If there’s one thing about Japan, and the many facets of its culture, that never ceases to amaze me it is its ability to constantly surprise. Musically this translates to regular discoveries of new producers and artists who from a Western perspective always bring something fresh and surprise. DJ Klock is one of them – I first discovered his work after meeting Tatsuki last year while I was researching and working on the Japanese music article I wrote and special podcast I presented for Turntable Radio. Klock had worked with Tatsuki and Baku as part of the live band Whakhakha (Japan’s first live ‘turntable band’) and when Tatsuki gave me a copy of Klock’s first album, ‘Human Essence’, I was taken aback by his approach to composition – seemingly unhindered by rhythmic constraints or established structures, and full of sounds that from a European point of view seem genuinely Japanese and unique - like those used by DJ Krush and other Japanese producers like O N O. Rather than pillage the myriad of sounds, samples and instruments everyone else has, these guys use instruments, sounds and samples that are closer to them culturally and which in turn gives their music a unique aspect and an overall sound that can be surprising at first. They never sound like they’re trying to imitate somebody else, instead they come across as genuine.

Sitting in a studio in a flat somewhere in New York with Hell Rell from the Dipset exclaiming ‘that’s that crack!’ when hearing a beat isn’t the type of setting where you think you’d find a world renowned turntablist and young producer, responsible for said beat. The beat in question was for a track, ‘Don’t Fool with The Dips’, that became one of the big surprise of 2005 in some music circles – a track featuring 3 young members of the Dipset collective rhyming over a production made mainly from turntables isn’t exactly run of the mill after all. But then again at just 24 years of age the man responsible for this, A-Trak, isn’t your average turntablist, DJ or producer. In the last 2 years he has made a habit of breaking norms and surprising followers of his early days as a turntable prodigy and battle DJ champion, as well as surprising a fair amount of people out of scratch circles since becoming Kanye West’s tour DJ. So how exactly did this Canadian boy, who still hasn’t finished his university studies, get to go on the road with Kanye for the last 2 years, have the Dipset rhyme on his track, end up doing cuts for Common’s lauded ‘Be’ album and more importantly achieve what most turntablists haven’t managed to by linking the underground, and inward looking, scratch scene to the current mainstream of rap and hip hop? Whatever answer you’re thinking of is probably off by a few miles. It involves a shop in London, a routine, some guts, Dame Dash, and of course skills.

Prologue

This article has been a long time coming… for many reasons. The main one being that it has taken me nearly 2 years to find good, solid contacts in Japan and Europe, that could provide me with accurate information, and music, about the current and recent DJ and turntablist scene in the country. The other was that with the cultural and linguistic gap, it’s always proved hard to be able to communicate with people over there. Still life threw me a bone, and this year through a succession of flukes (as is always the case) I’ve managed to finally find enough information to write this article, which looks at the new generation of Japanese turntablists, scratch DJs and DJ culture in Japan, albeit written from the western hemisphere.
Thanks must go to Studio RareKwai, Hiroki @ Pop Group, Kentaro and his brother Kotaro and Shoji @ BGPZ for helping with the source material for the article. Oh and also shout out to Sparky T for providing me with copies of Turntable Colossus and the All Star Beatdown Japan final.
Be sure to also check out the rest of our Japan special, includings interviews with Kentaro and DJ Baku.

The chance encounter

Kaikoo is a Japanese word that roughly means ‘coming across somebody or something and the chance born from that encounter’. And while this is the title of an interesting new DVD documentary about the Japanese underground tablist and hip hop scene it’s also very fitting to how this article happened. Japan has for a long time exerted a sort of exotic appeal to westerners as a land of differences, where things are not quite the same, and I myself fell in love with certain aspects of Japan and its culture early on in life. Since the advent of hip hop culture over 20 years ago, Japan has also taken its place on the map as a country with a growing, and notable, local scene and fascination for this ‘foreign’ (and now worldwide) culture. After years of appropriation, changes and evolution, hip hop is now starting to come out of Japan in a way it never really had before. It’s no longer about Japanese artists trying to imitate US or foreign counterparts (though this still happens), instead you can now witness and hear true Japanese hip hop (be it rap, b-boying, turntablism, graffiti etc…) and music thanks to the Internet and online shops which have made it easier to purchase and find Japanese artists’ music (though it’s still tricky at the best of times, unless you’re fluent in Japanese).