- Tonight the Tokyo RA mafia headed down to club UNIT for what promised to be a quality, up-for-it night of electro house and techno. Arriving just after midnight, I expected to find a nicely-filled club with a charged atmosphere but -- on a freezing January night -- the number of empty lockers in the cloak room soon told the story.
Cruising down to the main room, I watched the tumbleweed roll across the dance floor to Kentaro Iwaki's mixing and promptly decided that I'd head down another level to the saloon, and see where everyone was hiding. Judging by the sparse numbers down there too, I began to figure that Damian Lazarus was still largely an unknown quantity to the Japanese since it was (a) a Friday night, and (b) there wasn't much else on. Shouldn't it have been bumping by now?
And so myself and Brain hooked up with the rest of the RA crew, chilling for a couple of beers before heading back upstairs to what was still an empty main room.
With the music in the main room somewhat flat and uninspiring, the upstairs area outside the toilets with the flyer boards was proving to be more of a drawcard and myself and Brain wondered whether Kentaro was gonna have one of those sets; the kind where the DJ keeps holding off from dropping his big tunes in the hope that everyone will arrive soon, except that they don't...and the DJ just ends up playing shite for the full set!
Eventually we headed back to the main room and....DANG....everybody had decided to turn up!! The floor was nicely full with more foreigners in the joint than I had ever seen before and suddenly it looked like tonight was gonna be a rocker, especially when Kentaro dropped Isolee's "Beau Mont Plage". Finally, there was at least one happy punter in the room! It seemed as though he had been saving his groovier tunes for the crowd with the remainder of his set quite alright though his mixing left a lot to be desired.
Having only ever heard his online mixes I was really looking forward to Damian Lazarus' set by the time he stepped up at 2am. His set started, as I'd hoped, with nice groovy electro house and nice arsed bass lines; the crowd really appreciating his music and showing their gratitude at all the right moments. Unit normally has a very cool and educated audience who are well into the music but pretty chilled. The atmosphere tonight however, was a little different due to the higher number of foreigners; the dance floor seeming a bit more smiley, friendly and responsive.
Lazarus continued to play till close (around 6am). I liked his set, that kind of John Dahlback sound, and I was especially happy when he dropped "Rej" by Ame, which is one of my favourite tracks from last year. Everyone in fact seemed to love it as the smiles widened further on their faces.
My only slight criticism of the night is that Lazarus' set stayed pretty much on one level for 4 hours, neither really going through different phases nor taking the crowd on a journey, nor building up to much of a climax. After just a couple of hours, which is when I would have like to have heard things get a bit deeper, darker, dirtier, more minimal, grinding and all that kinda stuff, he actually lost a few people on the floor.
The bubbling electro house bass lines stayed juicy and inoffensive till close, were nice to dance to and very well blended. Socially, the company was great; it was a right good larry of a night and day with Brain and I kicking on with a couple of Japanese lads at their place nearby (shoutouts to Akubi, Ken and the other guy's name who I can`t remember).
All in all a really nice night out. Damian rocked it and played a nice selection of tracks and I look forward to catching him again sometime. 'ello to all who were there and thanks for making it such a nice 'n' fun night. :wave
music: 8/10 company: 10/10
Special thanks to Ikuko Maeda at Unit.