I no longer recall when I first came across her name in a CD booklet, but over the years I’ve found that if there is a song listed in connection with Jane Ha chances are it’s already one of my favorites. During the last couple of years I’ve primarily heard her in capacity of her role as cellist in Loro’s, but that’s about to change. The electropop crafted by Jane Ha under the alias Pika could be heard on the 3rd Bbang Compilation, but it was not until a few weeks ago that her debut EP, Pika’s Metamorphosis, was released

Who is Pika?
One of my favorite authors is Hermann Hesse, and he has a collection of fairy tales, and within these fairy tales is Piktor’s Metamorphosis. It’s a zen-style love story/story of trying to find wholeness and the philosophy is represented by a line from Hesse: “This is what you mean, isn’t it: that the river is everywhere at the same time—at its source and at its mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains—everywhere, at the same time—and that for the river there is only the present, without the shadow of a future.” Just wanting to be everywhere, and spread out everywhere— Through music and through understanding people and their surroundings and reaching out and sharing pain and giving love. I feel like I am always undergoing transformations and that sometimes, I have to endure extreme amounts of pain but when it comes down to it, that’s what makes me alive, and that’s what makes me want to write music so that I can understand people. So that’s what Pika is to me. (A mutation of Piktor, so to speak)

What is Pika’s Metamorphosis?
Pika’s Metamorphosis is a pun on Piktor’s metamorphosis and Kafka’s Metamorphosis, to be specific. In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is debilitated by his own indecision to just friggin leave his home when he was a bug. I don’t think that that is too easy to do anyhow–the whole existential crises. One of my biggest fears is to be a Willy Loman or incapacitated by my own doing. It’s hard to be out of your own body and to see the change, because as you change, you are just as you are, and this isn’t the 4th dimension and we don’t exist in time to see each little step along the way.

I chose this as the title because I want to metamorphose, and I hope to change constantly, within my music. The irony is that I want to change towards being closer to who I really am. I think maybe perhaps most people live their lives, constantly adding layers upon layers of thick indecision and uncertainty and hiding themselves. This isn’t a bad thing at all, especially if one really believes in it. I’m always trying to dig deeper and metamorphose into something that I was and that I had forgotten.

The music you’re making as Pika seems quite different from the contexts in which you’ve participated in the past. How did you arrive at this destination?
The music that I write now has always been there. In fact, I met the Loro’s members while I was first starting the whole Pika thing, but I put it on the backburner because I loved my members and wanted to devote all my time to working and fine-tuning music with Loro’s. I have no real super huge goal with Pika and I hope that it makes a few people very content and that would just make my day. In fact, it’s more like a project that I do on my own because sometimes a girl just has to sing to herself, because you yourself are the only one that really knows you, right??? hehe. In any case, I haven’t really hyped it up that much or anything because it was more my own naked music, fetal position, happy, sad, what have you. I’d like it to hopefully become more easier to do concerts (this recent concert was quite stressful).

Do you have any plans to promote your music in the US, or in any other countries?
About promotions…I am awful at it. I would like to play in the States or anywhere for that matter. My dream is to find some people to heal together with.

—

The recent concert in question would be the EP release show that can be watched on YouTube: 1 2 3 4. Although I have yet to hear the full debut EP from Pika, Pika’s Metamorphosis, myself what has reached my ears has sounded like a more accessible itta – easy to like, but constantly interesting.