You can preview tracks from To Be Continued's albums Creston Drive and Core Pop on Amazon Japan

Note that these are pictures taken from currently active Buyee auctions. I haven't seen my copies in person yet.

In just under two weeks, I will finally be seeing my copies of To Be Continued's albums Day Break, Creston Drive and Core Pop, and I will be able to hold them. Depending on how long I take a little cooloff period and absorb all of the music waiting for me, and depending on how I structure my writeups after that period is up, it could be a week or two after that before you see my full writeups on them.

As I was perusing the internet searching out how to obtain some of To Be Continued's several non-album, single-only tracks, a search for a CD single for "Last Order" from Core Pop took me to Amazon Japan, where I ended up finding out that both Creston Drive and Core Pop's listings come equipped with modern Amazon MP3 preview systems. When I went to check the listings for Day Break and frontman Kohki Okada's solo album Hip88, both were equipped with a much more antiquated system that didn't allow you to buy MP3s of the songs being previewed.

Why the different systems? Well, the answer is simple as pie: different record labels. Day Break was To Be Continued's last album through Sony, which Hip88 was also released through, while Creston Drive and Core Pop were released after To Be Continued switched to Toshiba EMI. And normally, I wouldn't consider a digital music distribution platform worth writing about, because as a collector of tangible music formats, I personally hate them and wouldn't pay for music I would obtain solely digitally. However, it is very possible that I won't be able to post YouTube uploads of songs from either album because the songs are logged under this system, so this could be the only way to listen to these songs online at all that I could personally support.

Preview the songs of Creston Drive here.

Preview the songs of Core Pop here.

(On both pages, scroll down until you see the Amazon MP3 platform. I have absolutely no idea at all if non-Japanese readers would be able to buy these MP3s, but again, I wouldn't support doing so.)

Having listened to both preview sessions in full, it's interesting how much their sound changed after the record company switch, far removed from the music they made with Sony, more mature-sounding and diverse in musical influence. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did also preview Day Break and Hip88, and they sound closer to Bitter Sweet Love or Beyond The Light than either album mentioned above.) I will be able to provide fuller thoughts once I actually have said albums in hand and am able to listen to them completely, of course, but I can definitely say I'm excited to hear them.