m-flo - SUPERLIMINAL
After nearly 30 years of hits, breakups, alternative lineups and reunions, SUPERLIMINAL is the 10th and seemingly final album for Japanese supergroup m-flo. While we were all excited about the return of the original lineup, everything has unfortunately come to an end. That the group has entered a kind of permanent recharging period is not a surprise given their history, but somehow they’ve managed to creatively spin it as an evolution into a final form.
According to the “>>LIMINAL SUPERLIMINAL” interlude, if the liminal phase is a “corridor between moments where memory, sound, and possibility overlap”, then the so-called superliminal phase is “the instant you cross that corridor when moments accelerate, sound becomes direction, and possibility turns into motion”.
Looking back at m-flo’s history, their activities and style can be roughly divided into four periods, starting from “Tripod 1” (the original lineup), “m-flo loves” (after singer LISA left and the group used a rotation of guest singers such as BoA and Crystal Kay), “Bipod” (just producer ☆Taku Takahashi and rapper VERBAL), and “Tripod 2” (reunited with LISA). Most fans would see these as four distinct phases or timelines, and stylistically that is the case too due to the cultural and musical trends of each time period. However, in this superliminal phase, the barriers between the phases are collapsed, and everything is merged into the current form.
This could just be a neat way of backwards rationalizing the inclusions on this album. It’s been 7 years since the last album KYO, and the majority of the songs on SUPERLIMINAL have been released in one form or another already. Heck, “MARS DRIVE” even came out in 2018. The tension at the heart of m-flo, and also its strength and weakness, has been their desire to always try out new things. Constant reinvention keeps them fresh and relevant in any year, but it splits the fanbase into different camps and makes it hard to categorize the group. Ask an m-flo fan what their favourite track is and you’ll get all different answers depending on age and preferences. Try to recommend m-flo to someone and you have to know what they like first. You can’t please everyone. Over time, that has led to a pile-up of material that didn’t neatly fit a compelling narrative or definitive direction. Whether its forays into maximalist hyperpop (“GateWay”, “RUN AWAYS”), highlighting new talent through the m-flo loves series (including singers Maya, Adee.A, and eill), or going fully old school (sampling Sylvia Striplin’s classic “Give me your love” on “ARIGATTO” together with fellow legends RIP SLYME), it’s likely there’s going to be one to a number of tracks that you might put in a playlist, but rare that you will love them all equally. For what its worth, my personal favourites on this are the aforementioned “ARIGATTO”, the jersey club inflected “Hypernova” featuring Maya, the breezy summer dub tune “Judgement?” featuring Mamiko Suzuki, and the catchy 00’s hip-hop track “ELUSIVE” featuring n-choco. (Also, bonus points for adopting a Designers Republic-type aesthetic on their recent m-flo loves tracks.) On the other hand, as an older listener, I’m less enthused by sudden insertions of gabber/hardcore drums or millennial whoops, which might be fun for about 5 minutes but the staying power is suspect. Hey, if that’s your bag, more power to you. This is 2026 after all, so there’s a fair expectation that people are going to pick out the songs they like best, drop them into playlists, and forget about the album as a whole. Understanding that this works in their favor, m-flo themselves accept this, describing their musical periods to the audience in the “>>ERA” interlude, and knowing that people will jump around the timelines, encourages them to “make your selection”.
On the surface it seems like almost a contractual obligation to tie all the releases together into this album, but I think the superliminal concept holds, because this is kind of the best of all worlds. The m-flo that existed in 2000, 2005, 2012, or even 2019 couldn’t make this, but the m-flo that has the collective knowledge of all the trends and experiments of the group’s history can deliver on every front. Give due credit to producer ☆Taku Takahashi, whose musical curiosity opens new channels while having the ability to actually execute new styles as they emerge for the better part of 30 years. LISA has also worked hard to do more rapping in her own words, and VERBAL remains the amazing constant that can fluidly adapt to any guest in any culture. There are very few groups who can successfully pull off everything from pop, R&B, and hip-hop to EDM, garage, breakbeat, and dub, sometimes within the same track.
SUPERLIMINAL feels like an acknowledgment of who the group was, is, and could be. It’s also a love letter to the fans, with lots of easter eggs like the Global Astroliner announcements, the reworks of group standards “Tell Me Tell Me” and “Come Again”, and familiar chord progressions in their triumphant farewell single “You Got This”. Most importantly, in one of the interludes, m-flo conclusively define themselves as “consisting of three members: VERBAL, ☆Taku Takahashi, and LISA”, which not only is reassuring, but also sets the record straight. While all good things must come to an end, m-flo have demonstrated their worthiness as a creative act by learning to transcend linear timelines, riding off into the sunset with endless possibilities. And the sky’s the limit.
Also by m-flo: KYO
Tokyo ON also recommends: Fuki Kitamura - Sp1raloop, SHIMA - Welcome to SHIMAJIMA