Hachiku came my way thanks to the official SXSW online playlist, which I've been ploughing through over the past few days (it's a very long playlist).
This music is everything DIY 'dream pop' should be: grungy, a bit lo-fi, intriguing, pushing boundaries, quirky for sure, and not quite fitting any mould. But it's also a great listen and not at all inaccessible. On the first listen, I was tempted to label Hachiku as just another bedroom musician, but I quickly realised there's a lot more to it. Now I'm more tempted to describe as possibly some sort of genius.
This song has a lot going on - it develops in unexpected ways more than once. It starts with a wave of rocky, grungy feedback - you sit there expecting some beefy drums or a 2-chord riff to kick in, but that doesn't quite happen. Instead, you get Hachiku's voice drifting in, lazily pushing out the song's cutting, witty lyrics. Then, a beat - but instead of a garage drum kit it's your best friend's Bontempi keyboard from the late 80s.
If you don't like this by now, maybe you never will. For me, it was that beat combined with the guitar that caused the tune to burrow into my brain, becoming a particularly persistent earworm.
I really like how the guitar feedback continues after this, and then allow in something a bit cleaner and more melodic. Later, there are some satisfying, crunchy guitars - and you finally get some of the resolution that you were expecting.
Hachiku is the musical penname of Anika Ostendorf, who - so the official write-up goes - "writes and produces dream pop with an avant garde twist from whichever bedroom she is currently inhabiting".