DJ Krush @ Sexual Appedite Saturday 25th March 2006

Hiroshima is dominated by hip-hop culture. Most of the younger generation resemble a member of G-Unit, and all of the local bling proprietors can easily afford to dine at fancy restaurants. But the mention of DJ Krush to the majority of these gangsters will only draw blank stares and occasional Westside finger signs. So, it was hardly a surprise when my ticket was purchased, the record store guy said that he still had a lot of tickets left. I was secretly hoping for a poor turnout, so I could witness this extraordinary DJ in a tiny venue with no crowd to jostle for position against. Alas, as I arrived and had to jam into a crowded elevator, I knew it wasn't to be.

In comparison to the prices of Krush shows back in Australia, I was very happy with my ¥3500 plus 1 drink ticket price. That happiness soon turned to disbelief when I was told that the ticket I paid for, in fact, didn't entitle me to a free drink, but in fact, required me to pay an additional fee to buy my first drink before I even entered the club. With my limited Japanese language skills, all I could do was look at my ticket that stated 1 DRINK and then laugh. Subsequently, I handed over my money and went in. Unfortunately G-Unit weren't there, but I was happy to see the Hiroshima underground happily head-bobbing to the beats. There were drunken skaters at the bar. Hoodie clad hip-hoppers milling around the stage, and on the dance-floor there were people who looked like they were heading to a Franz Ferdinand concert and somehow got lost. There were tight jeans, dinner jackets, unstyled hair that they spent three hours perfecting, square-framed glasses, and badges galore. The crowd was really friendly, and the atmosphere was very chilled.

It was around 12am, and the warm-up DJ was about halfway through his set. The guy was tight. He was playing a lot of great tunes. It was predominantly abstract-hip-hop-trip-hop-down-tempo-jazz, a la the headliner of the party but this guy held his own. He provided a great warm-up for Krush, and he did finish with the obligatory Krush record as the man himself took to the stage.

Krush took to the stage without much fuss. He cued, and surged into a cacophony of sounds. Haunting strings grappled with sub bass and mechanical percussion. In a customary swirling, rising intro, Krush had begun. The first record he played was the first of only a handful of vocal tunes during his whole set. The Japanese MC on the recording crisply delivered over a minimal beat. The set dived and twisted and shook from here on in. Abstract beats ricocheted against the warm basslines and middle-eastern vocals. Every track dropped got tweaked. Krush sent delays and reverbs through almost everything, and using a sampler in-built into his mixer, cleverly worked extra beats almost constantly. I didn't hear too many of his own productions in the mix but the sound itself was close to his The Message At The Depths album. It evolved into a heavy and percussive sound, with Krush himself plotting a lot of the drum samples himself. There was one section where, from what I could gather, he had a snare drumroll programmed into two separate sample triggers, and he used them together to bring the set to an almost industrial soundscape, before skillfully dropping a heavy beat into the mix with surgeon-like precision, sending the crowd nuts.

There are some DJs who are gifted technicians, but sometimes overuse the technology, just because they can. They drift off into self-indulgent build-ups while the crowd wait around for the party to restart. Krush used his technical skills to enhance his set without boring the punters. He didn't over-scratch but on the occasions when he did scratch, it worked. He didn't over-sample, but when he did sample, it worked too. He built and built, never once relenting on the energy levels.

This was a rare night in Hiroshima, and a night that I'm happy that I experienced. As I was standing in the hot, sweaty, jam-packed dancefloor of Sexual Apedite, I was thinking to myself. Forget Van Buuren and Tiesto being at the forefront of trance. This is trance music right here. With hypnotic, warped beats and occasionally subtle, occasionally soul-destroying basslines, every single person in the crowd had a serene smile on their face as they witnessed this one-time carpenter from Tokyo take them wherever he wanted.