Unless you happen to be Marty McFly, this will be of very little interest to you, but last Saturday saw the Hardcore Tano*C crew head to Osaka’s Club NEO, where all the usual suspects (REDALiCE, Thanatos, Technorch, Betwixt & Between etc.) brought their brand of otaku-flavoured Hardcore to Kansai. There’s some rather more interesting (but related) news coming up in the next post though, so bear with me.

Incidentallly, my cunning plan for last weekend ultimately consisted of heading off to some islands between Shikoku and Hiroshima, which isn’t exactly what I had in mind at the start of the week. Still, good to get some fresh air, eh? Maybe I’ll put a random photo or two up before long, in an effort to convince you that I did the right thing.

So, Arkitech’s jaunt around Tokyo with the Full Circle crew is not very far away after all. First up is the ‘Daytime Edition’ of X-Treme Hard, this time at Shibuya’s AMATERAXI on the 2nd March, where Arkitech will be playing back-to-back with DJ Yousuke. Now that does sound pretty appealing – I might have moved away from Happy Hardcore/the merrier side of things these days, but Yousuke’s sets are quite possibly the best that you’ll find anywhere, and his effort at Run-Run vs 4Real was about the most original HappyCore/other stuff set I’ve heard for a long time.

The 8th March sees Arkitech make another appearance in Shibuya, this time at the Hardcore Baby’s Revenge Release Party (at Club Kinoto). No other news on who else will be turning up for this one yet, but after the epic wait for this release it’s probably safe to expect a decent line-up.

Incidentally, the next Hell’s Gate event is almost here – once again held in the middle of the week, somewhat bizarrely, on the 13th of this month. I won’t be able to make this, which is a real shame – I can say with some authority that Zio will be playing some cracking tunes, a lot of them unreleased. Anyone who happens to be in the AMATERAXI vicinity would be advised to wander along, for sure.

Completely out of the blue, as far as I can tell, but Shinjuku’s club complex Code appears to be closing. As one of the biggest venues in Tokyo, it’s definitely a surprise – but one final NRG event is taking place next week, and what an event it promises to be. Energize & Hardcore Baby’s Revenge sees nigh on every name in Japanese Hardcore/NRG making an appearance – it might be best if I simply list them all, in a shameless copy/paste from mixi. Behold:

ENERGIZE [Main Floor]
DJs: [AtoZ]
COGI / DJ CHAMP / DJ YOUSUKE / DJ ZET / enbun8wari / GULD / HATAKEYAMA / HIDEAKi / HIROSHI / KEITA / KEISUKE / m@-nya / marix / MASUO / MUNETICA / NODA / TOSHIYUKI / YAGISHITA / YAMARIKI / yoshiko
VJ:
CDC

HARDCORE BABY’S REVENGE [Second Floor]
DJs: [AtoZ]
aSaKO / ASSHI / AZSA / Betwixt&Between / bio animal / Blasterhead / BUZZMASTA / DJ BIRDHEAD / DJ EUTO / DJ KONNY / DJ YOUSUKE / eckoz / kanon / Lunch / MAREHITO / NDE / REDALiCE / Short-Cutz / takahashit / yucadisco / 狗神 / 唐沢 / カリビアンコム / 電撃姫
MCs: [AtoZ]
KONNY MC / MC Euthman / MC Tyrant / MC YAMATO

One not to be missed, as you can see – but as my trips into Tokyo are now temporarily via Shinkansen rather than the Hibiya line, I’ll be reluctantly conserving my energies for next month at NRGetic Romancer. Hopefully the sets will be recorded, and I’ll be sure to get an account of how things went from one of the fortunate souls who can make it.

Happy New Year indeed! I’ll start off this year’s posts with a nicely out-of-date note re. X-Treme Hard’s end of year party on the 21st of last month. Although I’m not the biggest fan of Gabber/Speedcore, it was a very good evening – even if the Full Circle Collective played for a slightly less than gargantuan 15 minutes (understandably, given the number of DJs playing). The couple of tunes that they had time to play were excellent, including DJ Yousuke on guitar (and vocals!), and a typical combination of Hardcore/Drum & Bass.

Other highlights (for me, at least) included DJ Sharpnel’s set and DJ Champ’s Happy Hardcore mix, but both were surely overshadowed by the Bingo session half way through the night! You couldn’t make it up, but the sight of a group of ravers checking off Bingo numbers was almost worth the price of admission alone (despite me not winning anything).

DJ Chucky definitely came up with among the best of the harder sets, and it was the first time to see him live. His mixing was very impressive indeed, but sadly his set (and most of the others) was augmented by MCs – I didn’t like them back in my Drum & Bass days, and I’m not much more of a fan now. Aside from that, it was all good fun, and surprisingly my first trip to Shibuya’s pokey (or should that be ‘intimate’?) Club Kinoto.

Better late than never! I did make it to the last NRGetic Romancer of the year, and a good thing too – there were quite a few new tracks, and once again some blinding sets. Unfortunately, I arrived just after midnight, and so missed Horny’s schranz set, but by all accounts it was very good indeed. I’ll keep a look out for him in the future, particularly as I’m not very familiar with that style.

Cogi played an excellent psychedelic set this time, taking me slightly by surprise. He even included Substanced and Cyrez’s Venom, one of my favourite tracks at the moment. I’ll happily admit that a lot of the tracks were new to me (perhaps I’ll attempt to find out the tracklist for the set, thinking about it) but the selection was excellent. It’s definitely a plus to have Cogi playing independently of the Full Circle DJs at NRGetic Romancer these days – DJ Yousuke’s NRG set (following immediately afterward) bumped things up slightly, speed-wise, and darkened the atmosphere, but expertly carried over the vibe built up during the previous hour and twenty minutes.

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