What’s magic about Hasegawa’s work, though, is that these tracks aren’t math problems to be solved, riddles crafted by the artist to confuse or confound the listener. The hyperactive energies that animate the record read instead as democratic; to paraphrase SOPHIE, this is music that resists elitism and academia. The opening song, “Departed,” speeds along above a pummeling beat, the sound of a dozen indecipherable instruments clashing together in perfect staccato, but Hasegawa’s voice careens into hummable hooks. “KYŌFUNOHOSHI” has that same frantic feel, but its high-up horns could have been ripped from a gospel-rap record a decade ago. Even the wildest, fastest, least predictable tracks on Mahōgakkō seem designed to induce euphoria, not anxiety.
That sense of bliss is magnified on the often startlingly pretty softer tracks, when the beats fizzle out and Hasegawa’s voice floats into looping pseudo-strings. “Repeal (Tekkai)” is an audible daydream, “Forbidden Thing (Kimmotsu)” is a stunning ballad, all the more heartstopping for its sparseness sandwiched between two truly odd little skits. The record ends with Hasegawa’s bizarre interpretation of a bombastic power ballad, helmed by a piano but punctuated by shouts and enormous bells in place of a snare, compression and Auto-Tune rendering everything ghostly and thrilling. Best of all is “Boy’s Texture,” a mix of acoustic guitar loops, Hasegawa’s oddball ad-libs twisted beyond recognition (“Taste me! Taste me! Taste me!”), and falsetto vocals that make no more sense in translation than they do in Japanese.
Maybe there are reference points for all of this — some of the ambient moments reminded me of Sam Ray’s work as Ricky Eat Acid and heroin party, while the fringe ideas might not sound completely out of place in a scene that produced Bis Kaidan — but that’s not the point. Beneath the chaos and carnage, Hakushi Hasegawa sounds limitless.
