After pushing himself to the limit during GEZAN's March performance at Tokyo's Budokan, bassist Yakumoа found himself physically and emotionally drained. The band had spent a year building toward that milestone, capping it off with an ambitious 100-hour relay event that left him running on empty.

When an opportunity came to perform at Belgium's BRDCST festival in April, Yakumoа decided to lean into the experience rather than rest. "I thought, why not just enjoy this to the fullest?" he recalls in a travel essay published by Natalie Music.

The trip became transformative. After arriving in Belgium and reconnecting with fellow performer Aoba Ichiko—who curated the festival's lineup—Yakumoа began exploring Antwerp's streets, taking in historic architecture and soaking in the unfamiliar energy. But the real turning point came during the festival itself.

Performing alongside Aoba, Yakumoа felt the weight of exhaustion lift. As he watched her perform "light cruzing" from the audience afterward, something clicked. "I cried," he writes. "That feeling of being glad we pushed through for Budokan came welling up, and the tension in my shoulders just melted away."

The breakthrough moment came when he discovered Los Thuthanak, a duo whose psychedelic grooves and experimental sound completely rewired his thinking. Their jagged production—which he later learned earned Pitchfork's best album of 2025—shattered his assumptions about what music could be. "I had no idea where the sounds were coming from," Yakumoа reflects. "I just closed my eyes and let my body move."

That night sparked something he'd been searching for without realizing it. On the drive back, ideas wouldn't stop flowing.

Yakumoа's takeaway extends beyond his personal refresh: he encourages anyone stuck creatively to travel, breathe different air, and let unfamiliar experiences reshape their perspective. "Travel isn't just the journey itself," he writes. "It's also taking time to untangle what you felt and figure out how to express it."

He compiled a travel playlist of eight tracks that captured his wandering mindset, spanning artists from Moby to Metro Area—music for thinking while moving forward.