I’d been gradually getting more and more offers to do outdoor parties from around a little before “Metamorphose”, so for me it was time when it felt really new to be out spinning in these natural settings. Up to that point I’d been in this confined box, this nocturnal world of clubs where the focus was on genres and making people dance. But trying to play those same urban sounds out in nature just didn’t feel like the right fit to me; it felt off. As I got more chances to spin outdoors, I started pondering what formats and perspectives and sounds would work best in natural settings. My mindset shifted from “selecting tracks” like I’d been doing all along to another mode of expression that was more like being in sync with the environment and then further expanding that world. I began looking for records with textures and amounts of sounds that would feel right and mix easily with the soundscapes and background noise of the forest, picking out stuff that wasn’t too full-on and making mixes using only those kinds of sources. So it wasn’t like I was “going for” anything in particular so much as DJing out in nature expanded my choices... Maybe I was searching for harmony.
Outdoor parties and raves started to take off in Japan around 2000, and you were performing at various outdoor events. Your set at “Metamorphose 00” really sticks out in my mind with how you touched on hip-hop while creating this unique world that was so genre-less and freeform. What were you going for with your DJing back in those days?
SL9@ASIA
1999
This mix (Indopesounds ’99 mix) feels close to the vibe of your Metamorphose 00 set...Even before I started spinning outdoors, we often created Indope tracks with the idea of “how would this sound in nature?” in mind, so there’s a good chance that’s all I played at that “Metamorphose”. That very well might be the first time I had put the time in my set to such effective use working off sense and the mood of the space without worrying much about BPM or making any concrete decisions. But strictly speaking, while the vibe and sounds of this mix may be similar because they’re from around that same era, I think the way time flows in them might be quite different. The sounds around this mix seem to mark a sort of boundary between “before and after” in terms of electronic music from that time. Electro had been around since the 80s, but in the sense of making those sounds with plugins on a laptop, it was pioneering new ground in the audio world.
I was going to Europe a lot back then, so this was also a time when I was digging through sound sources from all kinds of different regions and genres, so I think the headspace I was in then plays into the mood, too. This is nothing out of the ordinary, especially now, but at that time I guess it was like the moment where I was finally able to take all these low-beat or downbeat sounds from diverse genres and make a unified world out of them. I’ve played the sounds of different eras and experienced each soundscape as a DJ, but I felt a clear shift in my own soundscape around this time. It was a transition from an analog to a digital feel. But since we didn’t have the sound systems or high-res speakers we do now, I could never be sure if the sounds would come out at the venue level how I had imagined...
My mindset towards the mood of the world and all the things going on back then like the Great Hanshin Earthquake, the Y2K craziness, 9.11 and so on may have affected things, too. Like that was my wavelength. In that sense, I think I was feeling around for a never-before-seen abstract world, some nonconcrete expression or sense that could depict the character of the world around the turn of the 20th century.