sugar plant are set to release a new album, “one dream, one star,” on March 18, a quiet but meaningful release that brings their 30th anniversary chapter to a close.
Formed in 1993, sugar plant have long been recognized as pioneers of Japanese indie pop and dream pop, cultivating a cult following overseas well before widespread recognition at home. Now, with more than 80,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, many of them in their twenties and thirties across the US and Europe, their music is being rediscovered not as nostalgia, but as something unexpectedly contemporary.
This renewed attention does not exist in isolation. In recent years, younger listeners have gravitated toward spatially saturated sounds often described as shoegaze, music that blurs outlines and dissolves a sense of time. Long before this shift became visible on social media or streaming platforms, sugar plant were already exploring similar territory, shaping songs out of soft psychedelia and gentle expansiveness that feel more like environments than statements.
What makes sugar plant especially resonant today, however, is not sheer sonic density but restraint. While shoegaze is often associated with overwhelming volume, sugar plant leave space. Their music immerses without pressing in, offering comfort through openness rather than excess.
This approach is most clearly heard in their drumming. The beats are simple and carefully balanced, never adding unnecessary information or drawing attention away from the song itself. This deliberate subtraction speaks directly to an unspoken desire shared by many indie pop listeners, to listen casually and freely, without stress or sensory overload.
In a time defined by excess information, relentless loudness, and constant urgency, sugar plant’s aesthetics of subtraction and softly diffused, dreamy sound feel almost like a shelter. Although their reevaluation has largely begun overseas, “one dream, one star” may become the point at which a younger generation in Japan discovers this uniquely stress free form of immersion.
The lead single “calling,” now available to stream, captures where sugar plant stand after 30 years, calm, refined, and quietly assured.
sugar plant “one dream, one star”
1.sunrise
2.calling
3.anything
4.flow (Album Mix)
5.sunlitrain
6.only to know you
7.blue submarine (Album Mix)
8.travelling
