DJ Krush

Attention, legend! Alive! You want to play Hideaki Ishii a.k.a. DJ Krush Tom Liwa's "Cover story vs. full-page ad". The beginning: "Hey dude! You wouldn't have thought ...". Hey dude! Didn't you think that the peculiar mix of hip-hop, trip-hop and jazzy ambient breakbeats that landed you on James Lavelle's mega-hip "Mo' Wax" label in the mid-1990s would carry you into the second decade of the 21st century? Or would it? Hey, the man, born in 1962, used to be a gangster. Yakuza. Before the legendary movie "Wildstyle" got him interested in hip hop. And so he decided to become a DJ. First with his brother as Crash & Bang. Then - in 1987 - in the Krush Posse. In Japan at least, he was the first DJ to perform with live musicians. Then came trip hop and downtempo. Then, in the mid-1990s, the first albums, whose "Abstract Turntablism" with its magical flow seems to have aged very well. DJ Krush also continued to surprise with intelligent moves and the right collabs at the right time: sometimes with Sly & Robbie, sometimes with Toshinori Kondo, sometimes with MosDef. In 2002, he opened the Enjoy Jazz with an impressive set. In 2008, he had a great jazz set in his suitcase at the Karlstorbahnhof. In 2014, he played again at the Karlstorbahnhof. At the time, he had just celebrated the 20th anniversary of his solo career with an exclusive showcase at Tokyo's "Liquidroom" and released a "self-remixed best of" album entitled "Stepping Stone". 2020 saw the release of his latest album "Trickster", a dark, experimental, dystopian thing with surprising sounds under the surface. In his showcases, too, he seems to continue to strive to remain as unpredictable as possible and still deliver even to his old hip-hop fans of the first hour, even if the signs now also point to dubstep or trap. Nevertheless: anything but nostalgia!