Inside the electronic mecca of Red Bull Music Academy BY KATIE CUNNINGHAM 31 October 2014 It’s a breezy Monday morning in Shibuya and I’m standing and looking at a contorted, glittery sculpture of a rectum. “There’s the stomach,” Red Bull’s media liaison tells me, pointing at an adjacent sculpture. “And that’s the anus. That’s not me speculating, you can fact check that all you want.” One floor below, the near-mythical Red Bull Music Academy has just begun its first official day for 2014. Thirty ‘participants’ – which is what Red Bull calls the producers it selects out of thousands of applicants to take part in their annual academy – are finishing 1
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Inside the electronic mecca of Red Bull Music Academy
BY KATIE CUNNINGHAM31 October 2014
It’s a breezy Monday morning in Shibuya and I’m standing and looking at a contorted, glittery sculpture of a rectum. “There’s the stomach,” Red Bull’s media liaison tells me, pointing at an adjacent sculpture. “And that’s the anus. That’s not me speculating, you can fact check that all you want.”
One floor below, the near-mythical Red Bull Music Academy has just begun its first official day for 2014. Thirty ‘participants’ – which is what Red Bull calls the producers it selects out of thousands of applicants to take part in their annual academy – are finishing breakfast, ready to kick off the first day of the best two weeks of their lives.
Up here, though, we’re admiring some kawaii-inverting Japanese art on a tour of Red Bull’s Tokyo office, which is decorated at every angle by Japan’s most innovative creators. Around me, videographers are editing footage from the previous night, photographers are uploading shots and plans for extra shuttle busses are being made, to transport participants back to their hotel when tonight’s forecasted typhoon hits. For the next month, the RBMA is all systems go and this is ground zero.
For the serious electronic aficionado, Red Bull Music Academy needs no introduction. For the past 16 years, Red Bull’s taken their Music Academy around the world, holding a new month long event in a different city each year. This time, it’s in Tokyo, marking the Academy’s debut visit to Asia.
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A Big Brother house for producers
Closed during the daytime to participants only, RBMA is only made public at night, when different shows take over the city’s most iconic nightspots – from the obvious likes of WOMB to the Shinjuku karaoke bar featured in Lost In Translation. For those who call Tokyo home, the Academy’s presence would be hard to miss: all you have to do is stroll through the iconic Shibuya Crossing to be hit with 360 degrees of RBMA signage.
If there are some sore heads around, it’s only because last night’s headline act Kerri Chandlerdidn’t finish his set until 11am this morning. Luckily, caffeine is one thing this building has in no short supply.
And if you have to be hungover, this is a pretty good place for it. If you’ve ever spent your last cent on a white label, lined up for hours to get into that one club, or spent a week staying awake until 4am in the bedroom of your family home learning to beatmatch, this is the place for you. Everywhere you turn, there’s someone ready to delve into a conversation about the finer points of production, point out the directions to Tower Records or compliment your Body High tee with a knowing smile. For the garden variety electronic nerd it’s elating enough, for the producers who are sent to collaborate, learn skills and grow as artists, life doesn’t get any better.
Not to mention the extra touches Red Bull puts in. The glittering anus is just one of the countless art installations found throughout the building – from the musical instrument constructed out of two electric guitars, a couple of vinyl players and a blender that greets new arrivals in the lobby, to the neon yellow stuffed rat placed on display as a nod to the Shibuya streets. There’s even a pair of real, living birds, set free to fly around the building as they wish.
All four floors of the building being used by the Academy were designed by a world-renowned architect – Japan’s Kengo Kuma – and it shows. On the ground floor is the Academy’s custom-built super-studio, where the likes of James Holden and Richie Hawtin will lead participants in group sessions over the coming weeks. One level up, there’s eight smaller “bedroom studios” – named in anticipation of the all-nighters they’ll host – and a candy store-esque room full of equipment for loan, from the basics like headphones and microphones to Prophet 5 vintage keyboards and Maschine MIDI controllers.
Ride the lift up once more and you’re in the cafeteria, where chefs serve three meals a day, drizzling miso reduction onto pieces of fish with utmost care. Turn to the left and you can watch the RBMA radio studio going live to air. Turn right and you’re in the lecture hall, where participants will spend upwards of six hours a day listening to electronic music’s greats discuss the craft.
At the end of the day, the participants will retire to the same hotel, ride the same shuttle buses together to the near-daily nighttime shows and support each other at the gigs they’ll each play while here. The intensity of the shared, insular experience – and the omnipresent cameras, there to capture every moment – earn the Academy more than a couple of comparisons to the Big Brother house while I’m there. That, or the musical summer camp of any producer’s dream.
This year, RBMA’s 60 participants are split across two terms. There’s 29 here in the first term, representing 22 countries between them. Six thousand budding and established musicians applied to be part of this year’s Academy, so it’s no surprise that the level of talent on display is staggering.
There’s even some famous faces among the class of 2014, like “queer hip-hop” darling Zebra Katz, Berlin-based Xosar – whose track The Calling we dubbed one of 2013’s best – and Nick Weiss, who produces as Nightfeelings solo and together with Logan Takahashi as Teengirl Fantasy. But there’s just as many artists here who’s Facebook like count hasn’t yet hit three digits – as the Red Bull team tell it, making it in comes down solely to the potential they see in you.
While there’s two Australian participants set to hit Tokyo next term – Mark Maxwell, a now former-civil engineer who quit his job when he got into the Academy to pursue music full time and Summer, a 20-something from Brisbane – this term there’s only one, Melbourne’s Lewis Gittus, who releases music as Lewis Cancut.
“I’m now entering the double hangover,” Lewis tells me the first morning I see him in the Academy, where he’s tinkering with a bassline alongside another participant in one of the bedroom studios. “So drum beats is exactly what I want to be listening to right now.”
Lewis has been making music for the better part of five years, but this was the first year he applied for the Academy. He’s spent the first half of his 20s running a small label with friends, collaborating with his pal Danny (you might know him as Swick) and, as it turns out, accidentally producing for J-Lo and Iggy Azalea.
“Diplo was really into Danny’s first EP and was playing it out so the three of us started trading music online – half finished ideas – and then we ended up all doing an EP together for Mad Decent. It’s called Dat A Freak, and it’s recently been reinvented as Booty by J-Lo,” he tells me nonchalantly, explaining how the popstars got hold of the track, did away with the original rap, put a new topline on it and spat out one of the most talked-about tracks of the year. Thankfully, they’re pulling in royalties: “That’s the good thing about working with Diplo. Diplo has a good lawyer.”
This is the first official day of the academy, but for Lewis and the rest of the participants, things really got underway yesterday. Before Kerri Chandler kicked off the first RBMA show at Tokyo nightlife institution Air, the participants spent five hours sitting in a room and listening to each other stand up to play and talk about their music.
“Everyone was pretty nervous. There’s a girl from Moscow, she was the most nervous to play her music yesterday and it was just absolutely mindblowing,” Lewis says. “It was music that if I had’ve found that on the internet, I would have freaked the fuck out.”
‘Your name is Blinky Bill and you must work with me’
Participants hit the ground running when they touch down in Japan, with each day at the Academy stretching for at least 12 hours and 24 hour legs entirely likely, if not flat-out unavoidable.
With Tokyo only an easy ten-hour flight from Melbourne, Lewis has it relatively easy. One participant, Lewis tells me, lives on an island off the coast of Brazil. To get here, he had to get a boat to the mainland, then a bus to one of the major cities and hop on a long-haul flight from there. Another, Deltatron, had to get a ten hour bus from Peru to Bolivia, then fly to L.A and catch a connecting flight to Tokyo from there. “Be prepared for less sleep than you’re used to,” the RBMA welcome booklet warns.
One of this year’s furthest flung participants comes from Kenya, an RBMA first. Bill Selanga – who records as Blinky Bill solo and with collaborators as Just a Band – is that guy.
“’He’s really into the cartoon. I hit him up online like ‘your name is Blinky Bill and I’m the only Australian, clearly you have to work with me. You have no choice,’” Lewis says. “When I got here he started singing the theme song.” Blinky Bill, Bill himself later tells me, was a big hit on Kenyan TV in the ‘90s.
Cool, charismatic, talented and intriguing, Bill’s the one-in-a-million whole package label executives dream of, but then, most of the participants here are. “His music’s amazing,” Lewis tells me. “I think he’s like, a superstar in Nairobi. He just travels nonstop. I think he just got back from doing a TED Talk in Sao Paulo or something.”
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Lewis is right – just a week before flying to Tokyo, Bill was busy being inducted as a TED fellow on another continent.
“It’s the first time a Kenyan musician has become a TED fellow,” he tells me when I corner him for a chat in one of the bedroom studios. “I was one of the music guys. I got to perform and got to present a talk as well. It was fascinating and daunting at the same time, because I’m not used to talking. It’s easier performing.”
The talk, Bill says, was about the place of African music in the global pop scene.
“People don’t pay a lot of attention to it, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. In a continent of one billion people, there’s definitely gonna be music that everyone can listen to. But you’ll find that there’s still very little representation of African music around the world,” he explains. “Now, particularly, when we are living in an age when the world is much more connected, you can have bands from Sweden that don’t necessarily have to carry the baggage of being Swedish. They’re pop musicians. But when it comes to African music, it’s like you have to carry the weight of the continent.”
“I sent a picture to my mum of me performing at TED and I was wearing this jacket,” he says, pulling at a black leather number. “And she said, you should have been wearing something more African, to represent!” I’m like, I’m not gonna wear something “African”, I just want to wear what I wear normally. I just want to be an individual making music.”
By the end of the first day, Bill and Lewis have already been in the studio together, but it’ll be a while yet before the participants iron out the kinks in their collaborative process.
“Today was a big mess of everyone hanging out in the studios and working, people just wandering into different rooms and adding bits and pieces. So I guess it will slowly settle down as people find their groove,” Lewis says. “I did three tracks today, but they’re all loose kind of things. But I think everyone just wants to do a lot of stuff early and then figure out what’s going on.”
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“Can you can you imagine this on a Tuesday in Australia?”
During the daylight hours, when participants aren’t in the studio they’re usually in lectures. On day one, legendary composer Isao Tomita – who is now well into his 80s – talks about the evolution of electronic music in Japan, from the early days of the synthesiser to the rise of Hatsune Miku and the vocaloid community. Just before the lecture kicks off, a hurried Nina Kraviz – who is coincidentally touring Japan at the same time as the RBMA, and who is a former participant herself – rocks up in her tracksuit pants to watch.
The atmosphere might feel studious during the day but at night, it’s a different story. Tonight, the action moves to Shibuya hip-hop club Harlem, which is hosting sets from Just Blaze, Marley Marl and two of Red Bull’s participants, Zebra Katz and Douchka, the project of Rennes-bred Thomas Lucas. Like much of the rest of the club-going world, inside Harlem is sweaty, smoke-filled, and seriously gender-skewed. Unlike the rest of the world, however, the mad crush to reach the front of the bar is replaced by an orderly, single file line.
In the smaller upstairs area of the club, Kerri Chandler strolls around with a drink in hand while the bulk of term one’s participants sit in the roped off VIP area waiting for Douchka to start his set. I get talking to performance, visual and sound artist Bosaina, who’s here from Cairo. She’s a solo artist in her own right, but also creates with a crew of four guys from her hometown. Together, they run one of the only clubs in Cairo pushing real electronic music, when the police aren’t busy shutting them down.
“Egypt is probably one of the only places in the world where underground music is literally underground,” she jokes.
When Douchka does kick off, he’s playing a very different kind of set than Harlem’s used to. Hip-hop’s out, Chela and Basenji cuts are in. So when the floor unsurprisingly clears, an army of loyal Academy-ers come down to dance front and centre, paying little heed to Tokyo’s confounding anti-dancing laws. When he drops Lewis’ new track with Swick and Tkay MaidzaWishes, a knowing cheer comes from the crowd. (And if you ever needed any proof of electronic music’s globalisation, it’s a French guy playing Australian music in Japan while a crowd of Kenyan, Egyptians and Dutchmen watch on.)
Downstairs in the main room, Just Blaze plays a surprisingly mainstream-leaning set, firing through Drake, Kanye and DJ Snake’s Turn Down For What in rapid succession. It might be obvious, but it’s doing the trick.
“If you dance to trap in Japan, no one will know you danced to trap in Japan,” Lewis jokes conspiratorially. Later, motioning at the rammed club, he makes a salient point: “Can you can you imagine this on a Tuesday night in Australia?”
Better than the show’s headliner is participant Zebra Katz. Walking on stage in a gimp-style mask and medical suit, both of which he’ll gradually strip off, Katz creeps around stage, growling about doing bumps and then bursting into mile-a-minute raps while the whole crowd stars on, gobsmacked. Lewis is particularly impressed – Zebra Katz is one of the acts he was most excited about working with when the list of 2014 participants was revealed, and he didn’t waste time making a studio date with him.
“When you’re from Melbourne and you’re in the same city as Zebra Katz, you’re like – I want to make ten tracks with Zebra Katz and put them out tomorrow! But you have to calm down a bit, because that’s not what it’s about.”
School’s outTwo days later, I go to my last Red Bull show at cinema-turned-club WWW. Dorian Concept and Tokimonsta – who lectured that day at the Academy, breaking down her production process for the participants – both play, with French vocal participant Lafawndah opening with wailing freestyle vocals.
Unlike the Harlem show – which ran until 8am, with the club owner walking through the crowd pouring spirits into punters’ mouths – WWW is fairly restrained. After Dorian Concept finishes at around midnight, most of the participants head back to the studios to keep working into the wee hours. As Lewis told me on his first day:
“I reckon it would be sacrilegious to not do an all-nighter at the Red Bull Music Academy.”
For the next week-and-a-half, Red Bull Music Academy will continue like this: participants will wake up, go to the studio, sit in a lecture, go back to the studio, hop on a shuttle bus to the club and, more often than not, take one back to the studio. Just before term one wraps up, I check in with Lewis about the second half of his RBMA experience. “Today was the last day. So many tears, except from me lol. We’re partying tonight at WOMB,” he writes from Tokyo.
That same day, the Red Bull Music Academy’s Facebook page post a photo of term one’s participants and staff huddled and throwing up peace signs in the cafeteria, a picture that will be reposted by most of the participants in their first days home.
They might part ways from here, but it won’t really be the end of their Red Bull experience: this, any of them will tell you, is something that stays with you forever.
