Pop Jazz Meets Digital Hardcore
Hakushi Hasegawa, the artist behind the album Honest Feeling Album?, combines pop jazz and digital hardcore, birthing a genre that creates an overwhelming but groovy sensation. If you need a new album to get your heart pumping and your feet jumping, give this a taste while analyzing the emotions behind the soft but aggressive vocals.
Hasegawa is known for their hardcore electronic vocals while mastering a diverse variety of jazz components. Light saxophone, electric guitar riffs, and dabs of acoustic guitar make the listener question what type of genre Hasegawa falls under. For Honest Feeling Album?, Hasegawa adds instruments that some wouldn’t consider compatible. A similar artist, Machine Girl, also highlights electronic beats and vocals that use the same chaotic energy. When one thinks of jazz, there’s bass, piano, light guitar, and drums, but Hasegawa puts a new spin on it by adding digital hardcore, creating their own genre for people who take a liking to jazz and those who take a liking to digital hardcore.
The combination of improv jazz and digital music takes two different ends of the musical spectrum to a different level. The vocals vary between softer tones and screams. The album combines two opposite vibes and mashes them together to birth a new niche genre. To contrast the two genres, the first featured song, “Little Briar-Rose,” introduces the listener to a city-pop delight with catchy drums and retro vocals. “Boss-Moire-FS,” the fourth featured song on the album, takes a turn that is more heavily focused in an electronic direction, with intense vocals and harsh usage of noise. They are two different ends of the spectrum, surprising the audience with where each song is going to go next.
What makes this album exciting is the unpredictability of each song. Either at the beginning, halfway through, or during the last 30 seconds, most of the songs have a change or twist in vibes. It can start off calm, cool, and collected, like “The Owner of Sweetness,” the seventh featured track, and then descend into what feels like madness, like “Grace.” Hasegawa starts to make you question what and who this album was made for. It makes you feel mad or chaotic, and that could be the message they are trying to send. You spiral into madness with each song, not having a clear mind while listening because your head is filled with noise. But once you start to realize and collect your thoughts, you’re brought to a nice monologue with softer instrumentals, like “Witchkeeper.”
This album did not feel repetitive, but it was confusing at some points. There were noises that were unrecognizable and became cloudy toward the middle of the album. Perhaps that is the storyline Hasegawa is presenting. In order to collect your thoughts, maybe they have to be chaotic. They have to be loud and aggressive in order to obtain a clearer idea of what you want to surround yourself with. Maybe you have to feel or sound crazy in order to make sense, or maybe a conversation is needed at certain times in your life, even if your thoughts are jumbling together.
Hakushi Hasegawa’s newest album, Honest Feeling Album?, combines the essence of pop jazz and electronic music, creating a storyline open to the listener’s own interpretation. Hasegawa creates a new genre that plays with the listener’s feelings through how quickly the genres and vibes jump from one to another. It shows Hasegawa’s story and how they might express their feelings through harder instrumentals and unpredictable transitions.
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