port town

"Following the physical release, the idol group Aquarium and Clematis, whose activities are centered around three pillars - life, live performance, and journey - has released their 1st album ""port town"" on streaming platforms. All ten tracks included on the album are being released as recordings for the first time, and the album brings together the creators who have previously provided songs for Aquarium and Clematis's EPs from the 1st through the 5th. It stands as a musical culmination that represents both the group's past and what lies ahead.

The album includes three songs provided by ""the world's most approachable shoegaze"" band The Otals: two tracks that overlay imagined contours onto the textures of everyday life and emotional fluctuations (""Terepshikora"" and ""My Lollipop Nightmare""), as well as a straightforward youth-driven tune set to an up-tempo alternative sound (""Suiyou, Rokugen, Kuuchuu Buranko""). It also features a three-part shoegaze suite by Yusuke Hata, vocalist and guitarist of the ""king of shoegaze"" Tokyo-based rock band cruyff in the bedroom, in which light pop sensibility and dreaminess coexist, blending the midnight blue of Shimokitazawa, the vermilion of Hong Kong, and the gold of Shanghai (""Shimokitazawa Night Life"", ""SWINGING HONG KONG"", and ""Dream in Shanghai""). From the Osaka-centered act WolfSurfPurpleSky comes ""You, Forever"", a new-sensation ""setsuna-style"" extreme pop track where mainstream and alternative intersect. The Yokosuka-based alternative rock band Fallsheeps contributes ""Lavandula"", a midwest emo meets shoegaze track that colors an autumn in a foreign land. The album also includes a cover of ""melt"" from the 3rd EP ""flower"" by the Sapporo shoegaze band Burst Blue, a song in which, while being enveloped in roaring sound, only the outlines of emotion seep into the corners of the room. Apart from the EP songwriters, Azusa Suga of the new J-pop band ""AprilBlue"" newly provides ""What's Your Poison?"", a retro-futuristic, discotheque-style dream pop track that symbolizes Aquarium and Clematis's era as a three-member formation.

The 1st album ""port town"" depicts a ""harbor city"" as a landscape that integrates the themes of the six EPs released to date - the imagination of stories, the imagination of time, the relationship between cities and people, blue as parting, portraits of youth, and loss and wish. A harbor is the boundary between life and imagination, an in-between space between daily life and journey, and a window through which thoughts are cast toward foreign places. We hear the voice of someone who has gone far away, and we come to hold memories of places we have never been. If that is the case, then this voice, too, may reach someone far away. It may become a memory for someone who does not yet know us."