WWWβ — a subterranean space under Shibuya's WWW and WWWX venues dedicated to "club alternative" — is a frequent stop for DJs and producers at the cutting edge of electronic music. But when a large crowd packed itself into the venue on April 20 for an evening of dark, experimental and at times abrasive sounds, something was slightly different — both headliners were from China.
That night, which was headed up by Tzusing and Howell, was the first edition of the so-called Jyoto exchange between WWWβ and Shanghai club All, an ongoing program between the two venues that is just one of the latest expressions of the increasingly fertile interactions between underground electronic music scenes in East Asia.
The producers and DJs connected to Jyoto (named for the "jyō" and "tō" kanji that start the names of Shanghai and Tokyo, respectively) don't represent a single sound as such, and instead draw from an overlapping pool of influences including grime; the droning, hypnotic beats of gqom from Durban, South Africa; and what has variously been termed "experimental" or "deconstructed" club — an amorphous, largely online-driven scene that ties together regional American and European styles, as well as other global influences, with a glossy, mechanistic sensibility.
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