Miso Extra - Earcandy

'Earcandy' is the soundtrack to the best night of your life, from early excitement to late-night chats in dimly lit living rooms.

Singing in both English and Japanese opens up the 'Misoverse' even further, splicing together sugary sweet K-pop with UK garage beats and laid-back lo-fi vocals, culminating most clearly in capturing opening track 'Love Train'. 'POP!' is a bouncy hyperpop tune designed for popstar group choreography, before Metronomy's feature on 'Good Kisses' brings a glitchy feel that mirrors the lyric's tale of romantic uncertainty. 'Playboi' grounds the record in an R&B-adjacent track that swells and swirls round layered vocal lines, twisting away from the airy, kawaii first half, a feeling that is driven home in sultry Spanish guitar-slash-bedroom pop banger 'Done.'.

It's clear why Miso Extra chose 'Earcandy' as the album's title, with the album having an addictive quality that is hammered home by the tracklist, descending from potentially sickly dance-pop into dark rave tracks such as 'Slow Down' that feels like going from sugar rush to sugar crash, but in the best way, with closing tracks 'Candycrushin' (ft. Tyson)' and 'Earcandy' bringing enough soulful R&B to calm and cool everything down.

Given all the sampling, mixing, and mastering that has clearly occurred in the studio, the biggest compliment you can give is that every sound has its place, cherry-picked to create the exact palette needed to tie together 12 songs that all have their own distinct identity yet still come together to energise and excite as a wider LP.

This is an unbelievably exciting debut from an artist who deserves the biggest stages. The last line of the record sums it up best: "That was fucking sick."