Courtesy of Beat Records

A little over a decade ago, what had previously been known as “scratching” acquired the new and uplifting designation “turntablism.” The term was coined by DJ Supreme in 1994 to describe the difference between a DJ who simply mixes records and one who uses turntables as a musical instrument by employing an arsenal of techniques such as, for example, “scratching” a record underneath the arm of the turntable.

This was also about the time that a budding teenage turntablist in Sendai, inspired by a DJ “battle” on TV, exchanged his skate-punk outfit for hip-hop baggies. “It was a good time,” recalls DJ Kentaro (né Kentaro Okamoto) in an interview at the Tower Café in Ebisu. “Acts like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest were popular, and there was no division between underground and commercial hip-hop.”

Ironically, it was the gradual disappearance of the DJ from commercial or what Kentaro disparagingly calls “MTV hip-hop” that led to the emergence of turntablism as a distinct art form. Once central to hip-hop culture as one of its four pillars (the other three being rapping, breakdancing and graffiti art), DJs had gradually given way to recorded backup tracks.

As has been documented in films such as Battle Sounds, the new generation of turntablists also liked to pit their skills against each other. One of the venues in which they sought to prove themselves was the DMC World Championships, named for the Technics turntables that are the DJs’ standard equipment.

After winning third place in 2001, DJ Kentaro claimed the title with the first perfect score in DMC World Championship history in 2002. So what exactly makes for a top turntablist? “The judges told me that my musicality made me the winner,” explains Kentaro. “There was another guy whose technique was flashier, but I prefer to try and make the music as interesting as possible, combining all sorts of club music into one mix.”

Kentaro’s first production album (as compared to his previous mix album On The Wheels of Solid Steel) is the first full expression of this approach. With contributions from alternative hip-hop acts Pharcyde and Spank Rock, as well as Japanese sampling wunderkinds Hifana and dub act Little Tempo among others, Enter is a constantly morphing kaleidoscope of breakbeats, reggae, house, and of course hip-hop.

“With turntablism, you’re still using other people’s records,” notes Kentaro. “I wanted to make a record from scratch: to build rhythm tracks and melodies and then to be able to remix my own tracks live.”

The title Enter, he says, refers to the fact that it’s his first album, but also takes its meaning from the Japanese word en or “circle.” “As a turntablist I love circles and loops. The first and last songs of the album have the same groove, so the album circles back on itself. The other theme is the four seasons, which is [evidenced] by the titles of some of the songs. The seasons are also of course circular.”

Released worldwide on noted UK electronica imprint Ninja Tune, and in Japan by affiliate Beat Records, the album confirms the trend of turntablism toward the dance music world—and away from mainstream hip-hop. Characters like Kentaro or turntablists of world renown like DJ Shadow may view themselves as hip-hop artists, but one wonders what mainstream hip-hop makes of them, if anything at all. In Japan, the hipster crowd that shows up for their gigs is certainly a world apart from the gold-chains-and-baseball-caps set you see at, for example, a Missy E show.

Interestingly, at the same time commercial hip-hop has largely forsaken the analog DJ, it’s the turntablists who are preserving vinyl’s legacy. “With the growth of MP3s, I feel a sense of obligation to teach young DJs about the joys of vinyl,” Kentaro avows. “I want to instill in them a love for analog records so they don’t die out.”

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