Monthly Listening: May 2025
Rounding up great new releases we checked out during May from Gen Hoshino, nyamura, Yuka Nagase and more
Hi! This is May’s Monthly Listening list, a quick rundown of new Japanese albums I checked out this month that I enjoyed. You can browse past Monthly Listenings from this year here.
Well, apologies, a new issue of This Side of Japan has not yet landed on your inbox. I thought we were back! …Until something came up on my day job. I lost a day of writing to tend to that instead, putting me behind schedule, and now I had to push it back to first week of June—fingers crossed. In the mean time, here’s a look back to the discography of Tokyo Girls’ Style that I put together for scrmbl.
Music-listening has slowed down for me for May compared to the previous months. I haven’t felt as urgent to pick things up. I’ve been feeling the new PinkPantheress album, though. How could I resist a good Basement Jaxx interpolation? I’ve been also working through this fan-made Best Vocaloid Albums list that I recently found on Twitter—more on that for the Bonus Beats below!
Here are the new Japanese releases that caught my attention during May.
epoch EP by Ayutthaya
► “Get Out” | indie rock
Gen by Gen Hoshino
► “Eureka” | R&B
Unrest by KING KILL
► “Defeat” | powerviolence
Another Seraph by nyamura
► “tadashisa no yukue” ft. suisoh | electro-pop / dream pop
Itsumademo Shinu Noha Kowai? EP by SAGOSAID
► “Am I afraid of dying?” | alt rock
OBLIVION TRACKS by SPOILMAN
► “Daydreams’ Dance Drill” | post-punk
from: Livings by utatane kurage
► “Ridatsu Symptoms” | indie pop
YMQEP by Yawning Mondo Qube
► “hallucination” | indie pop / new wave
Mofu Mohu by Yuka Nagase
► “hikari” | new wave / electro prog
Okuman Choja by Yuki Chiba
► “Kibo” | rap
Bonus Beats: 4 Vocaloid Albums
Back in late April, I came across a list of the top 50 titles from this poll done under the hashtag Vocalo All Time Best Albums, started by the producer behind Love-Ghost Lab. You can check out the list on Twitter here (it is written out in Japanese). Some of the classics, like wowaka’s Unhappy Refrain (number 1!), Hachi’s OFFICIAL ORANGE and supercell, made it in, but the results skew toward more recent releases from the past several years. Which is good for me since I already keep a couple of guides to Vocaloid albums that cover the early-half to middle of the 2010s but don’t touch so much on the newer stuff.
I’ve been slowly picking at this list for May, first from the top 10, and already discovered some gems. Here are a few great ones that were new to me.
Iyowa - Sleeping Pink Noise (2019)
KAIRUI - The Name of the Sea (2022)
n-buna - Tsuki Wo Aruiteiru (2016)
Tsumiki - SAKKAC CRAFT (2021)
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