next Advance Party is gonna be on May 5, 2024.
Are you looking forward to any releases next month?
Check back here to see if they get featured!

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