Hakushi Hasegawa, who signed with Flying Lotus's 〈Brainfeeder〉 in July 2023, has finally released the long-awaited new album "Mahou Gakkou." The first release since moving to 〈Brainfeeder〉 and Hasegawa's first full-length in roughly four years and eight months, the record contains 12 tracks in all, including A3 "Kuchi no Hanabi" — released when the label signing was announced, featuring the formidable jazz bassist Sam Wilkes, well known for his collaborations with Louis Cole and Sam Gendel — as well as A2 "Itte Shimatta" with KID FRESINO, a self-cover of A5 "Tsubomi ni Kaminari" (originally written for Kaf), and B1 "Kyoufu no Hoshi," with horn arrangements by Miho Hazama.
The advance single B5 "Boys Texture" (sample1), unveiled when the album was announced, grew out of a piece Hasegawa wrote in 2023 for noir kei ninomiya's Spring/Summer 2024 show at Paris Fashion Week, with Shudai Nishida on guitar. Masashi Uramoto handled the mix, and mastering was done by Heba Kadry, known for her work with Björk. Long troubled by a loathing of their own appearance and a constant dread of seeing themselves in mirrors or photographs, Hasegawa confronts that head-on here — much as in the recently released artist photo. Made across the pandemic years, the album further scrambles the new-era pop sound opened up on the previous record "Eaini," an ambitious work that seems to write a fresh page in music history.
Drawing on influences ranging from Western classical music to jazz, electronic music, Vocaloid and Japanese rock, Hasegawa embeds a superb sense of melody within excessively chaotic sound, a one-of-a-kind musicality whose resonance and appeal hold both provocation toward and longing for contemporary pop music.
Finding hope in the instability of a whispered voice, in sonics that destabilize gender, and in their timbre and vibrato, Hasegawa deploys Auto-Tune to wield and manipulate a multitude of their own voices, wrapping the listener in a fairy-tale, futuristic, fantastical, melodious, chaotic euphoria. A wellspring of talent overflowing. The music videos are must-sees as well. (Original Japanese text by COMPUMA)