SleepyEye

They haven't done anything in nearly 2 years, but just sticking their names on an event flyer ensures a full house. GetHiroshima sat down with beatmongers and would be creative catalysts SleepyEye.

When I first came to Hiroshima back in '96 I spent I don't know how many nights in almost empty clubs, dancing to music played by moody DJs. In the grip of the virus-like karaoke culture, Hiroshima's youth were all dressed up with nowhere to go. If you wanted to go to a club where there were actually more than a few people, there was little option other than the Saturday night meat market at what is now Cafe Jamaica. One Sunday night, I went along to a club night run by a group of guys I'd recently bumped into. It is still one of my most memorable nights here in Hiroshima- it was a real eye-opener. The club was rammed with up-for-it, smiling people getting down to DJs who looked like they were actually enjoying playing their blend of hip-hop, house and acid breaks - in short it was a party.

The four guys in question - Daiji, Hide, Susumo, and Naoki - had recently come together through a string of coincidence and chance meetings over 3 continents, and were embarking on a journey, destination unknown, of musical exploration- pulling a sleepy Hiroshima along with them.

Three of them, Susumo, Daiji and Naoki had been at school together here in Hiroshima, but it was during the mid '90s when they and Hide were all separately enjoying a spell abroad that the seeds of their later activity were sown. Hide, in London working as a hair stylist, bumped into Susumo by chance in the cafeteria on one of the few days when they actually showed up at their English language school, and in turn Daiji was hearing stories about the hairdresser from a mutual friend with whom he was living in New York. Exposed to a variety of music and clubbing experiences, they admit that their time abroad had a strong influence on the music they wanted to play, first as DJs and later as musicians. Hide, who was musically more impressed by the live scene in his time in London, says that the kuki or atmosphere of the London club scene had a great impact on him.

Naoki and Daiji Hide and Susumo

Susumo felt that guitar bands were lacking something, and in Hiroshima you just couldn't find the phat beats he was hearing in London and New York, where he first fully appreciated the power of music. With techno, which was developing a small scene in Hiroshima at that time, leaving Daiji cold, it was hip hop that really caught the imagination of the street skater. It is no surprise then that after a couple of years of living by their wits in Japan, that it was breakbeat that provided the starting point of their journey.

While they were DJing in bars and clubs around the city, back in their bedrooms they were playing around with machines and instruments, eventually taking the plunge, playing their first live gig at Neopolis Hall under the name SleepyEye. Their early gigs were often characterized by poor sound systems and a lack of technical skill, exaggerated by the fact they could hardly stand up by the time they took the stage. Nevertheless their personal charisma and the fact that their shows, however shambolic, exuded "a certain something" meant that they soon had a passionate and loyal following.

Hide Susumo Daiji

A couple of years later came another chance meeting, this time in an izakaya one night with a UK musician teaching in Hiroshima on the JET Program. They hit it off with Zoe immediately, and it was soon clear that she could broaden their beat driven and often moody sound with her expertise in melody and harmony. Zoe's joining the unit on synths and flute provided a new impetus and in a short time they were starting to look and sound like a proper band. Her leaving to return to London just a few short months later, also provided the urge for the whole unit to up sticks and join her. The 10 months they spent in Europe, dodging immigration laws and living on next to nothing was a wholly different experience to their last trips abroad. This time they were in a tight knit group of kindred spirits with a network of mutual friends and musicians to welcome them. Spending as much time enjoying life and the north London drum'n'bass and dub scenes as making music; this time they brought back a new appreciation of the musician/dj's role as entertainer. Hiroshima's hip-hop and breakbeat parties were still largely dark and moody, and they wanted to bring more of the London party atmosphere, still playing for themselves, but now thinking about their shows from the audience's perspective - something that is clearly in evidence at the regular Bass Instinct parties with which they are heavily involved. Since their return from London a year and a half ago SleepyEye have been very quiet on the live front. The family has been split, with Zoe in the UK and Naoki currently living in Tokyo, and the three members that remain in Hiroshima are largely doing their own thing; Susumo working hard bejind the turntables as part of the Bass Instinct cru to transmit how drum & bass made him feel when he was in London, Daiji DJing hip-hop and breaks regularly, and Hide running a successful hair salon and working intermittently with other live units. But family they still are. Whenever one of them is playing somewhere you can be sure that the others will be there in support, giving them, and by extension, the party itself the SleepyEye seal of approval. "We've never even considered looking for new members. It's not about what you can play or how you can play, it's whether you fit, about whether you become family. We came together by chance and when things come together again we will be making music together again." Hide adds, "I sometimes think SleepyEye are a bit too dependent on chance."

So, if SleepyEye were never to make music again, would anyone notice?

None of them seem to be overly concerned with this question, but they are keen to point out that it's wrong to think of them as just a band as that's only part of what they feel they do. They say that they would soon get bored if they spent all their time making music as "a band" and that they like to see themselves developing into something of a creative catalyst using music to do all kinds of stuff. Looking back on the last few years Susumo reflects that maybe their greatest role is as a filter for all that they've absorbed. He likes to think they play something of an advisory and leadership role in the emergent Hiroshima scene. "We pass on everything we have been influenced by, but in our own interpretation, and who's to know how what we do will be interpreted and where it will go from there."

For me it's the annual Summer of Love parties held on the atomic bomb day that really sums up what SleepyEye are all about. Attitudes to and the question of who owns the remembrance of the bombing has long been a thorny issue in Hiroshima and SleepyEye's contribution has been to hold an impromptu (free) musical celebration in Hanover Park (behind the baseball stadium) each year on August 6. The first year there were a group of 20 or 30 friends playing drums and drinking a few beers, but it has grown into an event featuring live bands and DJs with several hundred people in attendance. It's also become the occasion for an annual stand off with the local police, who invariably come to break up the party as a result of noise complaints. They appreciate that not everyone understands what they are doing, (in particular some of the bomb survivors) and maintain that they mean no offence. But when the police or whoever ask them, "can't you keep it down on this day of all days," their response is, "it's precisely because it is this day that we're doing it."

SleepyEye aren't particularly comfortable talking about the past and trying to analyze how far they've come and how they got here, but when talk turns to the future they become increasingly animated. It seems clear that they have plenty more to offer and their journey is far from over. Where they will end up, they're not quite sure, but in Daiji's words, "there is lots more fun stuff to do." And in life isn't it really the journey that counts. It's just a matter of time and chance, but when you move in SleepyEye time everything finds its own rhythm.