Foodman - HIKARIGASASHIKOMU (2026)

Takahide Higuchi searches for light in the darkness on their follow-up to 2023's 'uchigawa tankentai' EP, a surprisingly personal collection of mutant children's songs and playground rhymes that Higuchi subverts with chipmunked voices, cartoonish samples, Mark Fell-like FM synths and rhythms inspired by Brazilian funk, footwork and ghetto house.

Reflecting the stress and strain of the modern interconnected world, Higuchi controls the chaos on 'HIKARIGASASHIKOMU', appearing straight out of the gate with a chorus of corrupted voices that are pitched into alien screams, paired with shrill digital stabs and ketmized FX. It's disorienting stuff, far more eccentric than the MIDI-jazz-footwork echoes that characterized 2021's 'Yasuragi Land'. Here, Higuchi appears to be turning their distant childhood memories into demonic ghost chants and hypnogogic club inversions: nursery rhymes that have been chopped to shreds and spliced with hiccuping beats.

'Omoi' is like SND making footwork, while lead single 'Hard Reclining' is a seemingly mismatched fusion of folk-y vocal chants, vintage R&B guitars licks and flimsy city pop drums. Then on 'Horomiro', after being blasted by squelchy acid sequences, we're hit with a barrage of cartoonish samples: woody hits, repurposed gliding squares, transformer scratches and chaotic vocals. It's almost too much, standing in stark contrast to Higuchi's relatively spare early work. But thematically it's on point; Higuchi wants us to live in his world for a moment or two, experiencing his internal world so we can get a better handle on his psychedelic sound.