I've been meaning to write at some length about this one for a while now, specifically for a different audience. I'm too scatter-brained today so this will have to be short anyway.
Through the Hirasawa connection, I'd heard their third album ダイヤルYを廻せ! {Dial Y for Murder} and some of their fourth Dadada ism. Both were strong and showed a lot of personality, but it took until this July for me to spin their first, ヤプーズ計画 [Yapoos Plan], and damn, is it something special.
There's this darkness that's pervasive throughout the entire album I just can't get enough of. And its paired with this collective drive that makes the whole so compelling. Bassist Nobuo Nakahara and keyboardist Yoichiro Yoshikawa stand out as the best composers of the bunch, but every single member delivers masterfully on this. Yapoos Plan and Grass Valley's self-titled are easily two of the best debut albums I've ever heard, and its all the more amazing they were released just 8 months apart in the same year.
Its also, in conjunction with their second album 大天使のように {Like an Archangel}, an interesting case study on how fickle and hard to formulate the creative process is. Per Jun Togawa herself, the first was done with effectively no band meetings, yet came out so strong and cohesive. They tried it again for the second, and while the sound and composition personalities are the same, the end product ended up disjointed (on the linked retrospective she calls it her least favorite, which is likely why its not available officially streaming). Her calls on its good songs are accurate, though I'm also fond of the title track. Half of these were composed by members who left by the point their third was recorded, which makes me wonder how it would've turned out with their imput.