Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Yoji Biomechanika -- Hardstyle Disco

He's a bit shy...

On September 1st, I met up with my friend of a quarter century, Shard, to have lunch with him at the newest branch of Santouka Ramen.


I decided to go with the $20 Toroniku Ramen. Flavorful and creamy broth with some very tender slices of pork cheek. If only my allergies weren't acting up, I would have enjoyed it all that much more.


As usual, Shard had quite a few books to hand over to me including William Gibson's "The Peripheral". And he even gave me a CD by this DJ named Yoji Biomechanika (although he seems to be going by just his first name now). The album is called "Music for a Harder Generation ~ Volume 2", and the track here is "Hardstyle Disco".

According to his Wikipedia file, he had become famous in the 1990s as a Japanese club DJ before he broke out internationally in 2001. Yoji specializes in the following forms of dance music: Hard Trance, Hard NRG, Hard Dance, Hardstyle, Tech Trance...none of which I can distinguish. I remember that there was a boom in Trance music in Japan for some years, and somewhere in my collection, there is a CD of Trancified versions of Japanese songs, including those by Yellow Magic Orchestra.

His "Hardstyle Disco" single came out in 2003, and since I can only fantasize being in dance clubs now, I would be interested in how folks danced to it. Was there a lot of bouncing about or did folks put in a lot more arm and leg action? Back in my alternating Friday nights at discos like The Copa and The Diamond, I was doing quite a bit of limb flailing to Pet Shop Boys and New Order.


In any case, I think that I've found my go-to disc for translating when I need to wake up and I don't have access to Red Bull.


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