Adagio Apassionato

I was super, super excited to listen to and write about Potatoi (John Cha)’s first full-length album – ‘Orange Courage!’ I have really enjoyed listening to his solo works and discovering his persona as an artist beyond the band wave to earth. He started out making mainly instrumental music as ‘obdnce,’ with his only lyrical track ‘With You’ featuring Daniel Kim’s beautiful vocals. As he first began writing lyrics for wave to earth (‘evening glow,’ ‘annie.’), I could clearly see a distinction in Daniel’s lyricism and John’s – where Daniel’s (for wave to earth) are flowery and filled with imagery and metaphors, John’s seem to express emotions as they are.  With the EP ‘Toy,’ we were introduced to John’s solo persona and learned a little about him and his experiences. With ‘Orange Courage,’ though, I feel that John has really come into his own with his creations, and his voice feels truly authentic in these songs. Even the titles of both albums show this transition – John’s ‘Toy’ is p...

August and September of 2025 were the best possible time for any music lover with the amount of wonderful new music that was released! As luck would have it, all my favourite artists released new music and/or albums every week from August until mid-September – being able to absorb so much amazing new art ensured that these were probably the best few weeks of my life! It made it a little difficult to decide which of these albums or songs to write about on this blog since I had so many options – but to me, ‘Prema’ by Fujii Kaze stood out and also challenged me to listen deeply and analyse something unlike what I usually do on this blog. ‘Prema’ as a title itself stood out to me as soon as Kaze announced he would be releasing this album. It felt so special to me as an Indian – ‘prema,’ in Sanskrit, signifies an all-encompassing, unconditional love, often expressed towards the Divine or God. The innate positivity, spirituality and warmth that is so characteristic of Kaze’s music made me fe...