by Don crispy


King Street Sounds 12th Anniversary Party

The Japanese head of New York’s longest-running independent dance label reflects on more than a decade of house music

David Morales is one of the DJs headlining at Ageha courtesy of King Street Sounds

Go to a house party in New York City and you’re sure to see a few Japanese faces. Japanese have been dedicated followers of the genre since its inception in the ’80s, and as partygoers the world over know, Japan has one of the world’s best house music scenes bar none.

Cementing the links between New York and Tokyo have been a number of Japanese producers, like Towa Tei and Satoshi Tomiie, who went to New York and brought their own flair to house music. But in addition to creative types, there have also been business entrepreneurs such as Hisa Ishioka, whose King Street Sounds record label celebrates its 12th anniversary with a bash at Ageha this weekend.

After moving to New York in ’85 and falling under the spell of house at New York’s legendary Paradise Garage nightclub, Ishioka created King Street to “continue the 12-year tradition of soulful-spiritual house music to which the club helped give birth.” In addition to a slew of productions by the gamut of the city’s top producers, King Street has also been a dependable force on Japan’s club scene, providing a conduit for New York’s finest to cultivate a remarkably faithful following through uncountable events, in particular at Japan’s reknowned Yellow.

In an email exchange from New York before the upcoming Ageha event, Ishioka reflected on the new, subdued, post-superclub era of house music in the city following the go-go ’80s and ’90s. “Some people think it ended with the Paradise Garage closing and others think it died with the Michael Alig/Angel Melendez murder,” he said, “but those were simply different eras being affected by milestone tragedies.”

“The onslaught of the Giuliani era and the continuation of his legacy by the Bloomberg administration has made it more difficult for more big clubs to open, [which leads] to smaller parties that don’t attract the attention of city officials. Despite that, there has been a recent trend of clubs from other cities coming to NYC and making waves. Crobar (from Chicago and Miami), Avalon (from Boston) and now the opening of Pacha (Ibiza, London) in the fall all came here with a need to bring their respective venues to NY and make an impact.”

Ishioka also says Japanese house music is in a period of rejuvenation. “When we started around 13 years ago, there weren’t that many great producers around: Only people like Satoshi Tomiie, Mondo Grosso, UFO, Yukihiro Fukutomi, Towa Tei...Japanese house music has developed steadily over that time period, but in particular, the past five years have been especially noteworthy due to the rise of such talented producers as Malawi Rocks, GTS, Studio Apartment, Yasushi Ide, FPM...bringing their own unique and special flavors to dance floors, putting these guys and their music on par with their predecessors.”

In addition to Giuliani-style law and order campaigns, of which Tokyo has also seen its share, house music—like the music industry at large—is under pressure from digital downloading. “We’ve had to re-approach the sales model, realizing that now we need to be in the business of selling music as opposed to selling records,” Ishioka says. “It would be nice to have platinum-selling pop records with millions of marketing dollars behind them.
However, the reality is, in order to remain true to our underground roots and a viable resource for house music, we’re concentrating more of our efforts into our sales of downloads and MP3s, direct sales from our website, and licensing deals.”

Which isn’t to say King Street has given up on retail products. Its flagship platform in recent years has been the Mix The Vibe series of compilations by such stellar DJ/producers as Grammy-winning New Yorker David Morales and Japan’s Shinichi Osawa (Mondo Grosso). This weekend’s Ageha event will also serve as a release party for the latest in the series, Mix The Vibe: Sublevel Maneuvers Mixed by Doc Martin, just out last week.

One of the West Coast’s foremost house DJ/producers, Doc Martin is known for mixing dub and house in the “left coast” style sometimes called “dub house.” With fresh cuts from a who’s who of house producers like Blaze, Ananda Project and Francois K, Sublevel Maneuvers showcases Martin’s subtle segues, in which beats overlap seamlessly to create an integrated whole.

While King Street releases like the Abstract Afro Journey and Latin Lounge series explore tangential directions, Martin’s new mix/comp, like much of King Street’s output, is meant to reaffirm the 4/4 beats, soulful vocals and instrumentals that are house music at its core.

Ishioka concludes: “As long as there are people wanting to go out and blow off steam from their daily grind and DJs in need of music to play, there will always be house music. House (in all its varied forms) will probably go through another thousand revisions and re-inventions, but like any other style of music there will be those who will seek it out. It will continue. Let there be HOUSE!”

Ageha, Oct 7. See club listings for details.

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