- Tresor reissues a 2001 album of soulful techno and hardgroove from an unsung hero of the Japanese underground.
- Japan had a hard techno boom in the late '90s. This was when DJ Nobu and Takaaki Itoh were emerging, while Ken Ishii (who would later go on to compose the theme of the opening games of the Nagano Winter olympics) was putting out records under his no-prisoners FLR alias. Even the tripped-out minimal master Fumiya Tanaka was banging it out with the best of them (Exhibit A: this LP from 1997). If you need a primer, put on Takkyu Ishino's 1998 album Berlin Trax. Ishino was part of the goofy electro duo Denki Groove, but Berlin Trax was no laughing matter. A masterclass in stripped-down, driving techno with the occasional hint of dub, it set the bar for a new style of Japanese techno. This was the mantle taken up by another key producer from this period, Tatsuya Kanamori, AKA DJ Shufflemaster.
Kanamori first started putting out records in the late '90s as part of a shadowy crew of producers operating around the label Subvoice Electronic Music. Using a 909 and one or two synths, he turned out no-frills tracks for the wee hours. Since then, Kanamori has remained a consistent, if underappreciated, figure at home and abroad. He plays regularly in Tokyo and has put out records on labels like Ellen Allien's BPitch Control, but never quite reached the level of stardom as some of his peers. That may change now that his fabled EXP LP is finally seeing a reissue. Released on Tresor in 2001, the album holds a near mythic status among a certain cadre of techno evangelicals. As one Discogs user put it: "This is the best techno album ever."
As with most '90s reissues, there are a few places where the record feels dated. I could do without the Halloween chords on the suite of "Fourthinter" and "Imageforum," as well as the chintzy organ on "Flowers Of Cantarella"—but these are minor critiques for 95 minutes of tough-as-nails techno with a psychedelic grasp of texture. The LP doesn't sound as hard as the sort of records that get rinsed at a Herrensauna party, but even below 140 BPM, a track like "Slip Inside You" still hits like a river rapid.
Even with the intensity dialed up to 11, Kanamori's music is loaded with vibrant detail, often sounding surprisingly funky. The 909s are fierce on "Experience," but the synth lines ricochet off one another like liquid droplets treated to the Leidenfrost Effect (a sensation Surgeon tempers in his down-to-brass-tacks remix). Similarly, if you pitched "Innervisions" up by +10 (or, maybe, +15), this is the sort of thing that could have worked in Femanyst's recent RA Podcast—aggressive, yes, but also deep and soulful.
That soulful quality comes out in the dub techno slow burn of "P.F.L.P." and the humid hand drum romance of "Onto The Body"—one of the few tracks ever to make a soccer whistle sound sexy. These nearly tender touches help EXP stand the test of time. The album is prescient in how it borrows liberally from Detroit minimalism but reimagines Robert Hood-style minimalism in the same way that Ben Klock and Marcel Dettman would a few years later. The title track, for example, is somewhere between Minimal Nation and Before One, as Kanamori spends five whole minutes milking a blown-out drum loop and muffled arpeggio for all they're worth. Elsewhere, there's Shed-style swing on "Angel Exit," and Ostgut-y delay on the drum fills on "Opaqueness." These tunes match the icy, mechanical grooves of the early Berghain aesthetic but even now still sound like the shape of techno to come.
Dance music trends are cyclical, as producers and DJs continue to mine different corners of the past, often repeatedly. We've seen a glut of hard and fast techno over the past few years, but perhaps we're coming to the end of this mid-90s hardcore revivalism and into the more of the sort of equally intense, but emotionally understated techno that Kanamori helped pioneer a few years later. EXP could be a guidebook.
Tracklist01. EXP
02. Slip Inside You
03. Onto The Body
04. Fourthinter
05. Imageforum
06. Angel Gate
07. P.F.L.P.
08. Experience
09. Experience (Surgeon Remix)
10. Angel Exit
11. Flowers Of Cantarella
12. Innervisions
13. Innervisions (Pilot)
14. Opaqueness
15. Dawn Purple
16. Climb (Digital Bonus)
17. Guiding Light (Digital Bonus)