- "Love The Machine"
It has to be said that Japanese DJ/producer Fumiya Tanaka knows how to throw a great party. His Chaos parties at the old Liquid Room in Shinjuku (the venue that gave birth to the Jeff Mills' live compilation of the same name) were essential nights on Tokyo's minimal techno calendar, featuring such guest artists as Stewart Walker, Sutekh, and Luciano.
The Shinjuku Liquid Room is now sadly a thing of the past but all has not been lost; the Chaos nights relocating to Spacelab Yellow and Fumiya Tanaka still putting on a great show and enticing over guests from the cutting edge of the minimal techno scene.
Wednesday the 4th of May was no exception, with Germany's Wighnomy Brothers treating the crowd to an amazing three-hour DJ set. The Brothers (Soren Bodner and Gabor Schablitzki, who is currently in high demand as a remixer under his alias Robag Wruhme) took turns playing clanking, whirring, buzzing mechanical sounds undercut with driving bass rhythms and a solid 4/4 beat that kept up the pace and kept everyone dancing.
"...bold swaggering and shuffling sounds crept in...as if the machine was swaying from side to side, swinging its robot hips with a cool confidence."
The crowd periodically whooped to what sounded like the heartbeat of a clanking machine, as the Brothers wound up the clicks, buzzes, and whirls into little sporadic climaxes of sound. Soren and Gabor were all smiles, pumping their fists into the air and bouncing up and down in the booth; no doubt pleased with the unanimously enthusiastic response from the crowd, who kept rushing at the DJ booth and were loving the sounds of this Meccano monster in motion. As the Brothers'set progressed, bold swaggering and shuffling sounds crept in, almost sounding as if the machine was swaying from side to side, swinging its robot hips with a cool confidence.
A number of The Wighnomy Brothers'own productions popped up, such as 'Killerteppich' on their own Musik Krause label, and the Kompakt shuffle monster 'Wurz + Blosse' both bringing the set to a peak and neatly summing up the Brothers' sound.
Fumiya Tanaka came out after the Brothers and took the crowd home with about three more hours of solid minimal techno, keeping up the driving mechanical pace until the house lights finally came on. Fumiya is hands-down one of the best minimal DJs in Japan, sometimes dark and driving in his sets, sometimes intensely minimal and mechanical, sometimes a little abstract.
Never formulaic nor afraid of taking risks, tonight he once again illustrated that he knows how to throw a rockin'party.
Special thanks to Yuko Ichikawa at Spacelab Yellow.