Yousuke Yukimatsu With ClubWire

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/clubwire--6631315/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yusuke Yukimatsu with club wire. The scar on Yusuke Yukimatsu's
head is visible from all angles. When bowing forward and
tracing it with his thumb, you realize just how pronounced.
It is. Not just a rip snaking up the back
of his ear and hanging over the front of his

(00:20):
brow like an awning, but an indentation in his skull,
reminiscent of a partially depressured basketball or the aftermath of
a near miss fenderbender, which technically it was. The scar
charts a path through Yukimatsu's own death valley, reaffirming just
how lucky he is to be here at all. Yukimatsu's

(00:43):
life has been defined by sliding doors moments, but nothing
comes close to the brain cancer that upended his life
nine years ago. The experience was ruthless, two craniotomies, months
in hospital for radiotherapy, and a year on oral chemotherapy medication.
Yet Yukimatsu's layoff was lenient. He was able to leave

(01:07):
the hospital on weekends to have downtime with his records,
and his rebound was mercifully swift. Little else about Yukimatsu
today betrays a trace of the ordeal all told. The
Osaka born Djay is in insane physical condition, sat in
the courtyard of a Berlin atlier on a hot spring day.

(01:30):
He looks at least a decade younger than his forty
six years, with a regal mien, Olympian frame and granite
jawline that has fashion brands queuing out the door. Crucially,
he escaped with no damage to his speech or hearing.
As far as I can tell, the surgery didn't trigger
any direct shift in my taste or how I appreciate sound,

(01:54):
explained Yukimatsu in Japanese, before breaking into a beatific smile.
Change was more natural Now I simply have time to
listen to more music than ever before. The world knows
two core things about yusu Ke Yukimatsu. Firstly, he faced

(02:16):
an extremely serious illness and came out the other side, transformed.
Pent up in hospital, he resolved to go all in
on djaying and aced his dream beyond any reasonable expectations.
His is a tale of resilience so universally resonant, it's
no surprise to see it shamelessly repurposed all across the Internet,

(02:38):
from content regurgitators to capital dance tiktoks appendaged with prayer
hands emojis follow one piece of inspiration bait artlessly signs
off if you love this story. He's also a colossus
on the decks. Pulling from a vast inventory and limitless

(03:00):
reserves of passion, Yukimatsu possesses the conviction to bend any
wave form to his will. The former construction worker has
turned wrecking ball with far outsets that can force total
mental recalibration among the audience. He tackles sequencing on the
CDJ three thousands as avant garde shredder kg Haino approaches

(03:24):
notes on a fret board and generates comparable levels of
awestruck devotion. In mid twenty twenty five, Yukimatsu stands as
not only one of the most dexterous djays in the world,
but one of the most in demand. Too implausible as
it may seem at first blush, statistically, he may have

(03:46):
already become the most famous Japanese DJA of all time,
not for the first time. His life has been reshaped
beyond recognition in a matter of months. Having been a
curious follower from Afar, subsisting only on the thin gruel
of popular live streams, I finally attended a Yen show.

(04:06):
This passed New Year's Eve in Tokyo, eight days out.
The show remained on first release, with tickets available for
just three thousand, one hundred fifty yen about sixteen pounds,
and no great fanfare surrounding Yukimatsu's four hour set in
the second room.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
At first, the gig felt pretty sterile as he ambled
through a selection of wedding disco with the house lights
still up. Just as I wondered if it had all
been a terrible misunderstanding, everything switched as Yukimatsu loaded up
Free Yourself by the Chemical Brothers and cracked open the
casket of saki. As the clock struck midnight, Down went

(04:49):
the lights off, came Yukimatsu's shirt and trousers, and a
cascade of bangers poured forth. In person, Yukimatsu style was
infinitely more compelling than on screen, but something stood out
in particular in the moment between locking a mix and
executing it. He'd set his headphones down and steady himself

(05:11):
before mixing with his entire torso it was like witnessing
a falcon a split second before it dive bombs towards
Earth with a focus of such molten intensity that the
frame rate around him seemed to drop. After careening through
a breakneck finale of Sinjin Hawk's Snowblind, the Prodigies Voodoo

(05:32):
People and DJ Slugo's one one four seven nine nine,
Yukimatsu snapped out of his trance, bowed to the crowd,
and shuffled off stage. I welcomed the first sunrise of
twenty twenty five, walking through Tokyo in a daze, sketching
notes on my phone for what could make a pretty
nifty art of djaying. It was the most memorable set

(05:55):
I'd seen in years. Fifteen days later, all hell broke loose.
Yukimatsu's second boiler Room, recorded in Tokyo the previous November,
struck the Internet like a meteorite. Full disclosure, I was
part of the boiler Room team from two thousand fourteen
to eighteen, gather the buzzy forces of two thousand twenties

(06:17):
dance music, and he's already smoked the lot in five months,
going off its eleven million plus YouTube views alone, without
even counting the rave influences and technical explainers. The set
has breezed past festival dominating megastars like Sarah Landry nine
million and Marlon Hofstadt two point two million. Tally up

(06:41):
the best of Charlie xcix seven point six million and
horse GEARL two point seven million, and you'd still be
half a million short at the till all of a sudden.
Casuals with no frame of reference for the music played
in the set, such as three Fazes Drum and Lorenzo
Sennis Think Big, were lured in by the magnetism of

(07:05):
an artist who had defied the odds and was now
leaping out of their screens with the kinetic force of
a pro athlete go figure. A teenage Yukimatsu's interest in
representing Japan as a swimmer was scotched when he missed
cut offs for the regional championships by one one hundredth
of a second