Megadrive

Warning: This post does not accept game cartridges.

DJ Sega played at Triangle last Friday, coming all the way from Pennsylvania to hit us with the East Coast ish that got the guy onto Diplo's Mad Decent label. The electro junkies at Triangle just didn't know what to do with it - is it hip-hop? is it dubstep? Are his decks skipping?

Baltimore beat (there's probably another term for it, but I'm not very genre-savvy) is indeed unique, but it's not hard to see where it came from. My guess is it's just a tangent of the East Coast hip-hop sound, where a few DJs decided they'd rather screw with samples of other tracks than just lay down a beat for an MC to spit on. The upside is in it's shock value - "hey I love this son-what the hell is he doing to it?!", where the downside is, to be frank, it's a bit repetitive. As soon as you pronounce the bassline, you've got to do more things with it than just boom, boom, b-b-boom. Still, if you can get past that, the key is in hearing Nirvana and Michael chopped to death. That, and wonderful moments like this one below.


The track did get a little bit more expansive with it's sampling, but hardly - so you get the repetition. But the fact that Timmy! is obviously having a brain explosion over a beat is extremely entertaining, to this patron, at least.

The crowd swelled at the start, but slowly dropped off til we had a lot of the dancefloor to ourselves. Shame, really - not often Osaka gets a change of pace like that.

Nice work Sega - now, if you wouldn't mind giving me back my girlfriend before you go...cheers.

Dubstep Rude? Very.

Warning: This post rinsed it out hard Friday night.

Caspa made his Japan debut @ Noon in Osaka last Friday, and though the crowd was a bit thin (half the crew I know weren't even in the city - well done guys), the guy still pulled out a set bulging with bass, turning the club inside out.

Chatting to Gary (Caspa) on the night, despite my intoxicated state I did manage to get a few coherent questions out about how he was enjoying the scene. He said tho Japan was small he was impressed with the committment here, and though he loved making tracks, there's nothing like bringing it to the masses.
And bring he did.

Jah Works Sound Systems in Sakai brought out a sound system so large that I struggle to think how they got it through the door. Come Sunday I'm still feeling the buzz in my ears - and on the night I remember feeling the cartilage in my nose vibrate. Madness.

The lack of art from the night is on account of me forgetting my memory card, and being too Jagered up to get anyone's addy for their pics. Still, here's the promo mix Caspa dished out on the night. Short but sweet and...dutty.

Edit: Toshi sent me a few pics including this mint one of Caspa on the decks. Big ups!

Underdog

Tetralogistics@Triangle

Warning: This post provides a small, intimate setting that probably doesn't break revenue costs.

Talking with a friend in the Osaka electronic music scene recently, it came to my attention that perhaps Osaka is fighting a losing battle in the electro scene. While I'm not surprised that Tokyo pulls the bigger acts and has the more well-known scene, after hitting clubs in Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo I can confidently say that the Easterners have nothing on the vibe of the West. In this case, bigger simply does not equal better.

Of course, in the case of massive festival gigs, Osaka can't win. Tokyo has the huge ageHa (though it's usually reserved for the kind of sickly, overground house - think DJ Emma - and local acts like Takkyu Ishino), and the immense Makuhari Messe (home of Summer Sonic, Ganban Night, and the now-extinct Electroglide). Osaka, by comparison, only really has Studio Partita ("Black Chamber"), about half the size of ageHa, meaning while it is fantastic in its own right, pulls less than half the revenue. I'll concede Tokyo has the large-scale events in the bag.

Womb:Intense...perhaps TOO intense
But it's the small events where I think Osaka reigns supreme. Tokyo's big electronica clubs, Womb, Air, Unit etc. are all spacious, but also full of the usual fronting you get in hip-hop clubs. The location tends to be near semi-residential areas, which means the clubs have a responsibility to keep the external noise from the patrons coming and going to a minimum. Nothing kills my buzz more than having a security guard tell me to stop being so excitable when I arrive. Come on now.

With the lights on, it's tiny. But on the dancefloor, it's perfect.
Osaka's clubs are smaller, which means they often take in less than a third in revenue on what can be made in Tokyo. But that size creates a community and intimacy that I revel in. Some people prefer not to know everyone at the gig, but for me if we're all mates one way or another, the whole place reverberates with the vibe. No cold, heartless pushing to the front. No "pick-up bar" feel to it. Everyone's there for the music, and each other. Sounds pretty hippie, huh. Meh - that's how I roll.

Anyway, point being - clubs like Triangle, LabTribe, and Onzieme need your help! It's up to you to keep electronica alive in Osaka - otherwise we'll all be stuck going to Pure or listening to DJ Kaori.

Helicopter

On a backstreet in south Osaka,
the boy stumbled upon the holy grail.

Warning: This post kicks like a mule.

So the older of the youngers came to visit for a few days lately, and much fun was had. So much fun, in fact, that I'm almost glad he left. No way could I keep that schedule up for another week.

Bought a funky new camera for him to use on his travels - a Canon Powershot 910IS (called the SD870IS in America). This is an outdated camera - the 920 came out recently - but the nice thing about that is it was half the price. And to be honest, I don't think the 920 could have been much better.

One of the nice things about it (and there are many) was the superior video quality, blowing my Olympus out of the photo bath. Of course, with great quality comes great megabyte-age, and 100mb per min of film is a little difficult to get up on youtube (especially these days: am I the only one who's noticed how deathly slow uploading is there lately?). However, I was able to get a few vids up over the weekend.

The first of these is at Cafe Absinthe (which I may have mentioned before), where my Israeli bartending friend demonstrates one of the more complicated cocktails on their menu: the Helicopter. Made of (I assume) absinthe & black sambuca, the kick on it is only topped by trying to inhale the remaining fumes afterwards. As Luke's reaction shows, it's not really for the faint of heart.
Cheers.

Yesterday's Shisha in Shinsaibashi

I had work today (being Saturday), which is once-a-month thing. I'm hardly going to let that ruin my Friday nights though.
There's a great bar in Shinsaibashi (the young clubbing area of Osaka, with a primarily Hip-hop/Reggaeton base) called Cafe Absinthe, a bar/cafe that serves the deadly drink for about 9 bucks, in a plethora of different forms. Tastefully done the stuff is nice, but you don't want to lose control when you're working with absinthe. The body has a habit of treating it like paint thinner (which it could be used for).

The place also serves shisha, also known as hookah or a thousand other names depending on the Asian country. All of them refer to the water-based pipe (a "bong" if you're crude) which uses a flavoured mix without the tar and most of the nicotine of tobacco (now this IS a topic I've wiki-ed). More than getting a buzz from the hookah (there is a mild one), its a very social activity, keeping your hands busy and involving interaction while you chat about whatever it is drunk social people talk about. Puppies and rainbows.

Here's some vids of said Shisha smoking: