thomas ohashi / blog

Cool Music: HONEYPAQQ Vol. 1 by HiTech

Monday, May 23rd, 2025

For a while I’ve been wanting to blog more but I don’t feel like I have enough to say most of the time. I do spend a lot of time looking for cool new things though, so maybe it’s fine to just post about what I find and like. I’m going to try my best to not be too self conscious about my ability to write critically about things and just write what comes naturally. I hope some of you find it interesting!

My favorite new album this month, and one of my favorites of 2025 so far, is HONEYPAQQ Vol. 1 by HiTech. I really enjoyed their 2023 album DÉTWAT for its fun and frenetic house beats with hilariously raunchy lyrics and HONEYPAQQ Vol. 1 is a terrific followup.

I am historically not much of a dancer but I’ve been trying to relax my inhibitions around that and sometimes hearing the right song makes it so much easier. The first time I heard NEW JAZZ SCHMELL I couldn’t help but start to dance at my desk and I proceeded to replay it like five times. The groove is too powerful.

Another standout track is SHADOWREALM featuring one of my favorite working rappers Zelooperz. It’s just fun and hype as hell.

After a long period of mostly listening to rap and synthwave I’ve been having a lot of fun discovering new (to me) electronic genres like dungeonsynth as well as rekindling my love for genres I used to listen to like house and drum & bass.

HiTech falls somewhere in the middle of that for me. The Chicago house origins feel familiar while the high energy techno aspects feels really fresh, even if the style itself has been around for a long time. I picked out a couple favorites but I think the whole album is pretty great and I hope some of you enjoy it too.