JYOCHO Announce New Album 'Let's Promise to Be Happy'

Japanese progressive pop, indie rock band JYOCHO is set to release their new full-length album, Let's Promise to Be Happy, along with a live concert DVD, on February 16th via No Big Deal Records.

Available for pre-order now, the new album will be made available digitally worldwide, and a CD + DVD set will be available as a Japan only exclusive. Marking the sixth release and first in three years from the Kyoto, Japan-based band, the new eight-track project was written and produced by founding member Daijiro Nakagawa and recorded in Japan at StudioSHIKARI and Studio 246 KYOTO.

Today (1/31), the quartet-Daijiro (guitar/chorus), Netako Nekota (vocals/keyboard), sindee (bass), and Yuuki Hayashi (flute)-premiered an album sampler, produced by graphic designer and photo manipulator ISAMYU, who is also credited for designing the cover art for the new album.

The sampler follows the release of three tracks from Let's Promise to Be Happy, including the debut single "Gather the Lights" (released Mar. 24th), featured on Artic Drones' end-of-year list, "Top 10 Tracks of 2021: Math Rock, Mathy Prog & Indie Rock," along with the second single "All the Same" (released Nov. 10th) and the track "Measure the Dawn" (released Dec. 22nd).

Last summer, the band filmed a live performance of "Gather the Lights" as part of a spin-off concert JYOCHO presents: Machiya Extra Session, derived from their acoustic YouTube video series JYOCHO x KYOTO "Machiya Session," and released it as the track's official video on Dec. 4th.

In August, the band announced "All the Same" would be the ending theme song for the Japanese TV anime series, Banished From the Brave Man's Group, I Decided to Lead a Slow Life in the Back Country, which was introduced at New York Comic Con in October and started airing that same month. Anime News Network (8/30/21) praised "All the Same" as "...an impressive acoustic guitar melody and flute tone...The song's technical yet spacious and majestic sound adds beautiful colors to the ending." The full-length version of the single was released Nov. 10th, accompanied by the premiere of its official music video.

Regarding Let's Promise to Be Happy, Daijiro shares, "The new album is our most direct and intuitive work to date. The music on this release was influenced and revolved around the question, 'Do we really want to be happy?' For this new project, we started with our first album in mind, from a macroscopic perspective, and ended up with this album, which is a microscopic piece. As we seek happiness, things that are not happy are born within us. It is difficult to keep happiness in the same place for a long time. In order to keep it circulating, we have to bear and face the happiness and sorrow of others. I wonder if humanity is happy now."

In celebration of the new album release, JYOCHO will be premiering a third music video off this project on release day (2/16), plus they'll be putting on two performances in Japan: March 5th at Live House Anima in Osaka and March 27th at Shinjuku MARZ in Tokyo.

Directed by Takumi Ohsera (THINGS.), the new concert DVD JYOCHO presents: Machiya Extra Session (Live) features a ten-song set from the band, filmed last August 29th at WALL&WALL in Japan.

Listen to the album sampler here:

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