K O T O: PLATONICPLANET - Review

This is a review for my month long Album-a-Day adventure in Jan. 2022. if you want to read the other reviews, check out the original post.

Due to a lack of a review yesterday, today we’re listening to two albums to make up for it. Today’s first album was PLATONICPLANET from K O T O (which also sometimes stylized KOTO, I’m not sure which is correct) - this album was a lot of fun. The best way I could describe it is chiptune J-Pop, a combination that I thought was really interesting. It’s a pretty short, 8 track album that’s just full of catchy upbeat pop songs that happen to use chiptune instrumentals in a lot of the productions.

I often find the chiptune sound a bit distracting - in my experience, it often dominates everything in the songs that it’s in, and I don’t think the sounds themselves are good enough to warrent that. I think this album did a great job of maintaining a balance between some more “modern” productions (especially on the drums and percussion) while still having that chiptune flair.

I don’t know Japanese (yet!) so I can’t comment specifically on the lyrical content, but I really liked the vocals. They sat in this perfect middle ground between the drums and the often appearing sparkly higher register accents (sometimes even following the vocal melody, which I really liked).

Overall, I don’t have a ton to say about this album. It was a fun listen, and I would definitely put it back on again, but it wasn’t earth shattering or anything for me. Probably a big part of that is not being able to understand the lyrics, since that’s a big factor for me in music I really enjoy, but maybe this is a good reason for me to actually get off my ass and learn Japanese.

I’d recommend this album if you’re looking for a feel good album that makes you want to dance, as it does a great job of that.

Score: 6.5/10

Favorite Songs: SUITEI Sweetie, PLATONIC PLANET

One Recommendation: SUITEI Sweetie (this song is a bop!)