Turntable Radio presents Ken One, Olive Oil and Steppin’ Ahead podcast

We break up our podcasts of the original 70 TTR shows with a new guest mix from Ken One. Regular listeners will already know all about Ken, especially as he was instrumental in helping me set up the live sessions we recorded last year and this spring in Tokyo. Following my move to Tokyo and our hook up, Ken has also been sending me new music on a regular basis which we’ve aired in the last few regular podcasts.

And while I’ve now left Tokyo (I will be back!), Ken is well and truly a member of the extended TTR worldwide family so I’m very happy we can bring you this guest mix which showcases his own work alongside that of two Japanese producers and labels operating in different scenes, linked together by Ken’s turntable manipulations.

The podcast is actually two mixes and a short ‘megamix’ of music Ken One has produced for Taboo’s forthcoming ‘Burnout’ grafitti DVD which will be released in Japan soon. Full tracklist and download link at the bottom for those who don’t want/like to read.

The first mix is a short sampler of a full mix Ken One has done for the ‘Steppin’ Ahead’ label, and which will be distributed with the debut album from Japanese producer OQTO, to be released on Steppin Ahead shortly. The label is headed by Japanese producer KK and focuses on dubstep, which has been growing and thriving on the Tokyo underground in the last couple of years thanks to the work of Goth Trad and the BTC crew. Goth and BTC are family to me too, having had me to play at their nights on the regular during my time in Tokyo. During that time I saw the growth of the dubstep scene in Tokyo first hand, a growth that is actually linked to a variety of other scenes, as many of the producers and DJs on the Tokyo underground involved in dubstep today come from various backgrounds and are still involved with other genres and scenes. Tokyo’s underground electronic music is fragmented in one way yet also linked, a sort of microcosm of various artists and labels all operating on their own but also working together across genres and scenes. Ken One has had a link with Tokyo’s dubstep scene from early on too, mainly thanks to Ske, one of the original members of BTC and a bit of a legend in the Tokyo scratch scene, through his early work in the late 90s as part of the Dis Defence Disc crew alongside Baku, Martin and Tatsuki. Ken has provided live cuts at the BTC night on a few occasions, and has now done this mix for KK’s Steppin’ Ahead label, weaving together tracks from OQTO’s album and others forthcoming on the label with his own compositions and remixes on the turntable. This mix is especially interesting to me as quite a lot of dubstep’s darker and more ‘obvious’ elements are close to the scratch beats of the early 00s, something which has meant quite a lot of scratchers have found dubstep a very natural fit for scratching, especially when it comes to freestyles and even for compositions as Ken shows on this mix.

For more info on Steppin Ahead, peep the myspace.

Following this mix we have 3 tracks Ken One produced for Taboo’s ‘Burnout’ DVD, all brand new and never aired before (apart from one which I think I aired at the beginning of the year).

The second part of the podcast is a live recording of a session between Ken One and Olive Oil, that took place in Fukuoka earlier on this year. Ken actually sent me the audio for this when I was still in Japan but things got in the way and I never got round to podcasting it properly, so here it is. This recording is actually split into two parts. The first part, and the longest at about 20 minutes, is the original recording of the session, unedited and as such quite ‘rough’ at times as both Ken and Olive Oil improvised the whole thing on the spot. Olive Oil provided the improvised background mix, which is a mix of his own work and other records blended using turntables and effects, while Ken One improvised on top of Olive Oil’s mix, using sounds that were given to him by Olive Oil. The result is a really interesting insight into what I’ve always believed makes a lot of Japanese DJs and producers so unique, with a sound aesthetic all of their own. Olive Oil is very much a part of the post-DJ Krush school, as is exemplified in his mixing here, but as a producer he retains a unique approach with a strong downtempo feel. The second part is actually a 7 minute edit and rework of the original live session which brings the best elements and fits them together in a much more ‘coherent’ way if you will. So basically you get the original session, unedited, and then the short, edited version of it allowing you to compare both and see for yourself what Ken and Olive Oil chose as the highlights of their original work.

For more information on Olive Oil peep the myspace, as for Ken One his is here. Massive thanks go to Ken One for letting us use the mixes and to Olive Oil and KK.

I was originally supposed to air this before November 8 as a taster ahead of the ‘Scratch Evolution’ which Ken One organised in Kichi Joji and which featured DJ Duct, Shun, Memory Storm as well as Naoki and Shige from Ken’s Exsample collective. I didn’t quite get the timing right so a big ごめんなさい to Ken for that. But think of this as a post-event treat, and for those of you in the Tokyo area look out for more similar events in the near future. You can check some pics from the event on Ken’s myspace, it looked pretty dope.

We have a regular podcast coming up next, which should be live in a few days to give you time to enjoy this one, and then we resume the podcast of the original shows until December time when we’ll have another guest mix and/or live session.

Download the podcast here! (right click and save as)

Ken One ‘Steppin Ahead’ mix + Ken One & Olive Oil live in Fukuoka tracklist
DJ Baku – TTR Intro
Ken One – Steppin Ahead mix ‘sampler’ (forthcoming)
Ken One – Music from Taboo’s “Burnout” DVD (forthcoming)
Ken One & Olive Oil – Freestyle session “Live in Fukuoka” (unedited)
Ken One & Olive Oil – “Live in Fukuoka” edit