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| English | Japanese |
DJ Kensei



DJ Kensei
Interview (2023—2024)
 



I’m sure you’ve done interviews in all kinds of situations by now, but with this one, I’m hoping we can explore more of your instinctive, sensory side.
These days, my interests lean more towards the sensory aspects. The environment I live in is shaped by the people who react in some way to the sounds they hear and by my communication with them, so my aim is to create spaces and experiences through sound that can enrich their lives, whether by helping them become more aware of their own state, realize something new, or find a form of solace. Maybe nothing beats having knowledge and information regarding music, but I also place a great deal of importance on sensory perception.
The first time I heard your tracks was in the Japanese hip-hop scene of the mid-90s. Since then, every time I hear you play, I could sense a consistent feel or view of the world through it all, but at the same time was also often surprised at how you could express these fresh spaces that were so different from how I had pictured you before.
I get that a lot. I’m grateful that people capture my DJing and music in different contexts or moments, which might be why it comes across as fresh. But in me there’s this one big flow that’s been going on this entire time, changing day to day like gradations, and by extension of that, I’m here where I’m at now.
So everything’s connected, sequential, without any special cutoff points or anything?
Yeah. It feels more like I’ve been keeping things ongoing and continuous than saying, “Okay, once I get here and then take a pause.” Anyway, maybe it’s that I’ve been focusing on myself and DJing, so you could also say that everything was in-the-moment. I don’t anymore, but I used to DJ practically every day. It’s also my job, so DJing has always been a constant in my mind, and I started to pick up on sounds along the way, too. Maybe I’ve just been blessed with an environment where I can totally immerse myself (in DJing), with the right sort of fun and timing and people. But if I did have to name one point where there was a break in things, I suppose in terms of feel it would be before and after I went to India.
When did you decide to make a living with music?
I’ve never really thought of it like that. It’s not like I keep doing this because I want to keep it going. I just have a passion and dedication toward it. That said, I’m not super obsessed with it all, either. I just spin, call it a day, then the next day arrives and I spin again, and spin again...and in the process encounter all kinds of musical environments and people. This has been going on for decades now. In normal circumstances, maybe I’d have been, I don’t know, giving some calm, clear thought to the future. But that future is where I am now (laughs). The cusp of old age (laughs).
When did you make the transition from just listening to music to actually doing it, in other words, becoming a DJ?
Around my second year of high school. It was an era when being a DJ was generally nothing more than a job. Some classmates invited me to go out to a disco, and from there I started encountering all kinds of new experiences, spending my days listening to loud music in spaces equipped with DJ booths and sound systems. Thinking back, having that fresh experience of hearing music in a different way than I did with the small radio cassette player at home during such a formative time in my life was really significant. What drew me in wasn’t the flashy party or disco atmosphere, but rather the professional music scene and the new role of the DJ at the time. I kept going out to these spots and then one day the DJ asked me if I wanted to give it a shot, and that’s where it all began.
So you got into it early, both in your own age and the era. What did you do as a DJ after that?
Maybe I did get into it early for my generation. There was an era where I was DJing at clubs while also performing in a group called GBC with a rapper named Born that I was introduced to by DJ Marvin. The group later split up when Born went back to Brooklyn, but I kept on DJing. I spun in Brighton when I went there for study abroad in 1989, and then in 1992 I went to live in Sydney for a year because a friend was opening a new club and wanted me to be the resident DJ. This was way before the Sydney Olympics, so the city was in this kind of free-and-easy boom period where you could see stuff like people walking barefoot. I was still only around 20 years old, so spinning overseas on the regular felt really novel. Sydney was also my first experience with the kind of raves and mega parties we see as commonplace now. I learned the word “Balearic” there, we had DJs coming over from the UK and America, and I got to see De La Soul and Public Enemy live. I got to experience things from a quirky angle kinda different from what you’d get in Tokyo or New York.
During those days, I realized the sensory enjoyment of how music, combined with the atmosphere and mood of the place, creates a certain effect. I believe that experience is connected to who I am today. At the same time, I was a vinyl junkie, so I had boxes and boxes of the latest hip-hop and house records sent to me from Tokyo and New York each month. So that I could keep on DJing even after I went back to Tokyo. I’m really grateful to my friends back then who sent me everything.
What was your first encounter with hip-hop?
This is going a little back, but I guess it’d be the records played by DJs like Whodini, Jazzy Jay, Mantronix, or Malcolm McLaren, their techniques, all the scratching and tricks, as well as the times when I was going to spots like Yutaka (DJ Yutaka) and Michael’s club Hip Hop on Miyamasuzaka. To me back then, hip-hop was the DJ more than it was the breakdancing.
At Hip Hop, you had Yutaka and black DJs like Gino scratching on four turntables and controlling samplers with keyboards. I was completely blown away the first time I saw it. These guys were working the records like acrobats, scratching out these huge sounds, stopping the record on a dime... It was like these guys had complete control of the atmosphere itself. I’m talking an intense audio experience that (if I put it in modern terms) felt like a whole galaxy of its own. After that, I spent all of the 90s as a hip-hop DJ.
Sounds like the impact of that moment is still fresh in your mind.
Seeing scratching in analog, not digital, firsthand in that era, seeing how they controlled the sound, the time, the scene...it kind of took all of these emotions I’d never felt before and ran off with them... I don’t think I could’ve put it in words if I’d tried back then. Instruments are something you play, but DJs use vinyl to manipulate phrases and moments recorded in the past, and these become sounds that play from the speakers. That sensation resonated with me in a big way. Including stuff like playing backwards (laughs).
That’s why, for me, the act of DJing has a much higher priority than “just music.” Of course, I love music, but the premise is that I was deeply drawn to the act of DJing, and music is a part of that. My emotions and sensitivity were also tied to experiences where even my sight and sense of smell reacted, making it all about the timing.
How did you end up in the heart of the Japanese hip-hop scene of the mid 90s?
I was obsessed with hip-hop from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, so that was a big part of it.
My memory’s a little iffy on the time, but around the mid 80s I went to a recording session of this hip-hop crew Yutaka and Marvin had at a studio in Furukawabashi. This was in the morning after I’d finished spinning. Then later at this event “Peace Ball” at a club called Razzel Dazzel where I was a resident DJ, a DJ named Ohashi (DJ Masa) from Homeboys introduced me to Honda and Krush. I would go and hang at Honda’s house in Sangenjaya sometimes.




I met Ishida (ECD) at a club in Shinjuku called MILOS garage through Tatsuo Sunaga, who I’d also met at Razzel Dazzel. I did an event with Yoggi and Gaku from East End at Cleo Palazzi in Roppongi, which is also how I hooked up with the guys from Funky Grammer.
When I got back from Sydney in the early 90s (around 93 or so), I started DJing freelance at different spots around Tokyo. At this club in Higashi Azabu called Endmax, Takada, Beat, Ken-Bo, and Yujiro I believe had this event called “Cooly High” where you had the likes of Microphone Pager and Rhymester performing live. King Ghidorah I met through a mutual friend in our Tokyo high school network,