yet by maeshima soshi (Album Review) ▸ J-Music Exchange/Rate
No tricks, all treats here
No tricks, all treats here
Hello and welcome back to yet another J-Music Exchange/Rate review! For those who are new around here, allow me to explain what this is all about: the E/R is a segment that I do with my good friend/fellow Japanese music fan Leap250 where we both pick an album from our libraries, hand them to each other for us to listen to, and later give our thoughts on our respective blogs. This is a fun project that Leap and I have been doing for four straight years now, and not only does this give both of us the opportunity to suggest cool artists & albums to each other (most of which we haven’t heard of before or don’t listen to that often) but we hope that all of you reading gain a similar experience as ours. A lot of the music we bring up in this segment are ones that we genuinely find to be enjoyable, and it would be awesome if some of you came out of these posts with a brand new artist to check out!
And as always, Leap and I decide on a specific theme each month, in order to base our picks on. It was my turn for the month of October and while this may or may not be related to the spirit of Halloween, I really wanted to talk about some albums that include some surprising guest artists features. Leap went ahead and tried to do the impossible for me, and framed this theme as albums that kinda ‘spooked’ us with a few cool guest artists on them, which made enough sense, I’d say (lol). In any case, I’m always a fan of when artists, especially ones who have a knack for composing/producing music, happen to get someone to sing on a track of theirs; a few of my personal favorites who have done this being Ohashi Trio, Michael Kaneko, Sam is Ohm, VivaOla, as well as the underrated dude himself, voquote/Kota Matsukawa.
However, and unfortunately, I didn’t pick any of those great names for my album choice, so lemme show you what we brought to the table: Leap went ahead and tossed over yet by JP producer maeshima soshi, while I gave him what I believed to be one of my favorite albums from 2023, Shin Sakiura’s Inner Division.
Let’s jump right in!
maeshima soshi is a Japanese music producer, songwriter and beat maker, whose currently under the SASAKRECT.inc creative company. He began making music back in 2018 and throughout the following years, maeshima’s talent and career has exponentially grown, thanks to his appealing and creative expressions of the hip-hop, pop, electronic and R&B genres. He eventually was able to release his first single, Slide, in June of 2019, and in addition, later began to remix songs from other artists such as alt-pop artist 4s4ki’s “Chouhametsuteki Shikou” and “I’m free” from singer-songwriter Furui Riho. These remixes, presumably, led to maeshima’s first forays into creating songs with and/or for other artists like maco marets, OHTORA, as well as the popular boy band Hey! Say! JUMP. Since then, maeshima has produced music based on a wide range of styles alongside a wide range of artists, including noa, Punipunidenki, DE DE MOUSE, THE CHARM PARK, Takahashi Kai (of LUCKY TAPES fame), the DENONBU franchise, as well as international talents like Talitha (Malaysia) and LIU KOI (Taiwan).
As of this post’s publication date, maeshima soshi has released four full-length albums and numerous singles.
(info sources: SASAKRECT.inc Official Website, RealSound, 17 Carat K-Pop, The Glow, JaME World)
Tracklist
Swipe — feat. BLOOM VASE
So Far — feat. Takahashi Kai & Rinne
Found Me — feat. YonYon
Chewing gum / チューインガム — feat. macico & ANATSUME
Out of Time — feat. Talitha.
Fly — feat. ALLMO$T
Blackout! — feat. suisoh
One day — feat. Ryohu
Kufuku / 空腹 — feat. TOOBOE
Lost — feat. kurage
Give me a light — feat. MOSHI
Mirror — feat. OHTORA
Released: 2022.04.14
One of the most intriguing descriptions I’ve come across for producer and track-maker maeshima soshi is that he is "protean.". The word is of Greek origin, and is reference to Proteus of ancient Greek myth. According to the myth, Proteus was a master of disguise, and possessed the ability to shapeshift, and assume the form of anything he needed to be. Being "protean", thus, refers to an individual that's like Proteus—one who has the ability to change and adapt to the situation at hand.
While I would think that most producers are (or at least aspire to be) protean, it is in fact undeniable that maeshima soshi exemplifies this trait exceedingly well. The man is an enigma, whose face, to my knowledge, has yet to really be known to the public. Despite that, maeshima soshi has already gotten to work with a plethora of different artists across different genres, cultures, and nationalities, extending beyond his native Japan. Though he primarily operates within the melodic R&B and Hip-Hop realm, maeshima soshi demonstrates the universality of his music by allowing his collaborators to freely express their artistry whilst providing for them a fitting backdrop to along with it through his produced tracks.
In that regard, I find his sophomore album yet to be an outstanding showcase of his "protean" capabilities, featuring a wide range of talent, including representatives from Japanese Hip-Hop and R&B, cross-cultural Japanese artists like YonYon and krage, and even the Filipino Hip-Hop group ALLMO$T. It’s clear that maeshima soshi's pursuit of what he calls the "maeshima sound" knows no bounds, positioning him as one of Japan’s most exciting up-and-coming producers.
1 ▸ the maeshima sound & the accompanying vocalists
maeshima soshi is a name that I’m actually not too familiar with. The first time I ever heard of this guy was through Leap and one of his past song roundups, where he showcased a track that maeshima worked on for the virtual singer/SINSEKAI STUDIO talent ASU. And while ASU’s super nice vocals is what I primarily took interest in, visiting “BLUE NIGHT DARLING” again in preparation for this review definitely made me realize maeshima soshi’s talents with music composition and appreciate them on a much deeper level.
And that’s kinda how I approached the album we’re talking about today, his second full-length release titled yet. At least for myself, and in the context of the theme I chose for this month, the vocal features on this whole twelve-song tracklist was what caught my attention at first. This is for a multitude of reasons that I’ll go into in a second but the fact that every single track has someone different performing on it, compared to the album I gave Leap where Shin Sakiura either performed the vocals himself for a handful of songs or just went with a quick instrumental… it’s pretty fascinating that maeshima soshi managed to gather so many cool performers to make up this entire album.
But before I go further into the vocals, it’s definitely worth mentioning what maeshima did here in regards to composition. As mentioned earlier, hip-hop, R&B, electronic and pop are his go-to genres, and I honestly believe he expressed those quite well in yet. It starts off with “Swipe” featuring the Japanese hip-hop trio BLOOM VASE, where a pretty standard trap beat gets combined with a bouncy piano and high-pitched synths in order to give it a bit of brightness. Meanwhile, a track like “Blackout!” has a ton more going on with its high flying beats, wild backing vocals, someone faintly going hard on the bass, all while suisoh puts down some bars with her lower & stronger register.
Taking those into consideration, as well as him even taking it down a few notches with the smooth and almost sensual vibes in “Out of Time”, you can really tell that maeshima soshi’s got a very solid understanding for those aforementioned music styles. Not only did all of these songs feel very modern and up-to-date in a general sense, but I do think these line up with a lot of the hip-hop-focused music out there in the Japanese musicsphere, especially when it comes to the usage of trap beats or combining it with a more electronic flair.
Do I think there’s a so-called ‘maeshima sound’ he has developed over the years, as some have pointed out? While I haven’t listened to a ton of his other stuff, I’d say: definitely. Most can probably identify the lofi inspiration he gives off with many of the relaxed/chill compositions on this album, but I still do believe he creates music in his own unique & refined way, compared to similar tracks I’ve heard during my time as a Japanese music fan. That said, I think he did a great job highlighting that ‘feel-good’ element throughout this album, especially in the slower paced songs, which I very much enjoyed.
And with this album featuring a multitude of different artists, each performer honestly did a fantastic job singing on each produced track. It was quite nice to see a few familiar names like Takahashi Kai providing his usual, soft vocals in “So Far”, as well as the chill, groovy and R&B-like atmosphere in “Kufuku” which paired quite well with TOOBOE’s distinct vocal styling.
On the other hand, being able to discover some new artists I previously haven’t heard of was a cool experience. OHTORA’s passionate-sounding and higher-pitched performance in “Mirror” made it feel like I was listening to a nice Korean-esque ballad; “One day” featuring Ryohu’s more relaxed and smooth rapping was done really well; and one of my favorites also has to be the chorus parts in “Give me a light”, as the deeper/distorted vocals from MÖSHI heavily, specifically and weirdly reminded me of Bo Burnham’s 2021 viral hit “All Eyes on Me”.
2 ▸ east & southeast asia representation
One of the themes I proposed for an E/R review last year was ‘multicultural/multilingual artists’, mainly because it was a common theme for a lot of the music I discovered back in 2023. While music that is purely made by Japanese artists and performed in the Japanese language is obviously great, I happened to really, really enjoy a bunch of songs from a bunch of talented people who were not originally from the country and/or incorporated a different language in their music such as English or Korean. Like I said in my yearly song roundup for 2023, it was honestly fascinating to see so many people inject a ton of different ideas into the general Japanese musicsphere, which has felt quite fresh.
And why I’m emphasizing this is because maeshima soshi’s yet 100% expresses that ‘multicultural’ theme very well in a handful of its songs. Most notably, you get to hear the man compose some heat for a ton of talented singers and performers originating from other parts of East/Southeast Asia, such as YonYon (originally from Seoul and likes to intertwine Japanese, English and Korean in her lyrics), Talitha (songwriter from Malaysia), krage (she’s half-Japanese, half-Chinese) and ALLMO$T (a hip-hop group from the Philippines).
I was pleasantly surprised to see the multiple foreign vocal features and god damn, they were really good. I even believed that during my later go-throughs with this album, the songs which included those aforementioned artists stood out to me the most. YonYon is a name that I happen to already be familiar with and have gotten a taste of her specific style of smoothly combining three different languages in her music, and I think the performance she put on in “Found Me” was just another good example of her abilities. Plus, it was neat to be introduced to other outside talents like Talitha and the fantastic R&B feel she has within “Out of Time”. And while I am an American-raised Filipino through-and-through, I was pleasantly surprised to hear ALLMO$T throw down some insane bars in Tagalog, and it was quite fun to kiiiiiiiinda make out what they were rapping about in “Fly”.
Like I said earlier, I’ve had a deeper appreciation for Japanese music crossing paths with other cultures and countries, and I’d say that this is probably one of the more diverse instances of that. And whether or not this album counts as a ‘Japanese music release’ is a whole other discussion, similar to what Leap alluded to in his review of Misato Ono’s something invisible, but I do like how maeshima was able to identify talent and get a really good feel of what kind of music works for another person’s way of singing or rapping, whether they’re Japanese or another ethnicity.
3 ▸ an excellently executed collaboration
In past E/R reviews that deal with singers and composers/songwriters collaborating on an album, Leap has extensively discussed the relationship between the two. More specifically with the seiyuu/actor artists I’ve suggested to him in the past, he has alluded to a good point of whether or not an album actually sounds like a pure ‘Kobayashi Aika’ or ‘Kamishiraishi Mone’ album, or if their approach of collaborating with a bunch of different composers made it seem more like a random, stylistically different compilation of songs.
yet isn’t exactly in the same boat as those two but I actually started to think about this idea; not only because of what Leap has said in the past, but also the fact that many of these songs feel natural, in a way. Meaning that rather than these being solely seen as ‘guest vocal features’, I could totally imagine Takahashi Kai performing a track like “So Far” on a LUCKY TAPES release or hearing a YonYon single where she lays her super soothing vocals on a slower paced and light piano-focused song like “Found Me”. Even for the artists I had never heard of prior to taking a stab at yet, maeshima soshi beautifully created songs that sound like they fit with each of the voices and personalities heard on them. I mean, I don’t listen to music from the Philippines all that often, but the song that ALLMO$T rapped on felt perfect for a hip-hop group like them; to the point where I think a lot of Filipinos (and/or their existing fans) would absolutely vibe with “Fly”, all while being surprised that it was actually a dude from Japan who produced the instrumental for it.
But this poses another question: does it really matter either way?
And yeah… I guess it doesn’t (lol). What it boils down to is that maeshima soshi is a pretty phenomenal producer and it really does seem like he can effortlessly work with a wide variety of artists, especially in a sense where he understands how to truly make the most of their vocal abilities, as shown in many of the features on this album. On the other hand, I do believe that all these singers were still able to comfortably show off their own individual characters and expressions within their vocal performances, which added to the overall experience and made them a lot more fun to listen to (in my opinion).
It’s a genuinely nice mix of both, and that’s a pretty big reason why I really liked this album.
Rating: 8.5/10
Aaaaand that’s all I got for you today!
Cool album. I always have a lot of respect for up-and-coming songwriters who show off their talent pretty early in their careers, and maeshima soshi is definitely one of those. And the fact that he got all these names to be on one single album is still wild to me. 100% interested in checking out his other stuff now!
And now that you’re finished here, head on over to Leap’s blog where he talked about another album with a ton of fantastic guest vocalist, Inner Division by Shin Sakiura. Really enjoyed finding this one last year, so definitely go see what it’s all about.
Also, as of this post’s publication, Halloween’s already being celebrating in a good chunk of the world so Happy Halloween to everyone! Hope everyone has a great time and stays safe!!
Thanks for reading!! :D
-al