Air Ni Ni (LP)

Brainfeeder reissues Japanese hybridist Hakushi Hasegawa's first album 'Air Ni Ni', a carnivalesque fusion of bubblegum pop, breakcore, videogame soundtracks and proggy jazz.

Hakushi Hasegawa is a musician/singer-songwriter based in Tokyo, Japan, and the first Japanese artist signed to the Brainfeeder label. Consistent with Brainfeeder's ethos of seeking out artists operating outside the confines of genre since the label started in 2008, Hakushi's music is tricky to categorise as it straddles a few genres: alternative, electronic, jazz, pop/J-pop. Sometimes it's pretty, at times it's very intense and fast-paced.

This one's not for the faint of heart. On the surface, it's unmistakably pop music - there's vocals, there's proper hooks, there's bombastic stabs - but before any of Hasegawa's compositions can breathe, he inevitably hits us with a mercilessly sliced break, electric piano solo or hallucinatory synth improvisation.

It's the kind of genre-baiting stylistic eccentricity that Japan in particularly has always done so well, and we can hear traces of Cornelius and YMO in Hasegawa's ambitious, multifaceted compositions. Tracks like the upbeat, plasticky opener 'Only You' are only scratching the surface; by the time you reach the breakneck 'Desert', a full-throttle buzz of 185BPM drums, brassy 16-bit fanfares and cutesy vocals, you'll either be reaching for the stop button or strapped in for the rest of the ride.