Japanese Techno, '90s–'00s

You're asking about a national techno scene that absorbed Detroit and European influences and then went its own way. Japanese techno of the nineties and early two-thousands can be hard and functional, melodic and bright, or quietly experimental.

The common thread is craft: these are records made by people who treated the machine as an instrument to be mastered.

It grew in the early nineties around Tokyo and Osaka clubs and a cluster of independent labels. Ken Ishii reached European floors through R&S and Belgium's wider network, while Takkyu Ishino moved between Denki Groove and his own solo techno.

Labels including Sublime, Frogman and Torema pressed the domestic sound, and the club Yellow in Tokyo was a hub. By the two-thousands the scene had its own generations, from the hard Tokyo style of DJ Shufflemaster to the minimal direction Fumiya Tanaka carried abroad.

Who: Ken Ishii, Takkyu Ishino, Yoshinori Sunahara, Fumiya Tanaka, Susumu Yokota, DJ Shufflemaster, Takaaki Itoh and the producers around them. Labels: Sublime, Frogman, Torema and the domestic arms of European imprints.

What: techno that ranges from metallic and relentless to melodic and almost pop, with acid, electro and ambient all in reach. How a record gets in: it is part of this Japanese network of producers and labels, not simply techno that happens to be Japanese.