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Song Review:: Daily:Direction: First:Delivery- ROOMBADOOMBA {Debut}

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Release date: 2026 February 23 Album track list:  ROOMBADOOMBA , Self Album runtime: 5 mi nutes  That is a fascinating title for a song. It's also incredibly fun to say, and I haven't even heard the song yet. But I get to do some investigating for all of us. So, Daily:Direction is a six-member new boy group under a new company called ODDWAVE, whose CEO was the creative director of projects for LE SSERAFIM, Stray Kids, and ZEROBASEONE, so I'm cautiously optimistic. The group has two previously debuted members (Kim Joohyoung formerly of NINE.i and E-VAN formerly of MIRAE). EN-KIM, Lim Jihwan, and Lee Wonwoo were all former members of various survival shows. And then the maknae is named Jang Yoonseok, and he turns nineteen in a few weeks, so we are good on that front. The pre-debut teasers have been wild though, so I'm hoping that they continue with this oddity.  Wow, that started out a lot more mildly than I was expecting. Instead of going the high energy route, or the br...

Song Review:: QQQ (OnlyOneOf): QtoresQ- UNCOOL {Debut}

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Release date: 2026 February 26 Album track list: UNCOOL , QtoresQ, Rainbow shade, Burnaway (into the fire) Album runtime: 13 mi nutes  The debut of a new subunit is always an exciting time and considering what group this is a subunit of, I'm very interested. I haven't listened to a lot of the base group's songs, but the ones I have, I've found very interesting. The members involved in this subunit are KB, Jisung, and Nine, which is apparently a very interesting combination considering Jisung is the former leader of OnlyOneOf, who left the group in 2021. I have to say, that has me forcing down some strong excitement because there are some groups who have had members leave that I'd love to see return. So while I haven't gotten to experience this necessarily first hand, were that to happen, I'd probably spend the entire music video bawling my eyes and heart out because of how happy I was. I can empathize with those fans. And every single one of these songs is o...

Song Review:: WJSN: Bloom hour- Bloom hour

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Release date: 2026 February 25 Album track list: Bloom hour , Mirror Album runtime: 6 mi nutes  I'm apparently just going to keep going with the Starship thing right now. I'm not sure that I knew that they were dropping something new, but apparently they did! And it's very exciting since I have a birthday twin in the group. That was actually the first thing I learned about the group. And happy tenth anniversary, WJSN! Congrats on surviving and keeping going! This is one of those watery instrumentals, but it's less deep water and more shallow pool near a waterfall. There's a lot of splashing happening in my head, like they hiked up to the waterfall and are playing in the water now. This is of course is all metaphorical. It's got a surprisingly fast beat that's comprised almost entirely of percussion instruments. I'm not hearing any particularly low, grounding notes from bass instruments, but the song also isn't particularly saturated with high notes i...

Song Review:: IVE: REVIVE+- BANG BANG {Pre-Release}

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Release date: 2026 February 23 Album track list: BLACKHOLE , BANG BANG , Hush, Stuck In Your Head, Fireworks, HOT COFFEE, 8 (Jang Wonyoung Solo), Odd (Gaeul Solo), Super ICY (Leeseo Solo), Unreal (Liz Solo), In Your Heart (Rei Solo), Force (An Yujin Solo) Album runtime: 34 mi nutes  So, they dropped a pre-release single and now the album is out. And I'm behind. As usual. It's fine, actually. At the end of last year, if you missed it, I did a Greatest Hits post on Love Dive  so if you wanted to take a look at that, you totally should. I decided to do the pre-release first because odds are good that they'll get a win on the title track, so I will likely have to do that anyway. Let's get crackin', shall we? Ooh, I was not expecting that guitar at the beginning. The shift into the street music disappointed me a little but then the guitar came back and I was fine with it. We do get a bit of variation and some interesting sound effects, which I appreciate, and generally s...

Battle of the B-Sides:: ONEWE: AuRoRa

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 Submission! Submission! Submission! Whoo! I thought this might be a good spot for this, so thank you for your patience! And when I'm finished with this, I'll head over to Threads and send it your way since you wonderfully left a username for me to deliver it to. I actually like ONEWE. And it's funny, after the administrative work and remodeling I did (some of it quite extensive) on almost all of these posts, I'm looking for something that hits my brain to do after this one (since I'd done some planning before I decided I temporarily hated myself). So I'm just listening to my playlists. And other people's playlists. And watching videos on YouTube looking for a sparked song. But I had another ONEWE song come up that caught my attention, and then I remembered that that would be after this one, so I couldn't. As of writing this paragraph, I'm still looking. But I just thought that was kind of funny. ONEWE is a five-member band currently under RBW that r...

Music Show Wins:: Week of 02/18 - 02/24

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  Well, with Seollal being this week, the music shows were a bit scarce. Still, we had Ol' Reliable (AKA Music Bank) to give us  one win. And because it wasn't actually broadcast, I don't think, I'm going to give you an older stage that I think you'll find very cool. Which also means that the extra stage is older. For the After School Club re-run, I went with TOMORROW X TOGETHER's very first appearance on ASC right after they debuted, ep. 361 from 2019! They may be global superstars now, but they had to start off being adorable and shy and just plain cutie patooties. For the The Show re-run, I went with Yena formerly of IZ*ONE back in 2022 because that song is just delightful. And then for the extra stage, I went with another The Show stage, this one from WOOAH also from 2022.  As always, the links down below in the spreadsheet go to my reviews... Well, review, in this case. It's fine. The link down with ASC goes to the full episode.  Show Champion: N/A MCou...

Song Review:: Minhyun (NU'EST): Truth

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Release date: 2026 February 11 Album track list: Truth Album runtime: 3 mi nutes  First post-military release! I can't believe I forgot about this! I am so sorry, Minhyun! You know, considering the album artwork, this feels appropriately underwater-y. Some bits of the instrumental sound a bit like whale song or the other interesting sounds that you hear in the ocean. This is very calm and laid-back, and I'm reminded a bit of bamboo at different points as well. I know I just woke up, but it's soothing enough that my brain is like "Yeah, we can just go back to sleep. Let's do that."  I can't. But this is trying to convince me that I can. He is giving us the absolute minimum amount of vibrato. It just barely touches the ends of the lines because they're held for a beat or two, so it shows up with regularity, but at the same time, it's such a mild addition that I almost missed it on my first listen, except at the very end when the instrumental falls ou...