The erstwhile art student Daisuke Tanabe is a DJ and electronic musician in Tokyo who’s lived in London and is currently represented by the Berlin record label Project Mooncircle, and while a lot of what he produces is club music, and of the rest much is what one would listen to after the party or the afterparty, there’s an unmistakable artiness about it – it’s done with considerable artistry, to be sure – and the influence of electro-acoustic and ambient music is nicht gering, but nor, for that matter, though it’s a bit less outspoken, is contemporary jazz absent from this mix. (It seems he knows the singer Cornelia in London, so it’s likely that his and the Portico Quartet’s paths have crossed as well.) Rather more unexpected are the natural sounds he’s sampled and has incorporated from time to time (are those monkeys screeching now and again in the background, and were we really just whisked past an aviary?): but it all works together and the composite result is never annoying.
While he doesn’t seem to be aiming at instilling the proverbial trancelike state in his audience, Tanabe’s music does conduce to a certain amount of hallucinatory daydreaming (if someone drifts off while moving on the dancefloor, what could one call it? sleepdancing?); and some of his admirers have even created videos as accompaniment in which this tendency is underscored: a good example of this has been furnished by the Youtube member known only as One 1968, and I’ve included it in the playlist.
On Tanabe’s Soundcloud page many of his tracks have been uploaded. Here are a few (including a recording of one of his live gigs).
“Cuculus Canorus.”
“B F R 04” (Aphex Twin cover).
“B F R 05.”
“B F R 08.”
“Ghost.”
“PPBR.”
“Ns.”
“Live at Mo’ Fun 15.”
And “B F R 16 (Ate).”