Features

 

09 Feb 2010

 

 

Ena

 

At the edge of East Asia, vastly separated culturally and geographically from London, the Japanese dubstep scene is flourishing. Although not much older than the mecca-like London dubstep scene, Tokyo's dubstep culture is growing fast. Japanese and foreign DJs, promoters and producers built the scene from the ground up and are beginning to export Japanese dubstep to the world, here are their stories.

     
Softly-spoken DJ, producer and label owner Ena gives an air of total fixation on music. When not busy with his day job producing pop music for major Japanese artists he concentrates on making dubstep and running his drum & bass and dubstep label IAI Recordings.  

Ena, who is also one of the resident DJs at Back To Chill, stresses how sound systems make a difference on how the music is received in Japan. "The 'wobble' style is popular here although I usually like to play hard – jungly, aggressive, wild. So many Japanese can't understand these styles. These styles are a little bit difficult. Most of the sound systems of Japanese clubs are cheap, the bass isn't heavy but with most English clubs the bass is very heavy. Club Asia is different – it has the best big bass sound. We can feel it quickly!"

Compared to dubstep the Tokyo drum'n bass scene is more developed and has two major monthly drum & bass nights held at leading clubs UNIT and Womb.  But Ena notes an encouraging difference between the two scenes: "Most drum  & bass DJs in Tokyo don't make tunes but most dubstep DJs do. They're slightly different scenes, but the dubstep scene will get bigger."

Words: Blair McBride

 

 

12/19 THE NO SHOW - ENA (Cylon, IAI Recordings) by thenoshow



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