What’s Tokyo’s Womb like? We venture inside

What’s Tokyo’s Womb like? We venture inside

13 January, 2009 | 1.45AM

• Written by: TokyoNeon
• Filed under: Music News: tokyo

As Beatportal grows, we send our spies to ever-more remote parts of the world, including Tokyo, Japan, which recently hosted Japan’s premier New Year’s Eve party for 2008/2009.

Club Womb is like something out of Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner – an underground club with no signs outside, surrounded by the hypnotic, neon rainbow of Shibuya’s candy-coloured love hotel district.

Two innocuous metal doors in the seedy underbelly of Tokyo are the only giveaway to this techno mecca’s locale.

Beatportal were told by Womb’s chief PR Yuuka Tokumitsu, that “The NYE party is very crowded so please come ahead of time.”

She also said that, “There is no row only for the guest. Please line up with the general public.”

You see, in Tokyo, the “table culture” that Steve Lawler once admitted had a negative effect on the U.S. club scene, doesn’t really exist.

Equality is what Japan is all about, and that’s why there’s such a low crime rate here – people respect each other and don’t play the alpha male card (unless they’re very drunk).

So, arriving at around 22:30, there wasn’t much of a crowd – Tokyo’s clubbers typically don’t pitch up until around 00:00 anyway.

Image is extremely important in Japan’s capital, so everyone takes a long time doing their hair and plucking their eyebrows before they hit the tiles ... especially the guys.

Spiraling up into Womb, the main dance floor is something epic, containing the world’s largest disco ball.

Not oversized – just right – this dark, subby quagmire is flanked by an murderous sound system that, ironically, never hurts your ears.

The main feed is limited perfectly and, apparently, has a team of engineers EQing it as each different song comes on.

The main floor was filling up nicely with some progressive tracks rolling out of the speaker stacks, so Beatportal ventured upstairs, past the second floor balcony to the third level.

Here, DJ Aki – Japan’s most famous drum & bass DJ – was administering a deft blend of jungle / drum & bass, Tokyo-style.

He even dropped the monstrous ‘Quarks’ by Dirtyphonics (four French maestros being labelled as the “New Pendulum“) which is coming on Audio Porn early March 2009.

Slinking back to the main room just in time for the countdown, things were sweaty and incredibly packed.

The surging crowd created pockets of crushing, but everyone was so worse for wear that they didn’t care.

It’s hard to put into words exactly how intense it was, so we won’t – just check out this video footage directly below from the middle of the dance floor:

NYE countdown @ Womb 2008/2009

After the big countdown, the crowd was getting a bit out of control, so Beatportal ducked outside for an hour to dry off (in the freezing winter cold).

NYE is a time where Japan’s original religion – Shinto – celebrates, and so Shibuya’s love-hotel district’s only bastion of moral cleanliness, a secret Shinto shrine, was burning a fire and inviting revelers to soak up the holy vibe, as you can see on the picture on the right.

Returning to the club, the music had shut down, strangely, and Womb continued in silence for about 40 minutes, due to some sort of disturbance on the main floor.

But just in time, the tunes were back on, and some very interesting-looking people began to fill the floor, wearing different kinds of masks.

For the rest of the night, Andre Galluzzi played an uncharacteristically mellow selection.

The man was obviously jet-lagged, and was playing from the heart, but he kept the crowd in check.

So, another year down, another memorable Womb celebration.

We laughed, we cried and danced ‘til our beautiful, white Y3 sneakers turned black in the stampede.

Stay tuned for more Japan news in 2009.

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