Hakoniwa [Standard Edition]

The standard edition of Hakoniwa presents the solo EP by Fami., bassist of LOVEBITES, as six songs and nothing else. It is her first solo release in roughly five years — since the crowdfunded Graduation Album she made as a high-school student in 2021 — and the first since she joined LOVEBITES in October 2022. In the band she anchors English-language power metal from the low end; here she takes both bass and lead vocals, and builds her music from an entirely different vocabulary. Fami. wrote words and music for three songs: the title track “Hakoniwa Affordance,” “Beginner Highway Star” and “Nostalgic Logic,” and she also composed a bass instrumental. “Hakoniwa Affordance” dates back to her high-school years, and she has called it the song she is most attached to. The EP also carries “Slap Alien,” written for this project by the Vocaloid producer NayutalieN — the same writer whose “Alien Alien” she covered on YouTube as a teenager, a video that passed roughly 11.9 million views and made her name as a bass-cover performer. Bringing him in was her own request. Every track was recorded with a live band. Fami. handles bass and vocals, Hideki Aoyama (B'z, BABYMETAL, JAM Project) plays drums, and Yoshihiko Haga (aiko, Yuzu, Shunsuke Kiyokiba) plays guitar. Mao, who also works as a composer and arranger with LOVEBITES, handled arrangement and programming on her original songs. Technical J-rock, pop and a post-Vocaloid sense of melody sit together, bright and wistful at once — a toy box turned upside down, heard here with nothing else in the package.