Tokyo Bass, Boiler Room Native Instruments

This summer, Boiler Room Native Instruments took Kode9 to Tokyo to explore the full spectrum of Japanese bass culture. As a pioneer who has spent the last decade at the frontline of heavyweight club sonics (and a Japanophile, to boot), there were few better fitted to be at the centre of this exchange. Tokyo Bass is a short film that documents the experience, featuring a number of important voices in Tokyo s club underground. A project that hoped to reach across the aisles, it touches on everything from the traditions of early Japanese drum culture to the futurist footwork of modern Tokyo. Above all, the central focal point of the film is Kode9 s introduction to the ancient discipline of taiko: the enormous treehollowed drums used in Japanese culture for thousands of years. Originally used as fearful instruments in the theatre of war, it s only in the last halfdecade that they ve been used for performance. As an academic in sonic warfare and the theoretics of bass, Kode9 was our ideal candidate to tackl