Thinking it was long overdue to pay a visit to gothic/industrial event Midnight Mess, I headed along to Shinjuku’s MARZ last night. It turned out that this was the very last event (in its current incarnation as a monthly party, at least), and was also marking its 10th anniversary.

Thanks to the joys of work I wasn’t able to arrive until the evening (it was actually a massive 11-hour spectacular starting at 5.30pm), but it did mean that I was just in time for Winterkälte’s stupendous Live PA. I wasn’t familiar with their work at all (embarrassingly, as it looks like they’ve been active since the mid-90s), but this was an incredible set of hardcore, noise and heavy industrial-style sections. Getting close to breakcore on occasions, it was all a bit much for the more delicate goths in the crowd, but with a lot of industrial dancers and a few NRGetic Romancer/Dark Dimension ravers in attendance there were plenty who quickly settled into the higher bpms.

Sadly (but not all that surprisingly) I’m running out of prep time before my trip tonight, so the couple of goodies I had planned will have to wait until I get back on the 17th. In the meantime then, feel free to add any interesting links/news/mixes etc to the comments section of this post. Or if you just fancy a chat, go right ahead. New commenters will need to be approved, but I might be able to manage that from my phone during my travels, especially as both Malaysia and Singapore are apparently more free-wifi-friendly than Tokyo (which isn’t difficult). I’ll be staying offline as much as possible though, so there’ll probably be no emailing and the like til I return.

Bye for now!

Live video by Ustream

Hopefully there’ll be some time later today to think more about what I’m playing tonight, but right now I’m actually in the midst of preparation for my trip to Malaysia and Singapore (this Wednesday). Anyway, there should be some interesting tunes on show (including a lovely non-freeform track by my brother that I might use as a sound check/warm up), so feel free to join the chatroom from 11pm Japan time (3pm UK, 5pm Finland).

A couple of days ago I noticed that this month is actually TYFTH’s 5th birthday! That would have been a nice landmark for the next mix, but as it’s a bit late in the day I’ve been thinking instead about a belated session on Ustream to celebrate. It looks as though the Ustream producer software has undergone a makeover since I last used it, but barring any problems I’ll be playing some schranz(!), NRG and freeform on Sunday night (Japan time).

Anyway, I obviously didn’t have a clue what was going to become of the site when I innocently wrote the first post – indeed it was pretty much just a place for top tens and trying out some rudimentary horrendous Japanese (I’m not quite Donald Keene yet, but I hope to the gods I’ve improved since then). Thinking about it, back in August 2007 I was still more than a year away from my Tokyo club debut, had only just finished Yamanote no Oto and was a pretty anonymous presence on the FINRG forums, so there’s definitely been progress on all sorts of fronts.

As always, heartfelt thanks to all the Horsers for their support – it’d be great to see a few people on Sunday for a catch-up.