Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming

Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming is a six-track document of teenage HANABIE. converting live-house urgency into its first substantial release. The brief instrumental title track creates a moment of calm and expectation before “Envy” releases raw riffs, pressured screams and unstable young emotion. “TIME OUT” turns the anxiety of running out of time into a fast beat, and its abrupt structural movement already suggests the restlessness that would become central to the band’s later writing. “ghost mania,” featuring Yojiro from A Ghost of Flare, creates the darkest and most dimensional sound on the EP by crossing multiple voices with a supernatural atmosphere. “ZERO” places hesitation and restart inside a heavy repeated figure, while “Drastic Nadeshiko” energetically rewrites the conventional image of ideal Japanese femininity. The recording retains the roughness of an independent first release, but that quality carries the urgency of the guitar, the direct force of bass and drums, and the contrast between Yukina and Matsuri with unusual immediacy. The electronics and pop polish of later records are only beginning to appear, yet the central idea is already clear: everyday language, female identity, subculture and extreme music can be reassembled from the band’s own perspective. True to its image of blossoms opening, the EP captures the moment HANABIE.’s distinctive identity first became visible.