Ever heard of Gunkanjima?
I hadn’t, although I assumed it was something Japanese, especially since I was asked to interview one of Japan’s most reclusive producers: Jungle Taitei (real name unknown), a long-time member of the TTAK collective, and possibly previously never interviewed, according to his/her handlers.
Jungle Taitei has just unleashing a scintillating record, something that’s bound to generate many more interview requests. Out this week through Australian label Elektrax, ‘Taitei Drums’ is a superb, instant classic, tribal-percussive-tech track, the debut overseas release by the unconventional artist. It starts slow and swirling, but the kick, when it arrives, is a formidable one that dazzles the senses, completely living up to the title and adding an element or two of surprise. It’s like Tim Taylor and Dan Zamani’s sizzling 1994 tribal-techno classic, ‘The Planet Of Drums’, ripped apart and reconstructed for a newer, harder, cooler generation.
“They are an influence,” the artist known as Jungle Taitei confirmed this week via e-mail from somewhere in Japan (s/he refuses telephone conversations with hapless members of the press such as yours truly).
“But more so is Isao Tomita. Tomita is Taitei God.”
Isao Tomita, now 77, is—for those of you knot in the know (I certainly wasn’t)—something of a guru to electronic musicians in Japan. He also composed the sound track in the ‘60s for Osamu Tezuka’s anime series, ‘Janguru Taitei’ (‘Kimba the White Lion’), from which Jungle Taitei apparently takes his/her name. ‘Taitei’ in Japanese means ‘Emperor’.
It’s in the e-mail that Gunkanjima pops up.
The secretive producer refers quite briefly to an upbringing there, and when I Google the place, I come up with Battleship Island—a now-deserted island, just off the coast from Nagasaki, which was abandoned after 1974. The lasting impression of that upbringing? “Overwhelming silence,” our hero reports.
While the producer may be quite the enigma, the EP released through Elektrax Recordings most certainly is not. Along with the Original Mix, there are two quality remixes from fellow Japanese wunderkind, DJ Warp, and the explosive Secret Surfer.
The Secret Surfer mix takes the existing structure and hammers it into a stunning Detroit/Berlin techno crossover familiar to lovers of his formidable style: Mind-blowingly deep, dark, and dirty, this is like Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems days folded into old school Underground Resistance and recharged for a completely new millennium—aimed at a dancefloor packed with hundreds of gyrating, willing victims.
DJ Warp then takes the loftily-held baton and sustains it in ingenious new ways: He continues the tribal Detroit theme, and injects a funky, butt-shaking edge and mesmerizing keyboard stabs worthy of Jeff Mills, Derrick May and Juan Atkins in their more grooved-out, dancefloor-adjusted moments.
Glorious stuff on so many levels, from all three innovative artists—mysterious or not.
© 2009 Angel Fox @ Zebra DMC
great story!
Nina P