Everyone Is A DJ, Everyone Is Doing Homie Shit
FRIDAY NIGHT, JANUARY
I was warned ahead of time that Tokyo was going to blow my mind and yet Tokyo was blowing my mind.
It was probably only about 9pm but the club, if you could call it that, was absolutely bumping with everyone having an incredible time. The club, if you could call it that, was styled like someone’s “book nook” or treehouse — with manga lining the bookshelves on the walls, a small disco ball, what looked like colorful stringed lights that were pulled out of a teenager’s bedroom, and one flatscreen tv off to the side — and sized like it, too. I would guess that there were fifteen people in the space and it was packed.1
This was all novel and thrilling by itself but really, the most mind blowing thing to me was the soundtrack. Because on a Friday night in Koenji2, I was standing in a full club with people having the time of their lives listening to a Mickey Mouse and Goofy cover of “Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer. In fact, the whole set was comprised of tracks that could only be described as Disco Disney — wonderfully odd covers of songs performed by the classic Disney characters that were probably relics of television and radio programming from the 80s and 90s or ride soundtracks at Disneyland. And the DJ, a Japanese woman in what looked like her early 50s with a bob and round librarian glasses who goes by コマチ played 40 whole minutes of this stuff. Again, I’m frequently thrilled by the club but so rarely am I surprised. This lady was a real ass cratedigger, a head if I ever saw one! No one else could accuse her of jacking their style!
I loved seeing such a specific niche, what Patrick explained to me was the result of an aging population, a post pandemic nightlife landscape of small clubs, and Everyone Is A DJ culture. As the megaclubs collapsed under the weight of high rents and costs in an era where everyone was inside, these tiny spots opened up, allowing for everyone, even someone who only played Disco Disney, to find some CDJs and an audience who would listen to them spin their passions. People in the club — even with the small crowd, a wide range of ages and a mix of Japanese folks and Westerners — were rocking with it, maybe shocked into delight in the same way that I was, but genuinely dancing, laughing, singing along.
LATER THAT NIGHT
Say nothing more and I’m there: Tokyo Drift-themed club.3
SOMEHOW EVEN LATER THAT NIGHT
God, I love a multi-room club in Asia.
This was was not exactly a mega club in the same way that sometimes you see in the bottle service, big lights, EDM spots. This place could only be described as grimy — every surface was slightly sticky, it reeked of cigarette smoke, the lighting struggling for its life at 15 percent, and the kids were dressed for fashion, sure, but not sexy.
I arrived a little before 1 and usually at that hour, it’s just DJs spinning. The entry room with the bar definitely had someone on decks but walking into the main room, I saw that this was a full on concert venue setup and there was a band playing, loud, hard, fast guitars. Turns out that it was what my friend Seimei described as “Youth Culture” night. I was standing in the back booping my head politely, then the kids started moshing. Even at that hour, the kids were full on pushing and shoving each other, getting out their daily stresses and frustrations on the dance floor.
I left at some point to check out the third room upstairs. The stairs, again, were lined with kids in their best Big Shirts and Big Pants, smoking cigarettes on every step. The top room was a hodgepodge of acts, each playing for fifteen minutes, in every single style imaginable from hyperpop to blink-182 style pop punk to deconstructed club DJ sets. Again, I had been warned that the short fifteen minute sets were coming and that they were actually Not Good, despite the novelty factor that I might feel as someone coming from the US. Again, Everyone Is A DJ/Artist/Performer which means that everyone is trying to get booked. If everyone is trying to get booked, everyone is also constantly trying to get people to come out to their events so that they can be booked. Everyone in Tokyo is doing “homie shit” as a result, evident by the fact that the crowd did seem to completely turn over every fifteen minutes. I laughed by the assertiveness of the pop punk boys, who started playing in the middle of the previous act’s last song — hey, their fifteen minutes were starting! Their homies had come to see them!
I left the club much later, covered in probably the equivalent of 0.3 spilled drinks and the stench of cigarette smoke. The kids might be really sad that they’re fighting for set time but they’re helping me have a good time nonetheless.
A MIX (OR TWO) THAT I’M LISTENING TO
THE JUMP OFFENSIVE 002: REPLICATOR [LIVE AT UJF FIRST STRIKE]
For those of you who accuse me of being anti-America - that is not true; I just think that dance music should be fun above all and I’ve been writing scene dispatches from fun scenes. I will say that my favorite US-based fun crew right now have to be the United Jump Front (UJF) crew in NYC who play jumpstyle music. I saw them at Melting Point over the weekend and while I do think that Melting Point can sometimes be too intense for me, this was peak bopping around, being a little silly and goofy, high energy nonsense – in the best possible way. This mix, from Boston-based Replicator at their own party, is definitely silly and goofy and goes from hardcore to makina to trance and of course, jumpstyle. I do think there’s a good group of crews who do this worldwide who all play loud, fast, chaotic, uninhibited but also melodic and occasionally even pretty to balance out the intense. Some know each other but many seem to have sprung up out of some combination of real club scenes and internet culture. I’ve seen some version of this in Paris, Seoul, and Taipei with my own eyes and I’ve seen videos of it elsewhere, too. It’s nice to see that NY has a crew of their own.
The next hulaHOOP is on March 8 at MOOD RING and features Petal Supply, Noah B, Hojo, Gia Huy and Moistbreezy. $10/$15 cover or free before 11 PM with RSVP on Resident Advisor
Patrick and I had ascended up the narrow hallway into the and when I walked in, my immediate reaction was “That’s it?” He told me that he had seen the space somehow accommodate around thirty people during Jersey club night in the summer which is incredible and terrifying all at the same time.
the hip part of Tokyo known for being a hotspot of youth culture of years past
It feels as though no major city, and definitely not Tokyo, is immune from the plague of rising costs and rents. For nightlife spots, the thing to do then is to push further and further out into the outskirts, especially when you are something as niche-y as the Tokyo Drift themed club. Quiet night for the club, which was set up in “Bar Style” with only about fifteen percent of the club open and just some kids playing breaks from some CDJs set up on some barrels. In the club downstairs they were playing reggae. The boss somehow knew a bunch of my friends because actually yes, all Asians do know each other. Lovely convo with Patrick — please check out his newsletter Make Believe Melodies for English writing on Japanese music, one of the best to do it.