bufferins

I wrote before about how difficult it is as a western fan to get into Japanese emo. Between the absence of most of it on digital services and the cost of physical media—up front and for import shipping—the barrier is high enough that at times it's downright impossible to collect a full or even a partial discography for Japanese emo bands. This is terribly frustrating because there are so many excellent Japanese bands in emo. Things are slowly changing, with more and more bands from Japan showing up on Bandcamp and streaming services, but they are late adopters and there are so many earlier bands whose work is utterly inaccessible.

Suffice it to say, it took me more than six months to get everything ready for this post, and if you're wondering how much money it cost me to put together this discography, the answer is I don't want to talk about it.

Bufferins were a legendary Japanese emo band, formed in 1993. They weren't just a band playing in the style of 90s emo, they were a true 90s emo band, contemporaries of the American scene despite being a world away. Their songs are energetic emo pop laced with midwest emo and a fuzzy, shoegaze aesthetic that reminds me of Evergreen.

The band's first release was a self-titled EP in 1997, also sometimes known as Pond. In 1998 they had a split release with Last Days of April and their first LP. The first LP appears to be self-titled, but is also called corrupt (or 'currupt' on the obi from the EP). I think the confusion is intentional, given the art from the album, so I decided to have corrupt be the album's subtitle. In 2001 they release their second album, koboreochirumono. I wasted months trying to track down a physical copy of this album but ultimately failed, so unfortunately I can only offer FLAC for the first LP and two of the EPs.

The group seems to have disbanded somewhere around 2002 but reunited long enough to put out a final EP, what a beautiful world, in 2009, though this timeline is confused somewhat by another EP they released in 2005. The 2005 EP appears to be self-released on CDr, so perhaps it was handed out at a reunion show or something similar. The band also contributed tracks to a few compilations, but the only unique track was on Cycle of the Moon 2 in 1999.

bufferins Complete Discography