Friday nights are not as popular as Saturday nights for trance parties in Tokyo. Yet by 11:45 p.m. one Friday last month -- a full hour before most regulars would think it's cool to show up -- Cube326 was filling fast.
This wasn't any ordinary night at Cube326, a club hidden in Tokyo's Shibaura district. For starters, there was a film crew in the house, shooting club scenes for an upcoming movie. But more importantly, it was a Domino night, and the world's leading female trance DJ was up first -- meaning it was up to her to get the party going.
Domino needed only about 20 minutes of short two- to three-minute beat changes to get the crowd revved up and primed for her mix of chunky-beat floor-killers. And she did it all off the cuff.