Haiku Hands are altogether sudden. There is the music, a Frankenstein’s monster of genres and philosophies that’s without delay ferocious and playful. Alternative dance music, if courageous sufficient to stay a label on it. The Beastie Boys in the event that they had been a fiery woman group from Australia, if I had the audacity to check.
Then there are the members themselves: a masked collective, generally three or 4, generally extra. They could present up with dancers or DJs onstage. They’ve carried out in sumo fits, and they’ve carried out whereas 9 months pregnant. All in all, anybody who has seen or heard Haiku Hands is aware of they’re in contrast to the rest.
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That’s precisely how they need it. Catching up with sisters Mie and Claire Nakazawa, two of the three core members, the dialog is dominated by the phrase “push boundaries,” accompanied by an all-you-can-eat buffet of synonyms. Although they’re strikingly humble, it’s a phrase that they’ve earned.
It didn’t take lengthy for individuals to note the daring artistry coming from Haiku Hands. Their first-ever present was a efficiency at Falls Festival in 2017, and since then, they’ve crammed opening slots for Tame Impala, Cupcakke, Flight Facilities, SOFI TUKKER, and Bloc Party, in addition to bought out their personal headlining excursions in Australia.
In Australia, they are often discovered taking part in to packed, exhilarated crowds. When I noticed the three core artistic forces behind Haiku Hands — Claire Nakazawa, Mie Nakazawa, and Beatrice Lewis — in Toronto, but to interrupt the Canadian market, they introduced the identical vitality to a tiny, 150-capacity venue. They made it really feel big. The evening ended with everybody sweaty and euphoric. My movies had been of a shaky, blurry, irredeemable high quality. Four minutes of footage show the shadowy insides of my pocket, soundtracked by pulsing bass, and shouting, riotous vitality. I couldn’t have captured a greater illustration of their stay exhibits. Forget your telephone. Dance, get chaotic. When it involves a Haiku Hands present, you simply need to be there.
Amid this take-no-prisoners strategy to creating a very good time, it may be all too simple to stay oblivious to the intelligence behind the beats. Crowds sing and dance alongside, all of the whereas unaware that Haiku Hands’ lyrics are subversive, witty, philosophical explorations of expertise, social norms, and relationships. Take the most recent single from their upcoming sophomore album, Pleasure Beast (out Dec. 1), for one. “Feels So Good” is a Fatboy Slim and Gorillaz-infused observe that would animate essentially the most mundane of moments and occurs to be “about speaking your truth into a world that would often much prefer you to stay quiet, polite, in line and obedient. It can be speaking loud political truths or quiet needs and wants to the people closest to you,” Lewis says.
She continues, “This song is a dedication to those moments in your life when you can be brave enough to find your voice and let it out.” Then look to their genre-defying, eponymous debut album. “Manbitch” “highlights linguistics and gender stereotypes,” whereas “Mechanical Animal” is a few “meeting place between technology and our natural animal instincts.” “Fashion Model Art,” a collaboration with dance-duo SOFI TUKKER, playfully pokes enjoyable on the ridiculousness of the artwork/style world. Even their identify is considerate — “Haiku” refers to phrases, poetry, discovering the essence of an concept within the purest manner attainable, and “Hands” acknowledges the collaborative nature of the venture.
Their supply of those themes is commonly dadaist in nature — “I’m going to tear up the lexicon with a hexagon and my sexy thong on,” from “Not About You” is a standout instance of their surprising absurdity. Their intentional juxtaposition of the political and the absurd, grounded within the act of creation and the viewers expertise, creates a liberating and multi-dimensional ethos. Haiku Hands might be an expertise, or an concept, or each. The better part is that you could get pleasure from your self immensely regardless of how deep you go — be at liberty to take one nice present, a favourite band, or a new way of living.
At first appraisal, the offstage personalities of Claire and Mie are nearly fully incongruent with their stage presence. The sisters are quiet, reserved, and pensive. It’s not a indifferent cool of somebody used to basking in reward onstage. It’s a humble, introverted demeanor that’s extra assured behind a masks or pointing the reward at another person. I’d inventory it as much as the time distinction — “I just woke up,” Mie smiles upon selecting up my video name, and Claire, misplaced within the jungle of WhatsApp group chats, takes one other couple of minutes to seek out us — if different video interviews didn’t confirm this primary impression.
Quiet, meandering solutions appear to find themselves partway by means of. But by means of the lackadaisical supply comes unceasing tales brimming with extraordinary ardour and zealous devotion to artwork.
“As a little kid, I was pretty obsessed with listening to the radio, and I would make my own radio station,” Mie says, the youthful of the 2 siblings by two-and-a-half years. “I had two tape players, and I would record the radio onto them. Once I had all the songs I wanted, I would place them next to each other how I wanted. I also recorded little bits of my voice in between…” Here she pauses, gazing into the space, and says, as if it’s a realization: “Yeah, I was actually really obsessed with music when I was younger.”
Their household is credited with sparking a ardour for artwork, which might later flame into Haiku Hands. “Both of our parents were yoga teachers, so there were quite a few alternative people around,” Mie explains. “Our step-grandfather was in the Sydney Symphony. He was a violin player. Our dad did Japanese Butoh and dance and wrote poetry.” Their mother additionally bestowed them with a various style in music; the sounds of their childhood included Tracy Chapman, Bob Dylan, OutKast, and Naughty by Nature.
Plus, she took them to piano classes, drumming circles, and no matter music occurred to cease by their hometown of Australia’s Blue Mountains. “Whatever music came there, our mum would take us along, and we would fall asleep on the stairs with heaps of jackets over us,” Mie says. Contributing to their vary of influences, Claire explains that in “Blue Mountains, there’s quite a strong hip-hop culture. So a lot of the kids up here are really into all the hip-hop that was coming out during that era.”
To nobody’s shock, a 14-year-old Claire had a religious expertise at her first live performance, none apart from Beastie Boys. “It was at the Forum Pavilion, which is this 5,000-capacity venue, and it was this whole other world than your average life. All these people come together to share something that they all love. It’s almost like a church, a different form of a congregation, where you just enjoy something together with heaps of people.”
But when the Nakazawa sisters first shared a stage, it wasn’t music. It was visible artwork: stay, interactive, freestyle artwork, in entrance of audiences at bars and folks festivals round Australia. “For about five years before Haiku Hands, we had been a part of a crew called Sketch the Rhyme, which was a multimedia rap music/art show,” Claire explains. “We were the visual artists in that, so we’d stand onstage and draw live. There’d be music playing, and we would be onstage painting.”
Visual artwork is a vital outlet for each sisters, a lot in order that they each went to artwork faculty, and their first official collaboration was an artwork exhibition that they put on collectively. Mie describes collaborating as like-minded siblings as each liberating and vital. “I feel like there were not many women, like close friends, doing what we were doing, so involved with art, so involved in music. So I think we look to each other to have that support. It’s so much easier to have someone else to back you because you’re coming up with these odd ideas,” she laughs. “Me and Claire were quite similar in our ambition to challenge the norm and push the boundaries on what we always see and hear. It’s nice to have that collaboration with someone else who has a similar vision to you.”
That daring imaginative and prescient is completely shared by the third foremost member of Haiku Hands, Lewis, who Claire likens to being “very much like a bull. She goes forth and helps make things happen.” Lewis additionally boasts a powerful musical resume as a singer, songwriter, and producer — she is an alumnus of the Red Bull Music Academy, has a catalog of solo music, and is a member of the critically acclaimed band Kardajala Kirridarra, which mix modern digital music with conventional indigenous themes. “Our immediate connection was finding another woman who was interested in a similar thing,” Claire reminisces. “We were both very motivated and hardworking and enjoyed working. I guess you could say ambitious, but we just really, really wanted to do it basically.”
For this extremely collaborative group — they used to go so far as calling Haiku Hands extra of an artwork collective — they search the identical vitality in these they work with. They select collaborators who “get pleasure from humor,” “push boundaries that they haven’t pushed before and don’t want to do something that’s already been done,” and “have a strong feeling themselves.”
The concept of Haiku Hands as an artwork collective began as a result of they wished to acknowledge the contributions of their many collaborators, “especially early on when there wasn’t much money or anything involved. Everyone was doing it for the love and for the joy of creating, collaborating, and making something cool.” That want to create an open and welcoming group stays: “We love it when someone comes and is part of the project, even if it’s temporarily, but they can feel like they’re part of that. So that’s the idea behind it being an open kind of project,” Claire says.
But with the quantity of dedication and vitality that Mie, Claire, and Lewis at the moment are placing right into a extra profitable — subsequently extra demanding — model of the venture, they really feel snug claiming their spots on the forefront. “Over time, I think we have become more of a group rather than a collective because I guess the workload that we do is a lot,” Claire explains. “I’m additionally excited that we’re doing a bit extra ourselves on this album [Pleasure Beast].
“We’re outsourcing somewhat bit lower than we did to start with. We’ve been recording ourselves a bit and having periods the place it is simply the three of us. So I feel it will carry a little bit of a special sound. We’ll nonetheless have members be part of us and fluidity with the group in that manner as a result of I really feel like Haiku Hands is its personal vitality, versus particularly about us as people. I feel I need to maintain that aspect to it.”
Haiku Hands are regularly stunning and dichotomous: philosophy and enjoyable; their riotous stage personas and the standard, unhurried sisters I converse to; open to the world and but so intrinsically made up of three devoted artists. However, one factor is easy and as clear as day: Haiku Hands are excited in regards to the future. With 4 daring singles out (“Nunchuka,” “Ma Rula,” “Feels So Good,” and the newly launched “Cool For You”) and their sophomore album, Pleasure Beast, imminent, there’s rather a lot to stay up for and no motive to decelerate. At the tip of our dialog, Claire offers some superb recommendation that each epitomizes Haiku Hands and has a sensible utility for listening to all of their music: “Be in a space where you can play it really loudly. And that you can dance [in]. Because we like jumping around to it.”
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