Rush Hour

Compiled by Dubby, the owner of Tokyo's Ondas store, and Rush Hour co-founder Antal, 'Techno Kayō vol. 1' sweeps up seven dancefloor-ready proto-techno and synthpop oddities from the depths of Japan's '80s underground.

With city pop commemorated on Light in the Attic's 'Pacific Breeze' comp, it was only a matter of time before Japan's more technoid sounds were hoovered up for reissue. And thankfully, it's the right team in charge of this one. If you've tuned into Dubby's Ondas show on NTS, you'll already know that the DJ, curator and record shop proprietor has a wide ranging taste, and he's opted to archive Japan's weirdest genre diversions here. It was back in the late 1970s when "techno kayō" appeared, inspired by European proto-techno instigators like Kraftwerk but rooted in kayōkyoku, a local pop style that fuses Western and Japanese musical scales. Yellow Magic Orchestra might be seen as the pioneers of techno kayō, but there's plenty more where that came from.

Kuniko Yamada's slap bass-heavy, Blondie-inspired 'Tetsugaku Shiyo (Viens Philosopher)' is an early highlight, integrating 'Rapture'-like rapped vocals into a chiming synthscape, and Kazuo Ohtani's instrumental 'Last Battle' sounds like it's been snipped from a long lost Tokyo giallo, with dramatic orchestral bursts cutting thru the beatbox-led 4/4. Targets' 'City Train' is a good example of how quickly electro was developing in Japan, but the real reason for grabbing this comp is the 15-minute decelerated prog-techno-funk masterpiece 'Melonno Nakano Hitsuji', from prolific (and still active) experimental rock band Hikashu.