Saturday, June 3

Dancing To My Own Tune?

A few weekends ago, I went off to the largest club in Japan, for a rave that was being talked about on Radio 1. I’m not into trance music so thought I’d get bored after about ten minutes. I packed iPhil full of tunes so that if I really got desperate I could bounce along and pretend I was loving it.

AgeHa was based in Odaiba, so automatically I was impressed. The only problem, it’s quite a trek there and the 6 am journey home sounded depressing. However, there were free buses from Shibuya so that was perfect.

I went with a few people from work and got to the actual club just before midnight. The place itself was incredible; it had its own gift shop and food arena! The main area was packed and had cool light effects all night. However, the best place was the outside bar with a swimming pool in the middle. A few drunken people ended up in there over the course of the evening, and morning. The pool area overlooked a beach and lake. Check out the AgeHa website and click on facilities to see pictures and a layout of the place.

I thought watching the sun come up would be amazing but I ended up inside because Paul Van Dyk (a supposedly hugely famously international DJ, with a rather unfortunate surname) DJ’ed. Actually, I got really into it and the time flew by. If I’m really honest I have no idea why the DJ was famous; to me he didn’t do anything different compared to the guy before him. After all, it’s not their songs, they just press ‘play’ and ‘next’. Or am I being very naïve?

It was only when we left the club at 5:30 that I went outside for the first time since it was dark. It was bright and had that smell of morning. I wasn’t actually that tired but instead just rode on the free bus back to Shibuya, and spent the rest of the day chilling in Tsunashima Park playing cards with friends.

Sadly, it caught up with me the next day at work.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oliver

David Beckham last week and the Queen this week!!! Who next?

phil-san said...

i met the queen. and i've also met a queen. does that count?

(and i served popcorn to howard donald, sean wright phillips, and jamie cullum)

phil-san said...

it was!! someone asked him and he said yes!

next you'll be telling me that the black eyed peas song is called "let's get retarded". grr..

Anonymous said...

you saw Paul Van Dyke??? I am very Jealous. At this point i think i'll point out how nieve you are... When Paul does a set, there is rarely just one song playing at once, the sound is layered with loads a different songs, or various loops. You may have noticed that 2 songs are never at the same tempo when you play them on a cd player. The DJ has to take 3 songs, and match the speed exactly. They then have to start and stop the songs so the beats match, hense it sounds like one song... but its not. If you listen to it you can hear the layering! Plus the songs played are never identical, the DJ will always do something to change the song, add bits in, chop bits out, add other samples, all live. Oh, and Paul produces his own stuff too. He is a legend in the dance world, nearly on a par with testo. next time your bored, try get two songs to seamlessly blend into each other over about 30 seconds... Tricker then you think!

Anonymous said...

'Nearly on a par with Testo.' Who is this testo guy?!!!....

I think they both play a bit cheese in a trance sense of course!

phil-san said...

sorry ian, i had no idea. but i'm the first to admit my naivety.

as for testo. i read tesco, so i was uber-confused.

Anonymous said...

Tiesto is the boy. World-class dj who I'm lucky to say I have seen and will be seeing again at the beginning of August.

Wooohooo!!!

Dan
x