Hakushi Hasegawa discusses new album Honest Feeling Album

Hakushi Hasegawa's new album, Honest Feeling Album, arrives Aug. 28 via Brainfeeder, following 2024's Mahōgakkō. The Japanese producer and songwriter's music moves restlessly across electronic, jazz and rock, resisting easy genre labels by design.

"People tend to think that everything nowadays has to be explained," Hasegawa said in an interview with The Quietus, describing an expectation that non-binary artists like themselves provide answers "carefully, kindly, and in an orderly manner" or risk being dismissed. Rather than smoothing over that tension, Hasegawa said Honest Feeling Album leans further into it than any of their past work.

Where 2024's Mahōgakkō was cleanly split between a chaotic A side and a gentler B side, Honest Feeling Album has no such structure, staying eclectic and poignant throughout. Hasegawa described the shift in lyrical tone as unintentional but pronounced, moving toward material they called more "grotesque" and unfiltered than before. "Things are grotesque," they said, when asked what prompted the change.

The record is backed by a full band, HaHa And The Hairpins, made up of saxophonist Kei Matsumaru and guitarist Tokutaro Hosoi of the avant-jazz band SMTK, along with bassist Ryo Miyachi, drummer Shu Akimoto and percussionist Hitomi Aikawa. Interludes on the album bring in additional voices, including South Korean folk songwriter Lee Lang and Accorinrin of the punk group Otoboke Beaver.

Hasegawa closes the record with "Never Lack Nothing," built only from finger snaps and layered vocals, modeled after the Japanese Bon Odori dance tradition that honors the dead. The song is dedicated, in Hasegawa's words, to non-binary people who once lived in Japan "who have passed away."