This week’s features include: 空白ごっこ (kuhakugokko), Gyoson, LELLE,
mol-74, and 笹川真生 (sasagawa mao)

Hello! Good day to ya 😀 And welcome back to Season 2 of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! I am your host Leap, as always, here with another set of songs lined up for me to check out with you guys 😉

If you already know how it goes, feel free to head on over to down to the tracks. However, if this is actually your first time here, here’s a short primer on what this series is all about ー

The Draft, inspired by player drafts in traditional sports and draft formats from popular trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, is a bi-weekly series where we try to answer the question;

How good is Spotify at recommending songs to me ?

In this series I will test Spotify’s ability to recommend to me songs that I would like based on songs that I already do like in the form of my own ongoing Recommendation Roundup Playlist on Spotify.

Making use of Spotify’s built-in suggestion feature on user-created playlists, we will have it gather a total of 5 (five) songs for me to check out and listen to. In addition to my own playlist however, for this season we will ALSO be including the 100 Draft picks from the previous season into the mix, thus (in theory) refining Spotify’s recommendations even further while also ensuring that we don’t get any repeats (songs that weren’t picked from last season though will get another shot if they get recommended to me again). Songs that I like will get drafted on a *new* Draft playlist, where the goal is to see just how big it gets by the end of the year.

What else new in Season 2 of Draft, you might ask? Well, we will actually be introducing a couple more things that weren’t present in the previous season. The first, is what we will be calling the Score To Beat. Last time Spotify only needed to reach a 100 songs for it to get the W at the end of the year. We will treat that 100 as the *current* score to beat for the series, so for this season Spotify now needs to get 101 or higher before the end of the year in order for it to win.

To keep things fair however, seeing as Spotify juuuust barely reached its goal last year, we’ll be incorporating the Wait List; a separate playlist of songs (max 3) that I think I might reconsider drafting should it come down to it.

We are now in Week 7 of Drafts, as we now just break into Q2 of 2024. …MAN, time flies when you look break it down like that, lol

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Here’s what we got:

Some familiar names here for the Draft specifically. Nice!

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x なつ/natsu by 空白ごっこ (kuhakugokko)

Now, you might think that, because Kuhakugokko is a known name here on the blog who have since had quite a number of appearances already on the Monthly Recommendation Roundup that I would automatically give Natsu here a ♥ from me. That being said however, I’m actually not that much of a fan of the chorus on this one. It’s a little *too* shout-y for me, and I do know first hand that Setsuko does shore up her vocals in subsequent releases following this one and while those would more than likely get a pass here, this one unfortunately does not.

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♥ GRIND by Gyoson

I don’t know who Gyoson is. I don’t know what he’s up to nowadays (his last release was GRIND here which came out in 2021, and with the exception of a mysterious teaser-like tweet he has since been radio silent on X), but I will say… I hope he’s okay and he hasn’t quit making music as this song is a vibe and a half. I really like what he’s doing here on the production side and his flow is my kind of jam as well.

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x 紫/murasaki by LELLE

I had to remind myself that this is actually LELLE’s second time here already on the Draft, after their first appearance left much to be desired. Murasaki… doesn’t yet again make the cut for me, however I would like to be on record that this track is far and away a massive step up from Hibana. Sakurai Kentarou’s vocals was just a touch too shaky for me here but apart from that I think the instrumentation here was actually pretty tight. Who knows, they do say third time’s the charm so maybe if we see them again they’ll finally convince me otherwise, but for now it’s a no go.

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♥ 春は、魔法だ/haru wa mahou da by mol-74

In contrast to LELLE’s second outing here on the Draft, mol-74 knocks it cleanly out of the park again for me, this time around with their song Haru wa Mahou da. Last time I noted that their drum work to me sounded Math-y which I was particularly fond off. With regard to that, I’ve since learned now too that the band actually have their roots in Scandinavian Post-Rock of all things, and while I’m not all that familiar with music from that part of the world specifically, I do know Post-Rock when I hear it. Good stuff.

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♥ 悪魔/akuma by 笹川真生 (sasagawa mao)

Oh wow, we actually have three sophomore appearances on the Draft, with this now being Sasagawa Mao’s second trip here as well, coming after a bit of an unsuccessful one in his first time out. What’s funny is while I do think Akuma is also an improvement from when we last saw him, I have to give most of the credit to Hinat(a)ya who’s actually the one providing the backing vocals here. I think having her here offsets and thereby complements Sasagawa Mao’s high-pitched singing voice which make for a nice harmonization between the two.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

x ♥ x ♥ ♥

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This week’s Draft picks can now be seen on the Spotify Draft playlist. No new additions have been made to the Wait List this week.

Spotify gets another 3 ♥ week and all of a sudden we are trending much further below where we were at during Week 7 of Season 1 (at now just 24 songs drafted compared to 27). Granted, that differential can still be resolved with just a single good week of drafting. There’s also the Wait List to consider which, if the songs we have on there right now pull through, brings us to about even anyway. Definitely not at the point yet where it’s concerning in that regard, but interesting to note nonetheless I would think.

What did you guys think of this week’s Draft? Let me know down in the comments if you think I’m just being a bit too harsh on LELLE (lol)

Thanks for tuning in! Hope to see you in the next one 🙂

* Also, just in case you didn’t get your invite this month, we also happen to have the J-Music Advance Party for April going on over at my Substack. Entry and subscription to future parties is 100% free so if you’re at all curious, feel free to check it out here!