by Don Crispy

Akufen & Mike Shannon

A Canadian promoter puts the emphasis on two DJ/producers from his home country

Akufen

Mike Shannon

Japan is already familiar with
top-tier Canadian DJs like Richie Hawtin, but there are many others beside the minimal-techno legend representing the diverse scenes of Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and other cities. Thanks to the efforts of a number of Canadian DJs and promoters now based in Tokyo, we’ve had the chance recently to assess what they’re up to in genres ranging from house and techno to drum‘n’bass and beyond.

Among them is Josh Child, whose carefully selected Real Grooves techno parties have established themselves as some of the more consistently worthwhile events at venerable Nishi-Azabu dance pit Yellow. For the next installment of his party, he’s booked two Canadian DJ/producers who’ve gradually built rich discographies over the past decade.

Hailing from Montreal, Akufen (b. Marc Leclair) brings influences from Frank Sinatra to The Beatles to Kraftwerk into a mix ranging from experimental techno to micro-house. With DJs beginning their careers in their teens these days, Akufen came to house music rather late, but he hasn’t wasted any time establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with.

The music that put Akufen on the worldwide map came in the form of his 2002 album My Way (would Sinatra approve?) for Force Inc. For that disc, Akufen spent hours each morning sampling voices, songs and all manner of unidentifiable sounds off the radio, which he later spliced into snippets and wedded to house beats in a technique he calls “microsampling.”

“I recorded My Way in a cabin in the nether regions of Quebec in the dead of winter,” he says in his bio. “I was so much into it when I was doing it—the situation, the location, the isolation—that it wasn’t ever going to be as obvious an album as if I’d done it in Montreal.”
Akufen, it turns out, has also issued material on Revolver, a Toronto label run by the second headlining DJ on the Real Grooves bill, Mike Shannon.

Also based in Montreal in recent years, Shannon grew up in Kitchener, Ontario, and began DJing at age 12 when his dad bought him his first mixer. Shannon’s interest in techno was spurred by occasional trips to nearby Detroit, where he would check out the burgeoning electronic music scene.

Shannon’s first serious foray into dance music came through his Pulse Productions events, which began as sporadic multimedia events and gradually morphed into the weekly Punktion parties. In 1999, Shannon became resident at the infamous Industry nightclub in Toronto, later relocating to Montreal to launch Cynosure Recordings, which gained acclaim for cutting-edge recordings in glitch-house, fostered by Montreal’s Mutek festival, and dark, dancefloor techno.

These were also two of the flavors that would permeate his full-length debut (also for Force Inc.), Slight of Hand, which was typical of Montreal’s dance music scene in its inventiveness and difficulty to categorize.

As a foreign promoter in Japan, Child says the biggest challenge is “developing a trust with an audience that doesn’t know who you are in a city that has so much to choose from.” He says he’s looking forward to supporting more Tokyo-based artists in the future. “The Japanese dance music scene is doing well now, and there are a lot of upcoming local artists who are going to be a pleasant surprise.”

Real Grooves@Yellow, Aug 20. See club listings for details.

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