Last night I had a dream I was back in Japan teaching English in some massive school. This isn't the first time I've had a version of this dream. Part teacher, part student and usually a bit disoriented I generally wander from class to class pretending like I know what I am doing. I guess that's not too far from the truth in my past experiences. Over four years of this, you get pretty good at faking it. In one of my past dreams I found myself trying to walk up a flight of stairs. These stairs seem typical at first but as I begin to ascend everything becomes wrong. This feeling of vertigo takes over and they begin to feel too steep and suddenly too shallow and back again. They seem narrow and unwielding going on forever almost disappearing from underneath my feet. I struggle as the fabric of reality seems to be closing in on me and almost crawling, with my last breath make to the top... or the bottom. Too much has been lost in time to figure where I am but at least I'm there. Last night, in my school I knew once again, for me to make it to the class I'm supposed to be at, I'd have to traverse those steps again. This time, however I have a plan. The school is so unimaginably huge that I can use my powers as a stupid gaijin to avoid them altogether. I stumble into what turned out to be another English class filled with senior students. I take a seat at one of the desks and find out that the students are starting a project in which they are to write a short story. My mind wanders only to realize that the bell has already rung and I woke up.
On some innocent level, I suppose that influenced my decision to highlight one of Japan's more interesting teen duos, Halcali. Halcali arrived on the scene as the winners of a competition put on by the members of Rip Slyme, a well known Japanese Hip Hop group. When the tweens first entered the contest, they claimed they didn't even know what Hip Hop was. The name Halcali comes from the combination of the names of the two members. The stage names of HARUKA (はるか) and YUKARI (ゆかり) are combined to form the collective name. Rip Slyme, picked them from talent competitions held around Meguro (the girls' hometown) area in search of creating a new manufactured group. A trend I have noticed in the naming of many Japanese bands is the choice to use a name that cannot be said correctly in Japanese. Halcali is usually pronounced as "Haru-kari" by the masses.
The resulting 2003 album BACON was certainly a step above your typical manufactured fare. The production of that first album is full of a mixture of cute, catchy, eccentric and the downright weird - all while never straying to far from the rap stylings of these two young girls, one still in Junior High and the other just beginning High School. Their rhymes are pretty fresh referencing everyone from Al Pacino (multiple times) to Dragon Ball to Slick Rick. Unfortunately, future releases have failed to recapture the sounds of youth that made the first album such a joy to listen to. The second release suffered as each track was produced by a different artist and the resulting lack of cohesivenesses becomes kind of grating after a while. All the singles released since also suffer from a lack of the signature Halcal sound. I was hoping for something of a Cibo Matto part II by now but am beginning to think I'll have to settle for a watered down version of Yuki. While that's not entirely a bad thing, it's not nearly as interesting as the path I would have chosen. For literal day by day updates on the group in English check the amazing HALCALI day by day blog.
The time I heard about this group was when I went to The Kirin Plaza Art Gallery and saw an exhibit on "Important Japanese Pop Music". I forget the real name of the exhibit or if it even really had one but that was the gist. The first two floors were composed entirely of the history of YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra). It was very cool and I like that band well enough but walking into the third floor gallery was like a wet dream for me (I went three times). It was full of DVD stations where one could sit down and listen to the music as chosen by the curators. Yes, in a country like Japan, a manufactured tween hip hop group is art. Fuck, I miss it. Please enjoy the first (and best) Halcali video I ever saw.Below that is something I just saw a couple of days ago for the first time. It's a Mash up of the groups song "Strawberry Chips" from their second album along with elements of the first album by Tanaka Chigai. It's weird weird weird. Weirder still, I think it might be an official remix. Google doesn't seem to recognize the existence of Chigai outside this remix, so I guess he's relatively new, if he even exists at all. One commenter on YouTube simply used the word "orgasmic" to describe this video. I hip hope you agree.
