Footwork’s reach has long since departed Chicago, but while many people are concentrating on its European practitioners — Addison Groove, Kode9, Om Unit/Philip D Kick, etc. — there’s a whole slew of insane Japanese producers who are taking the footwork/juke sound to a more hyperreal, spastic, mind-fucking level. Perhaps most well-known are DJ Fulltono (who runs the fantastic Booty Tune label) and Satanicpornocultshop, but there’s also Kaoru Nakano, Paisley Parks (whose Geto Galaxy on Pan Pacific Playa is one of my personal favorites of the year), and my current obsession, 食品まつり a.k.a foodman.
食品まつり a.k.a foodman (whose real name is Takahide Higuchi) makes some of the weirdest footwork out there. His tracks sorta flounder, yet they retain the sharp edges of his sticky-icky samples, a push-and-pull methodology that’s made doubly strange given their seeming disregard for structure or cohesion. There’s forward momentum, but his tracks ain’t going nowhere, and the deadly precision is usually offset by much-welcomed lightheartedness. Check out “La men,” one such example, here:
Meanwhile, plenty more Japanese footworking to be heard on Japanese Juke&Footworks Compilation, a behemoth 45-track compilation that features all of the above and many more, courtesy of Jap Mutation Bootyism. Now, everybody footwork, okayyyy!?
• 食品まつり a.k.a foodman: http://soundcloud.com/shokuhin-maturi
• Booty Tune: http://bootytune.com
• Pan Pacific Playa: http://www.panpacificplaya.jp
More about: 食品まつり a.k.a foodman
