Before Kenshi Yonezu rose through the J-pop ranks, he gained a following as producer Hachi. Rather than the singer-songwriter’s own sorrowful voice laid down over his crooked punk riffs, his production featured warbling vocals written with Vocaloid ,  synthesiser software that allowed users to manipulate and write with a bank of preset voices. As Hachi, he was one of many musicians during the late 2000s sharing self-produced tracks for a growing internet community centred on Vocaloid songs and attracting multimillions of views.Official Orange compiles the essential songs from that early period of his career. A defining feature of Hachi’s music is the peculiar way Yonezu manipulated Hatsune Miku, the most popular of the preset voices in Vocaloid. As he draws out the synthetic quality of Miku’s vocals, cryptic rhymes transform into spellbinding passages. The elliptical wordplay seems written specifically with her voice in mind, her robotic delivery fully realising the song’s hypnotic effects. The surreal lyrical details on classics like “Panda Hero” and “Matoryoshka” further frame the songs into something otherworldly as they indulge in a realm of fantasy wholly of their own. As Yonezu warps Miku’s disembodied voice, letting her recite lyrics in uncanny ways, his twisted, cluttered punk also appears distorted at the edges. The production is scribbled with tricky guitar riffs as the songs move in an antsy rhythm: wheezing pianos and tinny percussion lay a carnival-esque flourish to “God and Apple Candy”. The woozy music of Official Orange resembles a pop-punk tune reflected in a funhouse mirror, its offbeat energy heightened when paired with the alien voice of Miku. As unsettling as Hachi’s music seems, you can’t help but be drawn into the strange sounds and shapes.