DJ Juri
The DJ/producer’s debut album takes listeners on a tribal trip

Courtesy of Flower Records

One of just a few female house DJs in
Japan (or anywhere, for that matter), DJ Juri calls her style “taiko dub.” In the liner notes for her debut album from key house imprint Flower Records, she says she’s often asked what that means. “I love taiko [drums], and dub means to create space, so ‘taiko dub’ means something like drum space,” she writes.

Although Tribal Trip is billed as a compilation, four of its eleven tracks are produced by Juri herself. On them she shows she can go head-to-head with any male trackmaker for pounding, percussive house (nothing resembling Jamaican dub here) and Latin rhythmic complexity, leading listeners on a tribal trip that should resonate with fans of the likes of DJ Romain. A resident at the long-running female-only Goldfinger parties, Juri celebrates the release of Tribal Trip with an event at Club Asia that will feature live taiko and break- and pole-dancing performances, as well as sets by Shibuya FM DJs...

Also on a percussive tip is the new, self-styled “drumadelic” disc from DJ/producer Daisuke Matsusaka (not to be confused with Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka), a.k.a. Audio Planter Soundsystem. Matsusaka’s debut album, Asian Blue Rose on domestic techno label Horizon, has a psychedelic, trance-y flavor, with floor-smacking drum beats providing the substratum for bloopy bass lines and layers of melodies and spatial FX. This should come as no surprise, considering Matsusaka’s sound evolved during an affiliation with the epic Ocean trance parties in the first years of the decade, where he headed up the chill out room.

Listeners may have also heard Matsusaka’s tracks in sets by the likes of Mijk Van Dijk and Laurent Garnier, or at the Fuji Rock Festival, where he’s been spotted behind the decks at the event’s mountaintop Daydreaming dance music stage.

Tribal Trip Release Party@Club Asia, Mar 24. See club listings for details.

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