“Sometimes I sing ‘Danger Zone’ in the bathroom. I like the music from Top Gun. When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot, and to this day, Top Gun is my favorite action movie.”
So declares Japanese producer, DJ Warp – a man better known these days for his prowess behind an array of rack-mounted machines in the grounded environment of a studio setting, rather than living on the edge in the cockpit of an F-14 Tomcat.
He is, however, responsible for the appropriately titled (and rather infamous) Missile parties over in Japan, and has just unleashed his debut EP on Elektrax Recordings with an intimidating name!
“The ‘Psychic Attack EP’ is intended to showcase the harder side of my style,” Takashi says, “but, really, it’s only the very tip of what I like to do. I make deep techno too. I don’t know the genres so well, but I just hope they can make somebody dance. That’s my ideal – to make many people dance to my tracks.”
Watanabe started DJing as a student in Fukuoka, the home of the insanely delicious tonkotsu ramen (pork bone) noodle soup. He acquired his DJing and production moniker – DJ Warp – thanks to the Warp label t-shirt he was wearing the first time he spun records. In the intervening years he’s developed a taste for proper – deep hard techno, and – after a stint in Okayama, near Osaka – DJ Warp moved back to Kyushu, where he now spins, makes music and runs Missile parties in Kagoshima.
If you don’t notice while listening in to the EP, Takashi is quick to mention it: he’s an avid fan of one of Detroit’s best known purveyors of proper techno. “I love Jeff Mills’ music and DJing,” he enthuses, and in the same breath refers also to cutting edge tech labels like Drumcode [l] and Tresor [l] – and Elektrax Recordings, the label through which he’s released this EP.
He also attributes inspiration to the consumption of Big Macs!
‘Psychic Attack’ opens this take out package with that high, screechy sound that Joey Beltram used to love (think the Luke Slater remix of ‘Forklift’, but a bit warmer). It’s a hard techno track that starts off scarce and cold, but gets warmer as it builds. Definitely it’s a track for those that love their rolling bass sounds. It’s borderline psychedelic, with its twisting electronic sounds and long filters in the breakdown – but keeps changing, just to keep you on your toes and not drift off into the forest.
‘Electric Groove’ is a solid, dark, dirty underground warehouse party slammer, something you could expect to hear in the London free party scene, with a very intensive percussive build-up over a dirty synth bass background, coming up into a slamming bass-kick intro. It smells of vintage Jeff Mills combined with D.A.V.E. the Drummer, and is quite the killer track.
Then ‘No Reason’ is a definite change from the first two tracks, probably to bring one back to earth. A nice, warm bass-kick complimented by a nice and bouncy bassline drifts into some nice percussion samples, and then some synth comp sounds that would make Cari Lekebusch proud. This track just keeps building and building, but never becomes a hard track or too busy; it’s constantly moving.
All up? A wonderful new release from a country that has already nurtured some wildly brilliant techno stars over the past two decades, including people like Co-Fusion, Ken Ishii, HIFANA, Fumiya Tanaka, Takkyu Ishino, Mumeishi, Magnet Toy, and Shufflemaster. Takashi’s own pick is an obvious one. “My favorite producer is DJ Wada from Co-Fusion. He’s the best!”
While making his own electrifying music, Takashi has also been tweaking some scintillating remixes of late – for the likes of fellow artists DJ Hi-Shock, Little Nobody and Bitch Shift. “Yes, I enjoy remixing!” he declares with a grin, “Because good original source material leads me to make good music! It’s like cooking.”
DJ Warp also does love to put on a good party!
“The Missile parties present not only hard techno but also deep techno here in Kagoshima. Kagoshima is a relatively small city in Japan, but the quality of music is higher than most other cities in this country, and it’s one of the hottest places in Japan!” he enthusiastically announces – as inspired, it seems, by the vibe of the crowds he plays for in Japan, as he is by the slamming music he makes in the studio.
No joystick required.
© 2008 Andrez Bergen
