A quick post here, just to remind everyone of a very special Munted! Monthly! – J-Mx and Nomic are guesting on what will be the final show. It’s a real shame that the event is coming to the end of its run, as Chip, Midas and the rest of the crew have done a brilliant job of introducing the less-well known sounds in the freeform scene to a wider audience.
Make sure to head along to Krafty Radio tonight (10pm BST) to show your support one last time.
Only a few days before the voting closes in Mark EG’s You’ve got Talent contest, but that’s enough time to show some support to TYFTH regular and scene stalwart BEEZEE. Everyone’s favourite Welsh-dwelling Mancunian DJ has entered a couple of sets, but his excellent The Kraken seems to be the one gathering the most votes. Head along to the CORE site before 9th July and do the right thing.
Right then, Munted! is all over (and what a great night/morning it was), so it’s about time I caught up on some of the stuff that’s been happening lately. If I’ve missed anything, feel free to let us know in the comments down below.
Brilliantly I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even had a chance to give a shout for the event I’m playing at! Most will have seen the news already, but Chip, Midas and the Munted! crew have gone beyond the call of duty with a massive event on Krafty Radio this month. First of all I’m very grateful to all the Freeform Forum folk who voted for my return this time around (alongside Substanced), making it a real Japanese takeover with Le Dos-on and Betwixt & Between. Three hours of Tokyo/Nagoya freeform, that’s even more than you’d hear at a Japanese event these days (!).
It looks like I’ll once again be going without sleep to somehow rustle something up before a week Saturday, but what an opportunity for the Japan crew. Stay tuned for set times!
Sadly I wasn’t able to get to volume 4 of raqhow’s experience!, but here’s a great video report that runs through all the main floor madness. As you can see, it looks like the balance between all the genres was spot on, even if there wasn’t any darker freeform on show this time. raqhow’s excellent b2b set with NONAKA+CHIN was recorded and is downloadable here, while there should be a special mention for ikaruga_nex, who looks like he also came up with another nice set.
All being well there’ll be a little time to catch up on news during this week, but before that here’s a reminder that Le Dos-on’s excellent debut album ENERGY is now available online. This is a must-buy, and even with all the free music around these days it’s no real hardship that for once the tracks have to be purchased as a set rather than individually.
As for me, I had an excellent one night off last week, spent with Guld and Skylight’s Alex at the new Tokyo Skytree and Shibuya’s Womb. Alex is in Asia on promotional duties, and it was pretty fascinating to talk about the more commercial side of the electronic scene, his and Proteus’ thinking behind Skylight, and Chinese trance collaborations.
Some video from this month’s Sinistry is finally appearing, including this dark-but-atmospheric clip of Alek Szahala playing Iron Squid. Looks as if Alek’s set was as well-received as ever, though I’d love to see a tracklist and some more video/photos, if there are any floating around online.
The next I Love Hard Beats is coming up in a couple of months, featuring a Substanced – Aryx b2b (!), and to mark the occasion the HBC crew have posted a quick interview with Aryx. Sounds like it’ll be quite an event, and Aryx will have yet more new material ready to play.
Facebook fans can (hopefully) check this link for the full interview.
Having been back a month now, I’m unfortunately remembering the many things I dislike about this city – thank the heavens for today’s event at Club Asia then, which turned out to be the perfect escape and a great gathering of ravers from the various sub-scenes around Tokyo. Of course I was mainly there to see Guld, and almost everyone from the NRG scene was there too, from the NRGetic Romancer crew to producers/DJs like Alabaster and Asahi.
I was a bit late arriving, and Guld was already on his third tune, a truly brutal new track from him that I’d heard before, but sounds incredible through a big PA (there’s a release forthcoming, so stay tuned). The rest of his set was dark, aggressive and heavy on the vocals, with Nomic’s New Shit remix and Einhander’s excellent One Immortal both making it in. As usual I was dancing through most of it, but stopped to take a video during the Einhander remix of Sagittarius, another Guld favourite of the past year. The whole set went down surprisingly well with the mostly tech-dance and cheery UK Hardcore crowd, but just goes to show once again that if people have the chance to listen to our genre it’ll make them move.
That’s a big if these days though, and a few of us were chatting about freeform’s worrying recent decline in Tokyo. The DJs and producers are (mostly) still around though, so hopefully we’ll be able to build things back up again during the rest of this year.
I was in a bit of a dancing mood last night, and decided to give this event a try after discovering it on mixi. I haven’t been over Asakusa way for a long time, so the post-midnight stroll from Kuramae up to Asakusa itself was really nice – it really is the best time of the day to walk around Tokyo, I reckon. Here’s a typical sight as I wandered around trying to find the club:
Anyway, HANA=KAWA=DOOR was a great little place, if more a bar/live music venue than a club. There was plenty of space to dance though and the staff were great, which immediately puts it a notch above most of the places you find in Shinjuku/Shibuya. I was very impressed by the tunes too, with almost the whole night being fairly high-bpm dark psy, with some more melodic stuff to start and finish.
Add in some quality mixing from the DJs and a friendly crowd, and it’s definitely an event I’ll head back to again. The video at the top of the post was taken during Baboooo’s 03:00 – 04:30 set – I should have paid a bit more attention to the lighting, obviously, but it’s quite cool that you can see the middle-of-the-night traffic trundling past in the background.