| #600 |
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2002 |
Perilous In Japan Part One Europe and America suddenly become very mundane in comparison to Japan. I am in Tokyo at the moment (actually to be precise I am traveling at 280km/h on the Shinkansen or bullet train) on another odd mix of holiday, business trip and gig scenario. Tokyo is quite amazing - neon is everywhere; multiple huge television screens blare weird commercials at you at every major intersection; the trains are immaculately clean, punctual, and absolutely rammed full of people all of the time. However, just a few streets back from the main streets it can be quiet and tranquil. As expected the electronic music scene here is dominated by the various shades of trance - hideous commercial trance to the various more psychedelic flavours. For example, Andrew Till from PsyHarmonics has just been over to play a huge outdoor event in Yoyogi Park. But of course, dig a bit deeper and there is plenty more than just trance going on here. There are exciting pockets of laptop producers, a smouldering ambient scene, and plenty of interesting dub and hip hop crews. The day after I arrived I ended up playing a set at a night quite similar to Frigid called Linkage in Club Blue - a very sharp venue run and owned by the acid jazz crew United Future Organisation. Blue has two levels, both with crystal clear PAs. The upstairs is a chilled lounge with tea light candles on the tables and huge paintings by local artists on the walls. The downstairs is purpose-built for dancing - a drak bunker with video and laser faciltiies and a stage for live acts. Unlike Australia, people wanting to run nights even regular nights in small venues have to pay exorbitant fees to hire the venue and this goes some way to explaining the enormous door charges at every club. The average weekly night of locals costs about AUS$50 with one free drink but the promoter will be paying upwards of AUS$5000 per night just to use the space. Hence DJs and live acts often go unpaid or receive substantially less than in Australia. Its a interesting situation and seems to really inhibit the growth of a strong local underground with regular events and favours those who are already established. That said, Linkage was a superb night of quality chilled music and very diverse. Oguruso Novihide who has recently released work on the US label Carpark, plugged an acoustic guitar into his laptop to create some highly meditative processed ambience which moved between Ry Cooder, Hrvatski and Pan American. Linkage organiser, DJ Kowloon melted relaxed breakbeats into the Orb's classic Towers Of Dub and out into some Detroit-ish downtempo sounds. Downstairs, in between some techno DJs, a Yokohama-based 5 piece, Root Undertone dropped a superb live set that moved from heavy dub into some serious Krautrock overlaid with looping sample lines and keys. After Linkage I set off to explore some of the labyrinthine streets full of record shops, galleries and bookstores. Record stores in Tokyo are in little clusters. Actually its even more packed with goodness than Soho in London except all but a few of the shops are exceptionally specialist and phsyically microscopic. One store is literally no bigger than a broom cupboard with a few vertical racks of vinyl a turntable and a counter. Given the globalisation of electronic music its not surprising to find the selection of records is pretty much like in Europe - except that rare second hand records are relatively easy to find and are always in immaculate condition. Local Japanese music suffers the same problems in the shops as Asutralian music does in Australian shops - it is more expensive and is usally only available as import because, like Australia, local vinyl pressing opportunities are virtually non-existent. Import CDs cost the equivalent of AUS$30 whereas a Japanese CD will set you back close to $50. Vinyl prices are the same as Sydney. Of all the stores however I was most surprised by two who have taken their name and logos from the London counterparts - Tower Records and Rough Trade. Tower Records in the UK is huge and hideous like HMV however in Tokyo, Tower Records doubles as an amazing bookshop stocking a huge selection of design and art books - better than I have seen anywhere else in the world - with a whole host of old out of print titles and an enormous graff/street art and zine section. Rough Trade is similarly amazing stocking perhaps the most condensed selection of good music I have seen anywhere. Its so condensed I am seriously surprised they have enough customers to sell too. Only the highest quality IDM, post-rock, avant-garde and odd-electro stuff is stocked - no trance, techno, d&b or house. Its great! I'll be playing a lot of the stuff I have collected and heard on 2SER over the last two weeks of April so tune in to here some of the latest from the Japanese underground. And in next fortnight's column I will round up the rest of Tokyo and start on Osaka. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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