Happy New Year! I’m now settled back in at TYFTH Towers, fighting off jetlag after yesterday returning from Sweden. Although the Top 3 roundup was conspicuous by its absence again, I’m hoping that 2019 can start in fine style with the return of the TYFTH twitch stream.
There are a number of personal plans afoot for me in 2019, but as much as possible TYFTH will also be able pick up the pace a little. Whatever’s going on away from this place I’ve no intention of giving up on freeform for a long while yet (if ever, let’s be honest). You’ll notice that a couple of reuploaded videos on the TYFTH YouTube went online yesterday – they were supposed to coincide with the big Thoughts on Mixing post, and they’ll be followed by a few more from the archives while I rummage through more old hard drives.
The first stream of the year will include some newer tracks if I can manage it, but after a long mixing break it’s safe to expect a few old, darker favourites. This one will be recorded for YouTube, so although it would be great as always to see everyone there’ll be a chance to catch it there, a little later.
Keeping that consistent streaming streak going, it’s almost time for the second TYFTH Live. Mastodon watchers will have seen some live indecision from me today, as I really haven’t been in the mood for NRG this week and finally decided to call it earlier this afternoon. Typically, all it took was one more practice with some unusual tracks to get some inspiration going though, so we’re back to original scheme of two relatively shorter sets.
The first will be some goa trance, likely to be heavy on the E-Mantra but a little more melodic than I’ve played in the past. After that will be some NRG, and I’ll likely be keeping things fairly simple while I get back into the swing of mixing publicly and precariously balancing computers here and there. The simpler mixing (in both sets, to a degree) will mean I’ll be more able to check the chat, so this could be a nice chance for a catch up, too.
You can find the TYFTH twitch channel here, and when the time comes I’ll temporarily embed the feed at the top of this post.
Even though Dark Dimension’s been pretty sporadic for the past few years it has made a strong case to be the best harder, darker event in Tokyo since the end of NRGetic Romancer. The lineups have been hit and miss, but last year’s anniversary event was the strongest so far with Lab 4 appearing as guests.
April’s edition is going one better though – the surprise booking of Proteus makes this his first appearance in Tokyo for what must be about a decade. GULD will likely be adding some more NRG to the event to make it a proper reunion for the Romancer crowd.
A very last-minute notice here that a winter edition of Hellfury’s Hardcore Bash online event is starting today. Although there’s less than usual to pick out on the freeform side, I’d like to point Horsers in the direction of Hyphen’s set tonight at 19:00 (GMT), followed directly by Shimotsukei. Watch out too for Hellfury himself playing first thing tomorrow – ideally with a freeform set but either way it’s great to see him back.
Heartfelt thanks to everyone who made it to the inaugural twitch stream, especially after social media did its best to keep people away. Even the last-ditch Facebook posts on the day were being hidden away, which wasn’t much help to the mostly European crew who had shown interest in the cancelled edition a few weeks ago. Lesson learned though, and from now on I’ll be relying more on here, lesser-of-two-evils Twitter, and twitch itself for announcements. Special thanks to the Japanese crew and TYFTH regulars who managed to find their way to the stream, it was utterly great to see you all.
I have uploaded the video for anyone who missed it though, with some very minor edits to cut out the soundcheck and some silence at the end. I was tempted to go down the titles/captioning route to spruce up the presentation a bit but that’s possibly going a bit far for what was supposed to be a pretty casual set.
In the end we made it to just shy of two hours, which was quite a surprise. I hope everyone enjoyed it, and if I seemed slightly subdued it was mostly thanks to having to keep more of an eye than usual on some new technical stuff. I tend to be as much of an arm waving loon during practice at home as in the club but didn’t want to hit one of the four screens I was surrounded by…
Anyway, the set was great fun and was reasonably on-brand for me considering it wasn’t planned to the usual extreme degree. I’ve noticed that winging it completely doesn’t really work as the transitions will be shorter and/or less interesting – too many of them and it starts to sound less and less like one of my mixes. Dug my own grave there, it seems.
Finally, I was glad to see the visuals went down well with everyone. What with it being a twitch set I really wanted some way add some visual interest and a live, interactive feel, and this seemed a pretty successful first try. Might be an idea to lower the room lighting next time for that authentic, cramped club vibe.
Stay tuned then – I’d like to manage one of these sets each month, but it’d be nice to stream some practice runs and other genres in the meantime, too.
Tracklist
01. Turmion Katilot – Verta ja Lihaa (Proteus Mental remix) 02. Lab4 – 4 Those About 2 03. GULD – Nightmare Freak (2009 remix) 04. Lab4 – Candyman (GULD remix) 05. Marilyn Manson – Resident Evil (J-Gear bootleg remix) 06. GULD – Hannya (Android Lime remix) 07. Lab4 – Perfect Drug 08. Hatsune Miku – Senbonzakura (GULD remix) 09. Alek Szahala – Ziggurat 10. Zio – Hell’s Gate (PlasmaDancer remix) 11. Alek Szahala – Dryad Machine (GULD remix) 12. Morita Yuuhei – Redemption Song 13. Cyrez & Sam One – Reboot the System 14. GULD – Gozenzeuna 15. Twisted Freq – Rougher Than You 16. Alek Szahala – Caballo 17. Betwixt & Between – Surendrajit (2011 refix) 18. Nomic – Rule Breaker 19. Betwixt & Between – Like a Flame 20. Nomic & Pain on Creation – Make Me Real 21. Eryk Orpheus – PVC 22. Proteus – Venla 23. Proteus – Venla Part 2 24. Cryobiosis – Serenity
A quick reminder that the rescheduled TYFTH twitch stream is happening tomorrow, which might be especially necessary as our old friend Facebook is limiting visibility of yesterday’s announcement. The set will definitely be longer than the usual event appearances but I’m not sure by how much – I was trying out a few mixes yesterday but I haven’t got a fixed tracklist in mind. Let’s say longer than one hour but probably less than two.
This’ll be a test run, but I’ll be aiming to iron out any sound issues and tinker with the visuals for a few minutes before the official start time. I’ll do my best with the multitasking to keep an eye on the chat, and it’ll be great to see anyone who’s able to stop by.
Obviously I’d like to offer some huge apologies for cancelling the twitch stream at such short notice – and not even officially cancelling it here, as the couple of lines on Facebook were the very best I could manage at the time. Late on Saturday I managed to get some pretty severe food poisoning that put me completely out of action for a couple of days. An extra nice combo with the remnants of jetlag, as you can imagine…
Anyway, as the first set I’ve ever missed for any reason I’m pretty keen to make up for it ASAP. The plan is to reschedule for 10 days from now, once again at 19:00 JST. I’ll do some wider word-spreading nearer the day, but wanted to update everyone here first.
Before that I’ll be trying to catch up on a few things I’ve had planned, as well as continue with some minor and not-so-minor additions to the site. I’ve been thinking that it would be nice for TYFTH to do a better job of archiving and referencing info, both for Horsers and myself, so that’s something in the works alongside all these other posts I keep mentioning.
This would be another of those things that have been planned for an age, but what with 2017 being the first year without a club set since 2008 it’s probably about time to spring into action. Even if Shimotsukei levels of activity are a bit unlikely, I’ll be aiming for at least one set a month, starting in January. Part of the thinking behind it is to keep me match fit for any sets next year, but also just to get me back into the swing of planning event-style mixes more regularly.
Right now I’m away from TYFTH Towers, but once I return to Japan there’ll be some action on what are usually the end-of-year posts. January will tentatively see the twitch stream, the 2017 top mixes (and hopefully tracks), along with a couple of other things that have been delayed for a while. And while 2017 wasn’t the easiest time for all sorts of reasons, TYFTH will definitely be a bit more active come the new year.
Aspiring freeform producers who missed the recent(ish) announcement should note that FINRG is accepting track submissions. Another promising sign (after Substanced’s Pure Freeform) that the label is resurrecting itself for the end of the year, and it can’t come soon enough.
As much as I’d love to be accepting tracks to be be released on TYFTH that’s not a possibility for the forseeable future, so it’d be lovely to see some IPoS-inspired darker tracks surfacing on FINRG in the meantime. Surely getting in touch through any of the usual channels will do the trick, but the orginal announcement can be found on the FINRG Facebook page.
I’m ever so late with this one, but as it’s hard to keep up with Shimotsukei’s mix-posting schedule there might well be some who missed her excellent tribute to Lunch. As the founder of Tokyo Hardcore Construction it’s not overstating things to say that there wouldn’t be much of a gabber scene here without Lunch’s music and events.
Shimotsukei’s set does a fine job of representing Lunch’s sounds (and even sourcing them in the first place), running through his final tracks on Pure Existence as well as far earlier work and some big THC anthems like Oldskool Terrorist (one of my personal favourites) and Hardcore Ravers Motherfucker. The mixing is also top drawer with some interesting, longer transitions that you wouldn’t often hear at THC – such was Lunch’s (justified) confidence in his timing he would usually play the next track with both faders at max volume from the very start.
More than any other recent set, this brings back all sorts of memories of the Tokyo harder scene of years past, but even without the nostalgia element it’ll be pretty hard for newcomers to resist melodies as manic and catchy as these.
