THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa / 長谷川白紙 has just released their new album Mahōgakkō / 魔法学校. The title, which translates to Magic School, seeks to make sense of a chaotic, vibrant world by letting itself get swept up in it. A balance of pop and pandemonium, the album is one of extremes, where chipmunk-pitched voices square off against percussion set to speed metal’s tempo and volume. Noise and melody, cutesy and aggressive, acoustic and electronic — all come to a head in a process Hasegawa calls the Explanatory Ratio.
“The balance is probably the only thing in my work that is intentional and very important to me,” shares Hasegawa. “In many of my songs, I use a scale that I personally call the Explanatory Ratio to guide my work. This is not a sophisticated musical theory at all, but simply a subjective scale that looks at the balance of sounds that are explainable to me and sounds that are not explainable to me, and whether or not they are distributed in the ratio that I set for each piece.”
Mahōgakkō finds Hakushi pushing their boundaries to the absolute limit, with hyperspeed jungle and breakcore traded up for the even more pummeling onslaughts inspired by Tanzanian singeli so that they become just another texture in the wild sonic landscapes. And just when your senses are bordering on overloaded, Hakushi gifts you a moment of sweet reprieve before the roller coaster sets off again with hectic syncopations and harmonic jumps not for the faint of heart.
Impressively, the eye of this maelstrom revolves solely around Hasegawa, who taps only a few select collaborators to enliven their vision. Those who caught lead single Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi) will recall bassist Sam Wilkes added depth to the track juxtaposed against Hasegawa’s high-pitched singing. The lone featured vocalist rapper Kid Fresino lends his voice to Gone, where Fresino’s determined flow seems to ground the skittering drums from spiraling out of control. N.Y.C.-based jazz composer Miho Hazama likewise lends her own form of control to Kyōfunohoshi, guiding horns and saxes brought in by Yohchi Masago, Ryo Konishi and Tomoaki Baba (J-Squad).
Mahōgakkō is the sound of a once-in-a-generation artist not just breaking boundaries for Japanese music but global music culture. It will leave you with no doubt that Hakushi Hasegawa is only really just getting started.”
