Dream pop duo Uchuu Nekoko dedicates new EP ‘to the memory of mom and dad’

Uchuu Nekoko has a new EP, and its title reads like the last line of a diary entry: 大人になっても、夜は暗くて, released in English as Even When You GrowUp, The Night Is Still Dark. On the duo’s Bandcamp page, the spot where a description usually goes holds a single line: “to the memory of mom and dad.” The page offers no further context.

The project from Kanagawa has always worked at a slight remove. Vocalist and guitarist Nemuko Yamanaka and singer kano have never shown their faces, appearing instead as anime-style avatars drawn by illustrator Tomoko Oshima, who has handled the artwork for every Uchuu Nekoko release. Oshima is credited again here, and the cover sets the mood before a note plays: a girl with her eyes closed holds a cat’s cradle of red string in a pale blue apartment, a guitar leaning against the wall and a digital clock on the shelf reading a few minutes past five.

The seven songs run to about twenty-six and a half minutes. The first three titles are in English: “Sunny On The Bike,” the shortest cut at just over two minutes; “Flowing In The Wind,” which the duo had already put out as a standalone single; and “on Blue.” Then the record switches to Japanese and slows down, with a pair of songs built around the middle of the day, “まひるの月” (“the midday moon”) and “まひるのあと” (“after midday”), and “そら” (“sky”) sitting between them. The second of that pair is the longest track, just past five minutes. The EP closes on “羊の夢,” listed on Bandcamp as “Sheep’s Dream.”

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The EP comes out on LOOM RECORDS, the independent label behind the duo’s first collaboration with singer Lovely Summer Chan and, later, their second album, 君のように生きれたら (Kimi No Youni Ikiretara). Bandcamp Daily’s staff named that record an essential release and compared its sound to My Bloody Valentine. The engineering credit on the new EP goes to Yo Nishimura.

Uchuu Nekoko formed in 2012 and settled into a two-person unit of Yamanaka and bassist Kōhei Tanabe. Their debut album, 日々のあわ (Hibi no Awa), came out on P-Vine Records in 2016 with guests including Lovely Summer Chan, Yo Irie and itoken of Soutaiseiriron. In 2017 kano joined, Tanabe left a few months later, and the duo followed Kimi No Youni Ikiretara in 2019 with 日のあたる場所にきてよ (Hino Ataru Basyo Ni Kiteyo) in 2021. That makes the new EP their first multi-track release in five years.

Even When You GrowUp, The Night Is Still Dark was released on November 4, 2026, on streaming services and as a digital download on Bandcamp. “Flowing In The Wind” had preceded it as a single in May.

Next to that one-line dedication, the title stops sounding like a slogan and reads as a plain statement about getting older. The release page leaves it there.

Tags: japanese music, dream pop, Tomoko Oshima, Uchuu Nekoko, 大人になっても、夜は暗くて, 宇宙ネコ子

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