HELLO TOKYO

DAVID HOLMES

('94/10/21, Liquid Room, Shinjuku)

LAURENT GARNIER

('94/11/04, Yellow, Nishi-Azabu)

In this last party, K.U.D.O. played massively, no gimmick. And later, Garnier appeared. He put on overalls, so looked like an artisan (they say that he wore MTV T-shirt in Osaka. In France, is it cool?). At first, he played a strange house with spoken words 'Oh baby, don't stop it, please, give it to me, harder, ohhh...' It made our naive & purehearted techno boys + girls blushed. But his techniques were really wonderful. Exquisite long mixes, up + down, lasting endlessly... Persistent! Was it Latin flavor? At last, 'Oh, baby, ohhh' again , it must be the ending, we thought, but he uplifted crowds again from there. Wow wow... We surrender.

But we saw he danced funny to ridiculous trance, was it his essence? Anyway, Garnier is going to be a regular DJ of Yellow, and going to play once in 3 months. It is great. Whenever, Tokyo will receive him warmly.

DAVE CLARKE

('94/12/03, Liquid Room, Shinjuku)

At this party named 'Underground Spirit', at first, we could listen to Subvoice Electronic Music(Tokyo)'s live PA, that sounded 'techno of good intentions'. And Dave Clarke appeared, he rushed. Played 'Red 2'(everybody wanted to hear it) early, then after, selfish Chicago/acid on parade. Perpetual pulses and sonic gradations. Even well known classics, he shifted them faster + faster, mixed up and confused, so differnt feelings rushed to us. At last, he slowed down, played only kicks, and from there, he uprised musics and crowd slowly to the top, what a construction! We dazed + moved, but then suddenly we heard that he shouted something like 'Juliana's Tokyo!' (Juliana's was a famous discoteque where snobs + bitches danced to 'the RAVE'. It closed '94/08/31), and played 'the RAVE'... Why?

Anyway, 3 hours with him was best time for Tokyo acidheads. He is the 'professional'. According to our technofriends-in-Osaka, Dave Clarke likes sweet cakes very much, and eated chocolates in the midst of DJ play(!). Then we like to give Clarke a truckful of chocolates, if he would play every month in Tokyo.

AIR LIQUID

('94/12/12, Yellow, Nishi-Azabu)

He was young, slender & looked so nice. Far from his picture on 'Trance Europe Ecpress 2'(TEE-CD2) where he looked sterner. Surprised + absorbed. Oh, our old technocrats, why can't you stop to pretend? Like to bluff sillily? Okay, his set was mainly old drum machines, Of course TR808 + 909 that was wired to seqensers (MC202 + Alesis MMT-8). And even real cheap Casio RZ-1 was there! (DIGITAL BISCUIT's favorite hihat is what RZ-1 generates.) And his performance was something like 'thrash ambient', not similar to 'music', but was cute, we were absorbed to it. Beautiful.

Later, We have heard that the ordinary records of Air Liquid are different to 'thrash ambient'. So about this performance, a girl wrote 'Too different to records! Why didn't he use other name?' on a fanzine. But we was pleased with it.

RICHIE HAWTIN

('94/01/28, Liquid Room, Shinjuku)

This night, Club Venus in Liquid Room was too crowded. No place to sit down, and support DJs were bad taste, we were flustrated to this... Though Richie began to play, we still were thinking 'Is this the place to music listeners?', but Circuit Breaker(Hawtin)'s 'Overkill' broke it. Eternal syncopations, vivid rhythms, tonal exploration... His music is 21th century pop. Once Public Image Ltd. prophesied, and Richie realized it. Bodies moved spontaneously, hands raised themselves. Liquid Room was rocked to it.

He did not played his songs than we expected. Especially, most of the latter half was house music. This must be Detroit taste, even Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Kenny Larkin & Carl Craig played house as half of their DJ set in Tokyo. But we thought, to avoid to be regarded as 'musician's parttime DJing', Richie might play house, not his songs. With shorter hair than GIs, Richie looked like a wax doll. White skin, tall & skinny, far from us, short & yellow Nippon-jin. Was he prince-of-technoplanet? Does he have heart? Is it same of us? Yes, his music (he calls them 'musik') says so! But we couldn't confirm it this night. He must be too shy, we know. Tokyo love him. Next time will be soon.