{"id":8010,"date":"2015-07-24T14:52:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T05:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/?p=8010"},"modified":"2023-05-18T12:18:47","modified_gmt":"2023-05-18T10:18:47","slug":"tokyo-audio-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2015\/07\/24\/tokyo-audio-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Audio 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend in Tokyo was Audio 2015<\/a> festival. A one-day outdoor party featuring a solid line-up of techno\/house\/electro artists and a chance to dance to Vitalic’s pumping electro, surrounded by Tokyo Bay’s evening lights\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Good<\/h3>\n

Harumi Passenger Terminal<\/a> is an\u00a0awesome location for a daytime festival (although you really have to wonder what they do with such a massive structure on regular days)\u2026 Beautiful view of Tokyo Bay in all directions and a fair amount of breeze to help cope with the brutal heat of the Tokyo Summer\u2026<\/p>\n

Closing headliners S\u00e9bastien L\u00e9ger and Vitalic truly carried the day. L\u00e9ger played a\u00a0solid old-school techno set (including his own deconstructed<\/a> take\u00a0on a\u00a0Detroit Techno anthem<\/a>). Vitalic played most of his signature tracks, with a small amount of extra remixing and production, closing with his brilliantly\u00a0punchy\u00a0remix<\/a> of Amadou & Mariam’s no-less-brilliant\u00a0electro-world\u00a0track<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup>still can’t get my head around the fact that Blur’s Damon Albarn produced that album\u2026<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Before them,\u00a0Ken Ishii and Dustikid also did a nice\u00a0job. Bit bummed\u00a0we couldn’t check Dave Aju at all (schedule conflict with Vitalic)\u2026<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bad<\/h3>\n

The handful\u00a0local Japanese DJs\u00a0who played through the afternoon had considerably better fashion, edgier haircuts and cooler sunglasses than both L\u00e9ger and Vitalic combined\u2026\u00a0<\/span>But they still<\/a> can’t mix their way out of a wet paper bag.<\/span><\/p>\n

While software mixing helps keeping even the most inept mixing relatively trainwreck-free, things still\u00a0get ugly every time they try their hand at actual live\u00a0interaction with the music\u20262<\/a><\/sup>Pro-tip: that kill-bass switch is not magical, hitting it out of tempo will only result in very awkward-sounding mood-killing breaks.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Ugly<\/h3>\n

Bloody fucking\u00a0go-go dancers at an electronic music festival? in 2015? Seriously?<\/p>\n

Being sold\u00a0out of water, halfway through a sweltering day where people have been dancing in the sun for hours: either laughably incompetent or criminally stupid.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having a strictly-enforced “No drinks” policy (water bottles included) on your indoor dancefloor, in practice forcing people to choose between dancing or staying hydrated, would seem to indicate the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the entire bar situation followed\u00a0the time-tested Japanese festival approach to\u00a0drink point-of-sales: an afterthought randomly left to the goodwill of the miscellaneous drink sponsors3<\/a><\/sup>hence having to walk 10 minutes from the indoor area back to the outdoor stage, if one wants anything other than what the nearby Hennessy booth has to offer.<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend in Tokyo was Audio 2015 festival. A one-day outdoor party featuring a solid line-up of techno\/house\/electro artists and a chance to dance to Vitalic’s pumping electro, surrounded by Tokyo Bay’s evening lights\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parties","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8010"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8567,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8010\/revisions\/8567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}