Hakushi Hasegawa -- Kuchi no Hanabi（口の花火）

 

Wow! I'm not sure if they still make this but it sure brings back memories. Pop rocks were quite the thing when I was in elementary and junior high school. Put a handful of these in your mouth and they would set off those tiny explosions. 

I was reminded of the old candy when I first took notice of Hakushi Hasegawa's（長谷川白紙）"Kuchi no Hanabi" which directly translates into "Mouth Fireworks" but whose official English title is "Mouth Flash". A couple of years ago, I brought the singer-songwriter onto the blog with a couple of his works, the toy-heavy "Doku"（毒）and then the jazzier "Kusaki"（草木）. In both cases, there is a form of freewheeling avant-gardism in his songs and music videos.

Almost a half-year ago, Hasegawa put out "Kuchi no Hanabi" and this time, perhaps there's a bit of Okinawan in the beat or at least something subtropically tribal with some heavy percussion being thrown about. It's all melodic cacophony and I'll leave the website Songtell to provide the analysis of the lyrics. The video is entertaining with some roughly hewn anime characters, a visually creepy family and a dynamic dancer to interpret things.

Hakushi Hasegawa -- Kusaki（草木）

 

Earlier this year, I introduced a singer named Hakushi Hasegawa（長谷川白紙）onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus" via his song "Doku"（毒）from his 2018 album "Kusaki Houdou"（草木萌動...Plants Sprouting）. I cheekily posited that the video might have people who suffer from ludilophobia running for the exits, and the song itself is perhaps something that I would call avant-pop.

Well, also from "Kusaki Houdou" is "Kusaki" (Plants) which once again brings all sorts of sounds into the ears and all sorts of images into the eyes via the official music video. Mind you, this time Hasegawa has some Shibuya-kei free jazz in the beginning and end (and a jazzy trumpet solo in the middle) but otherwise it's a similar cacophony to "Doku". The video's theme this time includes all sorts of plant life with a couple of interpretive dancers clad in black. At first thought, I'd assumed that Hasegawa was the first dancer!

By the way, before you click on the video, make sure that you watch it in a brightly lit room. From about 00:14, a whole bunch of images come flying at you for about 17 seconds.

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.