Hakushi Hasegawa -- Doku（毒）

 

I gotta say that this is one of the stranger songs that I've put up onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus", and it's definitely not a kayo kyoku. Singer-songwriter Hakushi Hasegawa's（長谷川白紙）"Doku" (Poison) is something that would have easily gotten its invitation onto "City Limits", that late-night program dedicated to the weird and wonderful in music videos on Canada's MuchMusic back in my university days.

Ludilophobia is the fear of toys. In such a case, I would have to give my own version of a PSA and state "Viewer discretion is advised" for the music video for "Doku" whose lyrics by Hasegawa I don't quite understand. However for those who love their moving toys, especially ones from Japan, "Doku" seems to be an avant-garde love song for fans of Nakano Broadway in Tokyo where a lot of those toys can be found.

Aside from "Doku", I'm an absolute neophyte when it comes to Hasegawa's works, but I've read that he generously heaps in a good mixture of electronica, jazz and breakcore. On top of that, his delivery for "Doku" reminds me of an especially high-pitched Minami Kitasono（北園みなみ）, except without the Shibuya-kei and City Pop stylings, replaced by those genres that I mentioned a couple of lines ago.

"Doku" is a cacophony of images and sound coming in at gale-force speed with crash and bangs, and Hasegawa's voice skims over the chaos like a well-designed paper airplane. The song can be found on his December 2018 mini-album "Kusaki Houdou" or "Somoku Houdou"（草木萌動...Plants Sprouting） depending on which article you read regarding the album review. Otaquest has an article on the song itself while Rate Your Music has ones on the album itself.

As for Hasegawa, according to his J-Wiki article, he became musically active through Soundcloud from 2016 and he released his first full album, "Air Ni Ni"（エアにに）, in November 2019 which peaked at No. 79 on Oricon.

P.S. I did find a YouTube video of his live performance. His English is pretty darn good.