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DJ Kensei



So the latter days of Indope and then Final Drop was me going out into nature and recording sounds while tuned into this transition from the days of the Bubble to a time where the future seemed all too uncertain, trying for that wavelength with the equipment and techniques of hip-hop. My interest was in the evolution of music derived from the artform of DJing, and then like putting the phenomenon of us doing expressions in audio the means we had available to us at the time into sound and video based on stuff like those sensory aspects and the scenery. That was also around when I was transitioning over to PC (though now I’m back to working with hardware and even more fragmented than before), so the type of expression I was doing wasn’t very common and I’d often get asked what genre I’d call it. But when I took a broader view internationally, I found that, while the approach might be a little different, there were people out there doing the same thing, and I had plenty of chances to meet them. I guess now it’d probably get lumped in with ambient or experimental or electronic, something like that. I got called a “laptop musician” (laughs).
2000 was also around when the party “OVA” started, which you spun at pretty much every time. The party itself became a kind of movement, drawing big crowds of people hungry for a new sound with dope audio-engineered tracks on a level that’s almost unthinkable now. What can you tell us about those days and what was going through your head back then?
Back then, there were still hard lines between different genres like trance, house, hip-hop, and drum and bass (though that isn’t to say DJs in those genres didn’t play other kinds of stuff). But then you had “OVA”, where an organizer named Ryoma Nara used his discerning eye to put together DJs and artists who were doing unique stuff that didn’t quite fit into those existing genres. Anything-goes parties like that are common now, but “OVA” was probably one of the first. It flipped the script on the status quo that said a party had to be at the same club playing the same genre by being at a different venue with different lineups every time.
I knew Ryoma from back in 1992 when we worked the opening of Eros (Roppongi), where they’d brought over Kid Capri. He said he felt something totally different in what I was doing even though I was spinning hip-hop, and so he invited me to DJ at “OVA”.
Did you feel like you had freedom there?
I think maybe I did. At any rate, I had no shortage of music and techniques I wanted to try out, but at the time there weren’t many opportunities to do so. Here at the turn of the century when people had this vague anxiety or sense of crisis about how they were going to make it in the days to come, “OVA” came along with the stance that an open, free atmosphere was the future, with the goal of throwing a party on the moon (laughs). All that wasn’t put so clearly in words back then, but I know I decided to sign on because I saw the light in that way of thinking. It was a point of human interaction that drew genre-defying DJs and artists capable of creating original scenes. I had plenty of new encounters there myself, some of which led to proper connections that have continued since. I’m pretty sure “OVA” is where I met Goro (GoRo the Vibration), too. Anyway, with it being that kind of party, it gave rise to a cultural community and allowed me to express myself as well. It clued me in to the existence of pros in other areas like decoration, lighting, and visuals (and I don’t mean just VJs), which also broadened my horizons of what could be expressed as a DJ.
This all came about right as I was starting to feel stuck with where I was at in club music, so looking back on it, I’m really glad I spun at “OVA” and just think it was overall an extremely important party. I also discovered other interesting parties like “Fol”, “Eleven”, and “Communicate Mute”. Liquid Room in Shinjuku was also organizing lots of diverse parties, so it was a point in time where it felt lots more fun was on the horizon.