INDEX
Founding of BASS WORKS RECORDINGS and Weekly Releases Over Three Years
– I was very happy to be able to do that. Then the earthquake happened in Japan in 2011, and the party scene started to slow down a little bit, but during that difficult period, you launched the label BASS WORKS RECORDINGS and started releasing music every week.
Sugiura: BASS WORKS RECORDINGS started in 2013, but I was going through a very tough time in my personal life, so I decided to do something exciting. We release a new song every week like Shonen Jump [laughs].
– How many years did it last?
Sugiura: Three years, every week for three years.
– But during those three years, the scene seemed to cool down a little bit, didn’t it?
Sugiura: Yes, the mixing of various genres and DJs disappeared.
– Around the time BASS WORKS RECORDINGS started, your sound also became more techno, didn’t it?
Sugiura: Shortly before I started BASS WORKS RECORDINGS, I noticed the goodness of techno just around the time Richie Hawtin’s “Enter” started. Around the time when “Enter” started at Space, Luciano’s party “CADENZA” started at Pacha, and Marco Carolla’s “Music On” started at Amnesia.
– This was the time when Luciano and Ricardo Villalobos were accepted enthusiastically. It was shocking how deep psychedelicism was expressed in that slow-paced techno. I couldn’t dive into it anymore, but it smelled like trance to me in the late 1990s. It was a party that the younger generation could go crazy to unconditionally.
Sugiura: It was really exciting to see house music played in a techno way. Just one hi-hat would cause the floor to explode [laughs]. But it also drove even the cutest and most fashionable girls crazy. Luciano’s music is totally different when you listen to it at home than when you listen to it on the floor. The DJs are great, but the audience is even better.
– I guess it all started with “Cocoon” by Sven Vas.
Sugiura: Sven is probably the most amazing. Ritchie, Luciano, and Villalobos were all working on “Cocoon. Cocoon has been around for a long time, so there are times when I don’t get to play it at all, but I always come back to it.
