Last Updated on 2025-09-20 by a-indie
Hello, I’m yabori, Editor-in-Chief of BELONG Media. Even when listening to the same music, everyone has different impressions. Furthermore, if the countries and cultures where people grew up are different, those differences should become even more interesting.
This time, we’re delivering a cross-border cross-review project. The writers are Takita-kun, who is writing a review for the first time in several years, and RAM, who lives in Argentina and studies Japanese culture.
Starting from a chance encounter on Discord, they listened to the album by American newcomer band Racing Mount Pleasant and wrote album reviews from their respective perspectives.
Please enjoy the chemical reaction between these two reviews born on opposite sides of the earth.
English Racing Mount Pleasant cross-review is here
Racing Mount Pleasant Cross-Review
Reviewers: Yuuki Takita, Ram Editor: yabori(Tomohiro Yabe)
From Reviewer Yuuki Takita’s Perspective
He’s also interested in Japan and can read hiragana and katakana, and enjoys studying kanji.
We came to write this Racing Mount Pleasant cross-review through a connection, but actually, he and I have never spoken before.
Through the Discord I recently launched, yabori connected with him, and since he likes the above-mentioned artists, yabori planned this cross-review with the purpose of deepening our exchange.
About Writing Cross-Review
There are two clear reasons why I accepted the cross-review.
Personally, this is honestly my first review writing in several years, and my first attempt at cross-review.
The main reason I stayed away from reviews for so long was that I wanted to focus on the numerous interview opportunities I was fortunately presented with.
Although I had been wanting to write reviews, I somehow kept missing the timing, but I wanted to try writing through this project with RAM as an opportunity.
What I Seek in Reviews
The other reason directly connects to what I personally seek in review articles.
What I seek in reviews is whether they speak from both personal and objective perspectives. And speaking in one’s own words. When talking about works, what you see and hear changes depending on where you place your perspective.
If it only talks about what you can understand immediately upon listening, you might as well just listen without reading the review.
By speaking from a personal perspective, I believe we can provide readers with new viewpoints and deliver new ways to enjoy the work.
And to demonstrate that, objective perspectives and facts are also necessary. Criticism from only a personal perspective lacks persuasiveness and doesn’t go beyond empty theory. There can be either differences or agreements between objective and personal impressions.
However, each writer should have their own words. For example, even if there’s an agreement that guitar sound is “beautiful,” how to express that should differ.
Through that unique expression, readers should be able to imagine another kind of “beautiful” for the “beautiful” they feel about the work. That’s the added value, the new way of enjoying, isn’t it?
The cross-review with RAM seems likely to fulfill all of that.
My perspective and RAM’s perspective. What will be the differences and commonalities between these two?
We have different languages and cultures, but we share common musical tastes.
What kind of chemical reaction will occur when two such people talk about one work?
With such expectations swelling in my chest, I write this review.
『Racing Mount Pleasant』Review (Yuuki Takita)
Their formation ranges from typical band parts to strings, trumpet, tenor sax, and more.
This debut album isn’t particularly novel compared to other post-rock bands, but the architectural beauty that ensures each part’s timbre while developing sensationally well-balanced sound is beyond what you’d expect from newcomers, and allows no other to follow.
The predecessor was a band called Kingfisher formed by art students at university, which makes sense of this flawlessly disciplined performance.
God Dwells in the Details
“God is dead” was philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, intentionally proclaimed with religious criticism and nihilism amid advancing modernization and scientific technological development. I don’t intend to ride along with that intention nor claim to understand it, but I can agree that scientific evolution itself causes values and worldviews to waver.
What I seek when listening to music is the noise that occurs precisely because it’s artificial. 『Racing Mount Pleasant』was an upright work that made me feel neither fluctuation nor deviation.
Still, Racing Mount Pleasant made my heart dance. It’s not a natural course for humans to present overwhelming architectural beauty as balanced as machines. It’s not something humans can accomplish so easily.
Even if 『Racing Mount Pleasant』isn’t obviously novel, God dwells in the details of every sound they make. When all of that comes together, humans cause supernatural phenomena.
AI progress further wavers God’s existence, but doesn’t God dwell in what humans create? Their music makes me think about such things.
From Reviewer RAM’s Perspective
I’ve been honoured with the opportunity to write a cross-review for Belong/A-Indie. My partner for this endeavour is Takita-san, he is from Japan, a country I have a ton of interest in, and potentially the furthest you can go from my native Buenos Aires.
I got to know him indirectly through Yabori, who told me about him and shared excerpts from his writing with me. He is a fantastic writer who has been meaning to write album reviews again after a period of time in which he mostly focused on working on a stunning collection of interview opportunities he had been presented with. None of the interviews he has participated in has failed to leave my jaw on the floor as Yabori showed them to me.
With a great sense of admiration for him, I got to work on this review, feeling particularly curious as to how our perspectives would differ.
『Racing Mount Pleasant』Review (RAM)
Transitions are often complicated processes.
‘Racing Mount Pleasant’, a seven-piece group from Ann Arbor, Michigan, released their sophomore album, accompanied by a name change for their project.
The band, formerly known as ‘Kingfisher’, had previously settled roots in a sound compounded by the textural mixture of orchestral elements with guitar arrangements more commonly associated with alternative rock music.
On this homonymous release, Racing Mount Pleasant have taken those bases and grown their sound further, creating a deeply atmospheric sound which has the ability to transcend the listener into places I can only name as ‘transitions’.
Scenes Sleeping in the Depths of Memory
Of the many times I have listened to this record, it has never failed to move me towards sequences located in my memory, oftentimes presented in a particularly cinematic way.
Transitional stages between what is and what will become. When winter refuses to fully melt into spring. When nights struggle to leave the path open for the morning to arise. Those days in which, no matter how you dress, you are always wrong when faced with the weather.
It is not easy to move forward when you cannot see what lies ahead. To hold a tight grip on the present and even the past becomes a reasonable reaction to the passage of time.
People are not static. We lose our loved ones, our friends fall in and out of love, and sometimes they become strangers whilst enduring the process of living.
A Hymn Dedicated to “Transitions”
This album feels to me like an ode to these transitions. When you know you have to let go and embrace the following day. For the night has been in for a bit too long now, and you need to fall asleep.
As seasons change. As love withers and blooms again. As a frame turns to another, and another, over and over again. Racing Mount Pleasant gives us a soundtrack to appreciate a pause in the ever constant flow of our lives, take in a deep breath, and move towards what the future might hold. Letting us figure out what part we will play in its unveiling. Facing what will be, whilst not ignoring what has been, but taking it forward with us.
Your “favorite” might become someone’s “door”🎶 Join here⏩ https://discord.gg/fjzp9Hjt
Racing Mount Pleasant Album Release
2nd Album『Racing Mount Pleasant』
Release Date: August 15, 2025
Track List：
1. Your New Place
2. Teenspeed (Shallows)
3. Heavy Red
4. Emily
5. Seminary
6. You
7. You Pt. 2
8. Racing Mount Pleasant
9. Call It Easy
10. Outlast
11. 34th Floor
12. Seyburn
13. Your Old Place
View on Amazon
Racing Mount Pleasant Profile
Racing Mount Pleasant (formerly Kingfisher) is an indie band from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Formed at the University of Michigan, they released their debut album “Grip Your Fist, I’m Heaven Bound” in November 2022. In April 2025, they changed their band name to Racing Mount Pleasant and released their self-titled album in August of the same year. Their musical style combines the intimacy of folk, the dynamics of shoegaze, the details of electronica, and jazz and classical crossover arrangements. They have a distinctive sound that has been compared to Bon Iver, Lord Huron, and Black Country, New Road.
Writer: Yuuki Takita
Born in 1991, freelance writer from Tomakomai, Hokkaido. After graduating from the same university as TEAM NACS, he entered a music vocational school and majored in the writer course.
There he produced three music free papers, conducting everything from artist interviews to editing.
Utilizing that experience, he joined a cross music media company with both free papers and web media, where he experienced review article writing, editing, and sales.
After leaving, he changed jobs to become a clerk at a major record shop, where he also wrote disc review articles for their in-house media.
This became the catalyst for starting his activities as a freelance music writer. Currently, he’s a salaryman and music writer who dreams of holding an outdoor music festival in his hometown of Tomakomai.
He enjoys cats, movie watching, and reading. Komatsu Nana and curry & biryani exploration are his lifestyle.
Articles he’s written so far are here
Articles written for other media are here
Twitter：@takita_funky
Writer: RAM
Student of Musical Composition at Argentina’s National University of Arts. Passionate for the written arts, musical discovery, sharing and engagement. I also work as a software developer.
Website：
Instagram：@ramcst
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