Halfby - Side Farmers

Halfby is the solo project of Kyoto resident artist, Takahiro Takahashi. Basically, he’s DJ and is always busy with his Dj tour in Japan. Also, he’s now well known as one of the Japanese rising star DJs. His DJ styles is Breakbeats and Hip hop based but he also plays Rock, Soul, Funk, Jazz, Bossa Nova, Reggae and Calypso/Caribean music. His combination play of wide range of music is well reflected in Halfby’s music.

Halfby made his debut in 2002 and all the three EPs became hits and were sold out soon. Especially, the first mini album “Half Works” was a huge hit at big record stores like HMV and Tower Records and stayed at the higher position in the indie chart. After the release of the mini album, he remixed the songs of the famous Japanese artists the likes of Cubismo Grafico, M-Flo, Doping Panda and Halcali. He got an offer from one of the famous film director in Japan at the moment, Mr.Katsuyuki Motohiro, and made the soundtracks of the movie 

“Summertime Machine Blues”  in cooperation with Strauss (Tatsuki Hashimoto). Then, he had chances to perform in the huge rock festival in Japan like Summersonic 05 and Count down Japan 05/06.

Halfby’s first full-length album “Green Hours” finally released in October 2005. It has been sold much more than the mini album and has reached 2nd position on Tower records’ indie chart.

Halfby - Side Farmers (2008)

So yes, it's happy big beat dance music, and if you like the names I've dropped in the previous paragraph then you'll probably like this. But I have to admit, the one thing that pushes Halfby's work towards greatness is what attracted me to it in the first place: the videos. Made by the good people at Groovisions, they all feature the same lead character - a computer animated, bewigged, dancing man - making his way through an array of insanely detailed environments. The YouTube widget at the top of this page collects five of them for your entertainment: a double bill of non-album track Rodeo Machine and Screw The Plan, followed by Halfbeat, Star Track and Slip ON. After a while they become compulsive viewing, as you start to spot the characters and themes that recur in each video.

"They're nuts, they're crazy coco-nuts".

Halfby's quality jollity seems to inspire.