We lost so many veteran and A-list talents last year that there were thoughts that 2022 would have a dearth of compelling new chika idol releases. To our surprise, the first several months of this new year have instead seen veteran idols producing some of their best ever work while new units have been dropping captivating releases from the word, “Go!” We usually wait until much later in the year to start tossing around contenders for “Best of the Year” nods, but Team Homicidols is finding ourselves so overwhelmed by the volume, diversity and quality of new music that we felt it was important to make some mid-year citations for posterity.
CROSSNOESIS
Crossnoesis Are a Ray of (Moon)Light
Those dreamy dark pop divas are back at it again with a new single and new music video! There’s no double crossing here, we love the new CROSSNOESIS!
The New CROSSNOESIS Single Is Good
This was a much more interesting post before I had to stop it mid-thought and then forgot the best parts, so let’s just cut to the chase: There is a new CROSSNOESIS single, it is good, but it is also being billed as an EP in some quarters because not only does it have six tracks (three full songs and three instrumentals of the same), but it is not titled the title of any of the songs on it. I get the confusion! I also get that this is a wonderful song and a perfectly cool MV and I will use everything from live demonstrations to threats of force to get more people to listen to CROSSNOESIS.
That’s really good! And by “really good” I mean “fun and innovative and practically ambulatory.” I’m not sure how anybody involved necessarily feels about invocations of the H word here, but that’s some vintage stuff, and the deal is sealed by the very well-woven guitar solo that takes us from “this is a fun and good song!” to “this is a fun and good almost rock song!” which is just about all of the qualification we need ’round these parts.
The single, such as it is, is out, so go get it! So sayeth the person who had their chronicle album in his Best Of short list, and everybody knows that my opinions are infallible.
I Enjoyed This New One from CROSSNOESIS Quite a Bit Thank You
Lost a little bit in the sour feelings from yesterday was the fact that the former HAMIDASYSTEM minus one HAMIDASYSTEM plus one new member, aka CROSSNOESIS, had dropped their EP. This in the midst of the new HAMIDASYSTEM, which does not involve any of the old HAMIDASYSTEM, which is now CROSSNOESIS, who are in the middle of a single-per-month run that we just enjoyed the other day, so there is understandably even some confusion for folks! All well and good. At any rate, the group that is now CROSSNOESIS and in no way HAMIDASYSTEM stop saying that, to promote the release of the EP, released an MV to really flex those muscles and show us their chops as a standalone, next-step kind of group:
Keep your Maison Book Girl jokes to yourself
Well heck, that’s simultaneously exactly what I should have expected and not really what I expected at all. It sounds just like, well, them! And of course it does — the creative team didn’t stop working together when CROSSNOESIS was birthed, and our prior exposure to their work didn’t exactly break with tradition. We’ve even heard this before! Am I complaining, though? Absolutely not. Ever since their turn toward the exquisite a couple of years ago, the entire HAMIDA experience has been one of ethereal goodness that always makes me feel good to listen to. I can’t wait to dig into the whole record!
Surviving Monday with CROSSNOESIS
Just like with their new sisters in HAMIDASYSTEM the other day, HAMIDASYSTEM refugees CROSSNOESIS put out some fresh material last week, and I may be a jerk for kind of letting it molder at the back of the queue for several days, but I had my reasons*. And now I have every reason to finally post the thing and at the very least make a permanent record of it. And maybe give your Monday morning a little bit of a pick-me-up!
This playlist that they added on Soundcloud may just be all demo versions, but it’ll sound both familiar and innovative on top of that at the same time, and that’s cool:
I may not totally get the move to pull HAMIDASYSTEM into a new thing and have the old members do a new thing with a sound somewhere between old and new, but as long as the end product has me nodding with benign pleasure (like this), I’m going to be okay. Both projects feel like winners. And if they want to get back into the media-spanning cross-functional projects that made last year such a cool follow, I’m here for it.
*They are bad reasons
CROSSNOESIS Could Possibly Save the World
So I don’t know where all of the good idol stuff went over the past several days*, you guys, but I’m kind of thankful for the moment’s peace. I told myself even yesterday that maybe I should just let the week ride itself out and only feel like I need to respond at all if something genuinely cool and big happens.**
Well, the best thing happened, and we finally got a look at the post-HAMIDASYSTEM project of the former members of HAMIDASYSTEM, who are not at all the new and current HAMIDASYSTEM, but are veterans of maybe the coolest, most creative, impossible-to-overrate multimedia art project to have ever struck idol. Specifically, we get music and some light visuals!
That was the fastest smashing of the Subscribe button in my over-enthusiastic history
