The Wisdom Teeth compilation nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 opens a window into Nagoya’s quietly thriving ecosystem of left-field dance music – where, decades after pioneers like baptisma built the city’s first experimental club spaces, a new generation is reshaping its sound.

Nagoya won’t be the first place that springs to mind when recommending a global hotbed of electronic music. But off the radar, this central Japanese conurbation, the country’s fourth largest, has been nurturing an underground scene of musicians, producers and DJs whose only guiding principle in common is a commitment to forward-thinking, genre-less experiments that exist happily both in the club and at home, in bed, after it. nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 (or Quiet Wind) is a compilation co-curated by Yuya Abe, a.k.a. Nagoya scene-shaper, DJ and producer abentis, for Facta and K-LONE’s reliably eclectic Wisdom Teeth label.

Spanning sounds that could, if you really needed to, be given names like new-age ambient, psychedelic minimalism, cosmic low-end and xylophone euphoria, but sounding far fresher and more alchemised than any of those descriptors can reasonably convey, the Nagoya sound is anything but predictable. Abe has given us the lowdown on how this scene of likeminds has evolved.

The founding father

Yoichi Kikunaga, a.k.a. baptisma, was shocked into action by the emergence of late 70s UK punk, and in the 80s, influenced by acts like Suicide, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, he immersed himself in music made on the Roland 606 and 303. By the late 80s, he was living in New York, struck by Jeff Mills and the techno and house scenes. Returning to Japan in the 90s, he experienced the explosion of jungle and drum ’n’ bass, before he opened a club in 2000 to provide a space where drum ’n’ bass low-end could truly be heard.

The venues

The venues baptisma founded, Club Daughter (2000-07) and Cafe Domina (2007-19), were key hubs for left-field music in Nagoya, spanning bass, techno, house, electronica, noise and experimental sounds. They hosted major labels and artists like Basic Channel, ~scape, Raster-Noton and Mala, and baptisma helped support and develop local talent. Since 2013, he’s run Spazio Rita, a space for street art, performance and experimental music, where the artists on nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 were shaped.

The city

Sitting between Tokyo and Osaka, Nagoya is Japan’s fourth-largest city and an industrial centre, home to Toyota Motors. It differs from Tokyo in scale and pace, but historically this has allowed for countercultural DIY music such as punk, hardcore and hip-hop to develop. Perhaps it’s because of its manufacturing identity, but originality and inventive approaches have always been especially valued. Its relatively large size and industrial character probably explain why Bristol bass, Detroit techno and Chicago post-rock have all maintained a strong following here.

The electronic late-bloomers 

With the exception of baptisma, the artists on nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風, all born in the early 90s, were largely raised on band music, only drawn to club and electronic music in their late teens and early twenties. DHYAN and I came from punk and metal bands, while Am Shhara played classical music on mandolin. Others grew up influenced by indie-rock, emo and metal, before gravitating towards electronica, hip-hop, dubstep, techno and ambient.

The legacy of LA’s beat scene…

The LA beatmaker culture of the 2000s, centered around Stones Throw, Brainfeeder and Low End Theory, sparked an explosive boom in Japan, leading to a huge increase in beatmakers in the 2010s. Performing live with devices like the Roland SP-404 was also popular. Half of the artists on nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 – me, DHYAN, daiki hayakawa and Nasty Soupman – belong to the last generation before that boom settled, and were among those who turned to more electronic sounds.

… and Nagoya’s own weird hip-hop

In 2008, ATOSONE’s hip-hop label RCSLUM emerged, producing many acclaimed rappers, while serving as a hub for music freaks through its CD mix series and parties that drew deep sounds from around the world. Among them, artists like Ramza, Campanella and Free Babyronia changed the game with hip-hop that sublimated influences from ~scape, Raster-Noton and ECM, and made a huge impact.

The gamers

Since the 90s, domestic pop and video-game music have often drawn on UK bass music, techno, US hip-hop and R&B. And the early familiarity with that range of sounds has contributed to this generation of Nagoya producers’ instinctive sense of crossover. Methodd, whose Xylophonica track appears on nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風, has said he began listening to dance music through the games he played as a child, like Beatmania.

The scene today

Inspired by the music of Livity Sound, Timedance and Wisdom Teeth, I launched [the Nagoya collective and party] Hybrid Bass Freq in 2020. It helped form a scene connecting genres and generations, and the tiny, 20-capacity Yakuzen Bar it was held in has since become one of the city’s most vital spaces, with recent performances from Rhyw, Flora Yin-Wong and Conna Haraway.

The meeting of minds

Coming into contact with Wisdom Teeth’s music eased our scene’s collective anxieties about existing between genres, and encouraged us to carry on developing our free, open style. Through social media, Facta discovered my music, and the reaction to my track 2++ led to the 2022 release of Bicycle on Wisdom Teeth. Dubstep producer Karnage and I became close via Hybrid Bass Freq, and co-hosted a Cyberpool event at Club JB’s. It was there, in 2024, that nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風’s artists performed together for Wisdom Teeth’s tenth-anniversary Nagoya show, which gave rise to this project.