I’ve just recovered from a busy Saturday, where for the first time I managed two events in one day – it nearly killed me, but I’m glad I didn’t miss either of them, especially after I couldn’t make it to last Thursday’s Tokyo Hardcore Construction.

First was Hardcore Tano*C, and I had to be there for the start to see Alabaster’s set. The night before he received some FINRG promos (entirely legally, I might add), and I was hoping, he played Voices of Babylon about halfway through. I have to say, I was really really impressed with his mixing and track choice, we’ve got very similar taste in tunes – as well as some of his more recent tracks, like Void and Ziggurat, he played Grimsoul’s Synthetic Paradise (still one his very best tunes, I reckon), Angel of Hell and a few other quality tracks. It was only a 45 minute set, but one of the best I’ve heard for a while – the mix combinations were very very good.

The atmosphere at the event was (as I was expecting) pretty different to any others here, and the crowd were mostly extremely young. Still, everyone knew their Tano*C tunes, even if there wasn’t too much of a friendly vibe about the whole thing. I tried to check out as many of the other DJs as possible, but the place (amate-raxi again) was absolutely packed, and there’s only so much of that I can take… USAO’s set started off really well, but got a bit samey as it wore on, and the same could be said for Minamotoya – although he played some slightly more melancholy/hard tunes at the end that seemed to confuse a lot of people who came to see his set. Someone I was really impressed with was t+pazolite – it seems like his tunes have come on leaps and bounds since the last time I heard them, even if his set seemed to lose its way a bit towards the end. kenta-v.ez. played the gabber style that most people are familar with, and although there were some very nice tunes, I can’t listen to too much of his stuff in one go…the last tune was a great finish though, nice and hard, and complete with a very cool ‘I…Am….Your…DJ’ sample.

I hung around until the end of Betwixt & Between’s set, and though he only played for 30mins there was no holding back. Starting out with Nightforce’s Raindrops (a favourite of his for a while now), he also played The Moon from Below and Dust to Dust before killing the crowd with first Anmitzcuaca and then Human Flesh Engine – it’s a combination I’ve heard him use a few times now when he’s really in the mood for it, and not something you’ll hear from anyone else in Tokyo, that’s for sure. There was some good mixing, which is worth mentioning as Betwixt still hasn’t actually played that many DJ sets, being Live PA at NRGetic Romancer, of course.

I had to run back home as soon as Human Flesh Engine ended, but the event was well worth worth going to, and definitely something new – then after dinner and a sleep, it was off to Daikanyama’s Unit for Drum and Bass Sessions 2009. I really haven’t been keeping up with the DnB scene at all for a few years, and only know that most of the tunes I have heard aren’t my thing at all – I’ve heard talk of the genre really having gone mainstream though, of course (getting daytime play time on UK radio, that sort of thing), but actually going to an event really proved it. It was going to be packed anyway with LTJ Bukem headlining, of course, and he did the business in no short order, keeping everyone moving for almost the whole of his (I think) 3 hour set.

The DJ warming up for him (who I believe was Tetsuji Tanaka) really raised my hopes of hearing some real (oops, I meant to say ‘classic’) drum and bass when he dropped Bukem’s seminal 1992 classic, Demon’s Theme (which you can hear at the top of this mammoth post) near the end of his set. Unbelievably, it still sounds amazing through a big PA, and I can only imagine what it was like for crowds at the raves back then to hear something like DT in the middle of the proto-hardcore that was being produced… He was so ahead of his time, no doubt.

Anyway, the set itself started of with some deep rolling tunes, the tunes switching up perfectly to change the mood/pace, as I’ve heard him do in so many sets, while Conrad did his thing on vocals. The problem was that the combination of a 3 hour set with the non-melodic style of even ‘deeper’ styles of modern DnB meant that there seemed (to my non-expert ears) to be too many filler tunes that didn’t really do anything for the set except make it last longer… Another thing is that the standard drums in modern DnB are so hard that it’s much more difficult to suddenly devastate with an amen-style track/go into chopped up breakbeats over ambient pads than it was in the mid-90s…instead it seems to be 2-step drums and bass all the way.

No point going on about that sort of thing though, and it was still amazing to watch him up on stage doing his trademark cuts and tricks to blend in the next track – and with the bpm being so high I even managed to find some room for a bit of raver-stepping once people were getting tired. It might have been a similar experience to seeing a huge name like Yoji [Biomehanica] playing these days – the tracks being played aren’t the style that they used to be, but you’re still watching a legend at work.