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Mix 26 comes from dear friend of the label and Revelation Time shop owner Eiji Taniguchi, who(with Norio Sato) is responsible for compiling the 'Heisei No Oto' compilation. Interview (excerpt) below..
www.musicfrommemory.com
MFM: Thanks for joining the series Eiji. How is life in Osaka?
ET: It's a pleasure to join the series along with other great lineups. The state of emergency has just been lifted in Osaka. Bars & restaurants are starting to open later than 8pm gradually. Everyone is feeling like doing parties again now. I miss when it was more lively with many tourists. Compared to Tokyo, it’s more chill and relaxed. And things are much cheaper although it's the 2nd biggest city in Japan.
MFM: Is it a healthy city in terms of culture, art and nightlife?
ET: About 5 years ago, clubs were cracked down and people couldn’t dance after 1am but it became legal and now it is allowed to open clubs till morning. I think it’s not so close to the mainstream, and you can be more free from commercialism and you can do what you want.
MFM: Your record store Revelation Time has gained a lot of appreciation and respect within the worldwide music industry. How did it all start?
ET: I was more like a collector, private dealer, buying records in Europe, States, selling them on the internet. But I got bored of sitting in front of the computer for a long time, then I opened my shop. Fortunately you can have shops on like 4th floor of the building for cheap in Japan. And luckily I met many good friends and famous DJs, artists I had never imagined to meet before. I learned how people listen to music, and how to recommend music.
MFM: Osaka counts many more record stores, most of them in the same area too. Do you have an explanation to why so many record shops can survive next to each other?
ET: I think there is relatively less pressure economically to live in Osaka and more small shops with speciality than big commercial shops. People try not to compete but help each other to coexist. I personally try to sell different stuff from other shops. It’s the same for clubs. In clubs, you sometimes find party flyers of other clubs. We have many tourists from Asia, not only from Europe, Australia, and the States, after relaxed visa (of course not at the moment), we have sales from people of many different countries.
MFM: Heisei No Oto contains music released almost exclusively on CD. What do you think is the reason that a lot of Japanese music got released on CD but not on vinyl?
ET: I think it was a global trend but a specific reason for Japan is the residential environment. CDs take up less space than records and 1990 was the peak of the bubble economy, CD was a better format for the mass market. But vinyls for DJs were still pressed in the 90's because there wasn’t CDJ yet. Japanese Hip-Hop became popular in the 90’s and my friend DJs in the UK wanted those Japan exclusive releases so much.
MFM: How is that for you, does the CD have a different meaning or value to you compared to a vinyl record?
ET: For me it’s just a different source of music. I was into 80’s stuff but as my interest moved to 90’s, it was very natural to start to dig CDs. I think I bought almost 1000 CDs in the last few years, but I'm still buying a lot of vinyls too. I love the sound of vinyl of course but I like the clear hi-fi sound CD too. And it’s very easy to digitize.
MFM: Did you encounter a lot of difficulties with making the selection and contacting the artists for Heisei No Oto?
ET: I guess it’s relatively easier to find artists than before, thanks to the internet and social media. I almost gave up on licensing one track but Jamie suggested to find the player and contact, (actually the artist was a fictional character) and it worked. Some artists weren’t so interested at first but I think everyone is happy to get involved now. More artists understand now that people listen to music regardless of when they are made, after Youtube and music subscription.