REFLECTION

Now, his most recent album, 2022’s Reflection. And this is his best one.
This album has a good mix of everything Tofubeats has done over the years, and is probably the best introduction to his music. It’s got some hype and catchy pop songs, some rapping, some completely pointless 3 minute long EDM excursions, and some even more completely pointless 8 minute long EDM excursions.

The immediate highlight here is Peak Time, which is so catchy and awesome I named it my song of the year for 2022. It only has one vocal section but that section sticks in your head so easily and never gets old. It starts simple but builds up until the whole song is bursting with life by the climax. It’s the rare tofubeats EDM song that is not just good, but great. It never fails to get me dancing.

Let Me Be and Emotional Bias fit together as Let Me Be pretty much feels like buildup to Emotional Bias even though they’re the same length. Emotional Bias is another actually really good EDM song. As I mentioned earlier this is a fully-formed version of STO from West Members and it’s great. It’s kinda repetitive so it’s not something I frequently revisit, but it’s guaranteed to grab your attention on a first listen of this album.

From here the album moves into a rap section with Smile, Don’t like U, and Mature, Ballistic, In Love. Smile is a trap pop rap track that’s pretty catchy and wouldn’t sound out of place as a pop song on a radio station. It’s tight. The rest aren’t. Don’t Like U is probably the worst of the three Neibiss/tofubeats collab songs, and Mature, Ballistic, In Love has a really weird tropical beat that sounds super out of place.

Following this we get three straight pointless EDM songs in Afterimage and Solitaire, but after that is Vibration, the most straight up pop song on the record and one that’s really fun and catchy. With it’s feature from Kotetsu Shoichiro, it wouldn’t sound out of place if you shoved this on First Album. It is a lot more reserved than most of the tracks on that album, but that’s just a sign of Tofubeats growing as an artist since then.

City2City is great as well, it’s kinda similar to Peak Time from earlier. It’s mostly focused on an instrumental buildup that pays off really nicely, but it also has some really solid vocals thrown in here and there, especially on the chorus. It’s a chorus that repeats one word over and over but it sounds good so who cares?

Somebody Tore My P and Okay! would be kinda excusable if only one of them was on this record but for some reason they both are. Somebody Tore My P was already on TBEP and is not good enough to warrant being here as well. It does nothing but unravel and that’s not enough to justify the 6 minutes of runtime. Okay! Doesn’t unravel and is instead 8 minutes of a stagnant sound that, while pleasant still, doesn’t need to exist.

The last big song and climax of the whole record is the title track Reflection, featuring Kaho Nakamura. I want to preface this section by saying I don’t like breakcore. I don’t like drum and bass. I’ve never been a fan of those genres or anything adjacent. With that said, this song is awesome.

Despite the fact that I don’t even speak Japanese, this song does an incredible job of getting it’s feelings across. The longing and anxiety are able to be expressed purely through the singing and beat, even if you don’t understand the words she’s saying. And those feelings are beautiful, and powerful. I said Peak Time was my song of the year, but this is in the top 5 as well.

This is genuinely one of the best singing performances I’ve ever heard, at least in terms of raw emotion. It’s very rare that a Japanese song makes me feel things in the way this one does. The unraveling here at the end of this song is actually well deserved for a change and is the cherry on top of this fantastic track. It’s so out of left field for tofubeats to make a straight up drum and bass track and it’s even more out of left field for me to actually enjoy one, but this is SO good.

This album is still only gonna get a B+. The highs here are incredible. Tofubeats in general really has some of the highest peaks in music. It’s just the lows are so stupid. I’m gonna fix his tracklist. Peak Time, Emotional Bias, Smile, Vibration, City2City, Somebody tore my P to pad time, and then Reflection. That’s a 7 song 28 minute album of the year contender. Depending on your personal taste you can throw in one of tracks 8 or 9, one of 6 or 7, or Okay! Instead of somebody tore my P. This album does not need to be over an hour long. At most it should be 35 minutes.