This week’s features include: 日食なつこ (nisshoku natsuko), パスピエ (“PASSEPIED”),
miu, WOMCADOLE, and ずっと真夜中でいいのに。(“ZUTOMAYO”) 

It’s a quick turnaround for those of you who caught last month’s Roundup (check it out here you haven’t yet!) so I hope you don’t mind being back here so soon for another week of the Spotify J-Music Playlist Draft! If you’ve been here before and have actually been following the series, you should know where to go from here. HOWEVER, if you’re new to the blog and you’re not quite sure what this whole this is about—

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.

This is Week 22 of Draft as we now enter November of this year. I’ll say it right now; these last couple of weeks are going to be crucial.

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Let’s get it:

lol what’s Minority Myrakuraku doing there

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♥ 環礁宇宙/kanshou uchuu by 日食なつこ (nisshoku natsuko)

Nisshoku Natsuko makes another well-deserved appearance in the Draft after successfully breaking into the list on her second try back in Week 12. It seems we got off to a rocky start during her first entry, but Kanshou Uchuu has definitely won me over this time. While her vocal style might be an acquired taste for some, I find it captivating, especially alongside the lively instrumentation. The playful interplay between the string instruments and piano adds an inviting charm, making for an overall delightful listening experience.

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♥ 脳内戦争/nounai sensou by パスピエ (“PASSEPIED”)

On the subject of acquired taste in vocals, that’s always been the knock against PASSEPIED for as long as I’ve known about them, with their music generally being hit or miss for most people based solely on whether or not they liked how vocalist Ogoda Natsuki’s singing style. Admittedly, I do fall in the camp of, when it works it works, and in this instance for Nounai Sensou it does, work well enough. At the very least, I don’t mind it as much as I have in other songs of theirs. More over, I actually really do like the hook that this song has as well. Very catchy.

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♥ Shandy gaff by miu

TIL “shandy gaff”. But yeah, no, this is… an interesting song. It’s a predominantly jazz-based track, except that you do also hear a guitar just riffing away in the back, and past the second verse there’s also a section where miu lets loose with a quick little rap verse—which is the kind of music I primarily know her for, at least from the little that I’ve heard from her. I honestly didn’t really know what to think of it at first (lol), but over time I did end up liking how different-sounding it is on the whole.

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♥ 軌跡/kiseki by WOMCADOLE

WOMCADOLE’s one of those bands that I only know about, by virtue of following Japanese music for as long as I have, but have yet to really listen to their music outside of just hearing their songs in passing. Like, I vividly remember seeing some of their PVs from years ago when they first came out, and I simply just… never bothered to give them a listen. Now, I know it’s because I lean more towards female vocals, but I did listen to male singers and male-fronted bands on occasion before and even more so now and after hearing Kiseki here I do honestly feel like I would’ve enjoyed WOMCADOLE even back then. Big fan in particular of vocalist Higuchi Yuki’s voice—an area that tends to be the biggest hurdle for me with male singers.

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♥ マイノリティ脈絡/minority myakuraku by ずっと真夜中でいいのに。(“ZUTOMAYO”)

Well this sure takes me back… For the longest time, back when ZUTOMAYO only really had two EPs to their name, Minority Myakuraku was actually my favorite song by them. I remember hearing it for the first time and being floored by there being a hip-hop-y beat all of a sudden when at the time they really hadn’t put out anything like that prior. And then you get to the chorus and it’s classic ZUTOMAYO escalation, before then going back into the beat. The me from five or so years ago thought that was a pretty wild listening experience. Actually surprised that I never talked about this song here on the blog before.

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This Week’s Total Likes:

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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The Draft playlist on Spotify has been updated with this week’s Draft picks 😊
There were no new additions made to the Wait List.

I said these next couple of weeks leading up to the finale of this season of Draft were going to be crucial, and Spotify responds in kind by giving us a 5 ♥ week. You love to see it. If it can replicate this turn out for the remainder of the season, it will have no trouble clearing our Score To Beat. Here’s hoping it manages to do just that.

What are your guys’ thoughts on this week’s Draft? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Listening!