Ask any genuine DJ's DJ and they will tell you much the same. For all the egocentric electricity that comes with playing those big arenas, huge festival stages and massive concert halls, they will never beat the connection of sharing their music with an intimate room packed with real music lovers.
No bullshit, no fireworks, no passengers, that is precisely the experience at Nagoya's JB - a 300-capacity, 10-year plus institution in the nation's third most populous city.
"You can't beat the intimacy of having people right next to you when you play and that's what it's like at JB's," confirms Matt Edwards, aka Rekids boss Radio Slave. "It's like going back to playing house parties, which is what we all started out doing in the first place."
Much of JB's charm is down to its location. Or rather lack of it. Lying inconspicuously on a humdrum street at 4-3-15 Sakae, on Nagoya's outskirts, there is no effort to draw attention to itself and inside the back-to-basics aesthetic continues.
"The room itself is nothing much," continues Matt. "It's just a small rectangular room with the DJ booth at the front. But the soundsystem is ridiculous. It's a proper audiophile system that just gives everything you play so much extra character."
Running since 1997, JB's has been dedicated to giving underground electronic music a forum in this city from day dot.
In the early days, the techno old guard of Jeff Mills, Carl Cox, Derrick May and Stacy Pullen were booked, later NYC house legends like Frankie Knuckles, Kerri Chandler and David Morales, and more recently everyone from François K and Jerome Sydenham to Modeselektor and Matthew Dear.
But none of these names would mean anything if it wasn't for the crowd. There for the music first and foremost, their knowledge is so obsessively studious it is like playing in an alien dimension. Whatever the genre, their enthusiasm remains stoked from start to finish.
"As the night progresses you really start connecting with the crowd and can express yourself as a DJ," explains Matt. "You can play everything from classic NYC house to old Carl Craig favourites to really obscure disco and they'll come with you. Not only that, they'll know exactly what you're playing too.
"When you play in Europe or the UK, people are out on a Friday or Saturday night to get wasted," adds Matt. "To a degree it doesn't matter what they're listening to, it's just fodder for their ears whilst they're getting smashed. In Japan, they know every single record you have made inside out. The requests I get at the end of the night are ridiculous - they want things you made years ago, unreleased tracks, it's mad." |
| Travel: By no means an easy journey, flights from London Gatwick and Heathrow to Nagoya generally costs between £450 and £525 with airlines such as Air France, Finn Air and Lufthansa.
cheapflights.co.uk | | Sleep: A convenient hotel located in the heart of the city is the Nagoya Rolen Hotel (rolenhotel.co.jp), where twin rooms are just £28 per person, with free internet connection and free bike hire. Alternatively, check out Ryokan Meiryu (asiarooms.com), an affordable Japanese style inn where rooms start at £32 per person. Or males can go for the authentic Japanese capsule experience at the men-only Capsule Inn Nagoya, the cheapest option at just £20 a night. jpinn.comm/inn/7-1.html | | Pre Club: Playing everything from world music and rock & roll to house and psychedelic trance, the Plastic Factory (32-13 Kanda-Cho, Chikusa-Kuis) is worth checking out if you have time. It’s open 8pm – 5am most Fridays and Saturdays. For live music head to Jazz Inn Lovely, at 1-10-15 Higashi-sakura, open from 6pm – 3pm, where local jazz, funk and experimental acts play each night of the week. | | After Hours: Nagoya has little in the way of after-hours but try to make a daytrip to the picturesque and ancient fertility shrines of Inuyama, just a 35-minute train ride from Nagoya’s Shinkansen Station. |
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