The idol meets the wall of noise. Hatsune Kaidan is the side project in which Hijokaidan runs the Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku - a synthesised, entirely virtual pop idol - through their own harsh feedback, and Noisy Killer is its covers album.
The track list reads as pop culture put to the torch: J-pop hits, anime themes, a Perfume number, Jun Togawa's Suki Suki Daisuki, all sung by Miku's bright digital voice and then steadily swallowed by the noise rising behind her. Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, T. Mikawa and Koichi Nakaya on electronics turn the most disposable surfaces of contemporary pop into raw material. The effect is genuinely subversive: by breaking the Miku phenomenon down into feedback, the project lays bare the artifice of the manufactured idol, all image and no person behind the mask.
Funny, abrasive and oddly poignant, it is one of the sharpest entries in Hijokaidan's long line of collaborations. Issued by Alchemy Records in 2015, its cover art a deadpan parody of a classic Scorpions album sleeve.
