Tear ‘Em Up: Yusaku Harada

There will come a day where Japan’s electronic music scene will be a little too full. It’s already starting to happen, as with each new FOGPAK compilation…and with it a longer playtime…it becomes clear that, even though there are lots of young producers worth listening to, there are also a lot who just don’t have that many fresh ideas. One of the outposts that have been consistently good at releasing some of Japan’s best electronic music has been Day Tripper Records, the Osaka label founded by Seiho. They haven’t released masterpiece after masterpiece, but they put out quality music at a better clip than most.

They recently put out a tape by Yusaku Harada, and once again Day Tripper have highlighted an electronic artist worth focusing on. A cursory listen to Harada’s work to date…he first popped up on a FOGPAK comp…finds him doing something a lot of Japanese electronic artists are doing right now – building fidgety songs out of spliced-up vocal samples. His newest song, “Kessler Syndrome,” is an especially good demonstration of this. It also highlights everything that makes Harada stand out…whereas so many songs seemingly take one song’s vocals and chops them up, Harada’s ingredients sound like they come from 20 different songs. The music is just as rapid fire, jumping between steely bass and piano keys. This collage-like approach…very different than what Seiho does, as he tends to show off each sound, while Harada lets them tumble over one another…makes for a heck of a listen.

Explore the rest of his music too…he makes it work on stuff like the crowded-but-catchy “Tape Tape Tape.”