conversation of a mystery

HARUKA (born 1988) and YUKARI (born 1987)

For your first post you're probably expected to hit it full pace with something grand, something catchy and straight from the hip. Sadly though, it transpires that my first and presumably only attempt at this will center on two high school girls rapping in Japanese. It's the hip popping 2 girl unit HALCALI (put their names together). I first went to Japan summer 2001, largely clueless about everything- language, music, food. A terrible way to start perhaps, but the beauty part of such ignorance is that you're totally free and of course totally ready to assimilate everything on a grand scale. It was while watching MTV Japan one day that I came across Halcali's first single Tandem. It sounded exactly like 2 kids with a beatbox in their bedroom. It sounded nothing like i'd heard before (or since). It sounded glitchy, catchy and cheap. The girls (both friends since school from Meguro, Tokyo) have songs so dense with pop culture references it becomes difficult to catalogue them all (moving quickly from Missy Elliot in one song, to Tom Sawyer in the next), and an inventive, too-hip style that moves right through the songs, the videos, the posters, the TV clips, everything. They`re young, famous, funny and sharp and frankly isn't it about time you retired that Libertines album? So run, don`t walk:

http://halcali.com