Tone Glow 144: Shinichi Atobe

The very first interview with the Japanese techno producer about the release of 2001’s “Ship-Scope,” performing live, and the evolution of his songcraft. Plus: His favorite records of all time.

May 01, 2024

Shinichi Atobe (b. 1971) is a Saitama-based producer who has been making house and techno music since he was 27 years old. For more than a decade, the only release to his name was a 12-inch titled Ship-Scope (2001), which came out on the cult-favorite dub techno label Chain Reaction. During the early 2010s, Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty of Demdike Stare tracked down the Japanese producer and released Atobe’s first full-length album, Butterfly Effect (2014), on their record label DDS. In the years since, Atobe has been relatively prolific, releasing a slew of LPs including World (2016), From The Heart, It’s a Start, a Work of Art (2017), Heat (2018), Yes (2020), and Love of Plastic (2022). His newest record is a 12-inch titled Ongaku 1.

For his entire career, Atobe has been referred to as a mysterious figure due to the lack of biographical information available online. He has, however, performed live: he had a DJ set in 2017 at KGR(n) in Shinjuku, and he had a live electronic music set in 2023 at WWW in Shibuya. Joshua Minsoo Kim initially reached out to Atobe via Twitter to ask for an interview. Atobe accepted the request, and later noted in a tweet that he was never actually reticent to do an interview—it was simply that he was never asked to do one. The following interview thus marks the first one that has ever been conducted with Atobe in any language. Across two hours, Kim talked with the producer via Google Meet to discuss his influences, the evolution of his songcraft, and performing live. The two spoke on April 26th, 2024 with interpretation by Junko Okada. As you will see below, his answers were largely brief and straightforward. Thank you to Rose for additional help with this interview. After the interview, you will also find a list of Atobe’s favorite records.

Joshua Minsoo Kim: What year were you born? Also, were you born in Saitama or did you just grow up there?

Shinichi Atobe: I was born in 1971 in Saitama Prefecture.

Can you paint a picture for me of what it was like to grow up in that area? What sort of memories come to mind for you of that time and place?

What I remember is that growing up, I loved rock music. When I was a junior high school student, I bought an electric guitar—a very bad and cheap guitar. I listened to records and would copy what they were playing while listening to records.

Do you remember what rock bands you liked?

Led Zeppelin, King Crimson. In my high school years I liked The Smiths.

Were you ever in a band?

I wasn’t in a band. I just copied music by myself.

Did you have a lot of friends that you talked about music with? Did you go to concerts? Or was this love for music a more isolated, insular activity?

I was mostly listening to all kinds of music alone.

Could you talk more about your interest in music? Did you ever study music?

I was studying music all by myself. I learned music theory on my own when I was doing my studies.

How old were you when you were doing music theory?

When I was 30.

Oh wow, so it was much later on. I’m curious about your family. Were your parents interested in music too?

They liked enka.

Do you feel like you gained a love for music because of their interest in enka? Do you feel like they fostered a love for creativity and the arts in your household?

There wasn’t any influence from my parents.

You said you played guitar. I’m trying to understand how you went from playing guitar and being into rock music to eventually making dance music. Was there anything in between?

I was a rock guitarist when I moved to Tokyo and lived there for four years. When I was working, I wanted to start a band. In reality, I was so busy with my work that I had to give up on the idea of forming one. I started buying cheap used CDs and listened to hip-hop music. I thought it was a fresh musical style. After that, I started buying cheap used CDs by Orbital and Hardfloor, which got me interested in techno. And then I thought, I want to make techno music too.

What year did you move to Tokyo?

When I was 19. I was there until I was 23.

You mentioned that you got these hip-hop CDs. Was this American hip-hop or were you listening to Japanese hip-hop from the ’90s?

American hip-hop.

Do you remember which rappers?

Gang Starr.

You said you were busy working at the time. What was your job? What about it was so demanding?

I was building shelves for supermarkets—display shelves.

How old were you when you first decided to start making techno? What was it like when you first started making this music? Obviously you played guitar before, but how was it different from that?

I started making techno when I was 27. At the time, I was working as a security guard. I saved up money to buy a Prophet 600. I was listening to a variety of techno music. At the time, I started liking Basic Channel. Basic Channel reminded me of punk rock, so I fell in love with their music.

Were there specific records from Basic Channel you liked?

Maurizio’s M4 (1995) and Quadrant Dub (1994).

Do you remember how you found those records?

Cisco Records in Shibuya. At the time, there were a lot of techno record stores in Shibuya.

Did you ever see DJs play techno or was it something you mostly heard via records?

I didn’t really go to clubs—I listened to records.

You said that Basic Channel’s music was similar to punk music. Can you expand on that?

I was always wondering how DJs mixed tracks, one into another. I thought that Basic Channel’s sound was kinda twisted, which reminded me of rock music. And also, the designs on their records reminded me of punk and new wave. The abstractness also reminded me of punk and new wave.

Were you familiar at all with reggae? By the ’90s, reggae had already made its way into Japan. Were you familiar with reggae outside of what Basic Channel were making with dub techno?

I didn’t really listen to reggae in the ’90s, but I listened to Massive Attack.

You have tweeted that you used to listen to YBO² when you were in high school. One of the members [Masashi Kitamura] made an album in the ’80s called Prologue for Post Modern Music. I was wondering if you’re familiar with that record since you were into YBO².

I don’t know about it.

Okay, that’s all good. You started making techno when you were 27. I wanted to start asking about your first 12-inch, Ship-Scope (2001). How did you get involved with the label Chain Reaction? You said you liked Basic Channel—did you reach out to Chain Reaction?

At first, I was listening to Basic Channel and studying how they composed music. I began to understand how to make music similar to them. Then, I started sending my demos to many record labels. Most of the labels didn’t reply to me. Sometimes I would receive a reply, but they would tell me that they didn’t want to release my music. But when I sent the demo to Hard Wax in Germany, they liked it and put out the first 12-inch.

Do you remember what other labels you reached out to?

I sent so many that I forgot a lot of the labels. I remember that I sent my demo to Cisco in Japan, but I can’t remember any other labels because I sent my demo to so many.

Do you remember how you felt when Hard Wax said they wanted to release your music?

I was just happy.

Were the songs on the demo the ones that appeared on Ship-Scope? Like, it was those four songs?

Yes.

There was obviously no music that you released until much later. I’m wondering, were you ever in contact with Chain Reaction or Hard Wax at all after releasing the music?

Hard Wax told me to go to Yellow [aka Space Lab Yellow] in Roppongi in order to hand over the master tape to the Chain Reaction staff. They were visiting at the time.

Was this Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald?

Substance, Tikiman, Vainqueur and Mark Ernestus’ wife, Okazaki, were at Yellow then.

Wow, that’s awesome. So I’m wondering, did you know any of the other Japanese producers who were making dub techno at the time? There was Tomoki Tsukamoto who made music as W-Moon and then Yoshio Maeda who made music as Unless. And there was another Japanese producer on Chain Reaction called Matrix.

I knew Matrix, but unfortunately I didn’t know the others.

Was Matrix someone you knew in person? Did you ever talk with him?

No, I just listened to his records.

Ship-Scope was released in 2001 when you were around 30. What sort of things did you learn in those first years of making techno? What did you feel like you accomplished with that 12-inch?

The 12-inch made me think that, oh, maybe my life will change.

I’m thinking more musically. Like, with "The Red Line" in particular, it’s longform and minimalist—what were you trying to accomplish with that? Was there a specific artist you were trying to mimic, that you were influenced by for that song?

For “The Red Line,” there was maybe influence from Autechre and Detroit techno.

Were there particular Detroit techno artists or specific Autechre albums you were especially interested in?

For Detroit techno, I liked Carl Craig. For Autechre albums, often I couldn’t read the album titles, but I listened to them a lot.

I’m wondering if there’s a significance to the title “The Red Line” and the title “Ship-Scope.”

For “Ship-Scope,” I just directly translated the word 潜望鏡 (senbōkyō, periscope) to English. For “The Red Line,” I was inspired by the sounds of the subway stations. [Editor’s Note: The Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line is called the red line due to its color on maps over subway lines].

Are you the sort of person who doesn’t listen to music while on the subway, who instead listens to the sounds around you? Like, do you often listen to your surrounding environment?

I’m not really interested in field recordings or the sound around me that much. But I heard a sampling CD and I used that to sample the sounds of the subway. It was a free CD, so there weren't any copyright issues—it was free to sample.

I’m curious how you approach making your songs. Do you usually have an idea in your head about how it’s all going to sound and then you try to capture that? Or do you just experiment and see what works?

So, for “Ship-Scope,” at the time I didn’t really know much about music theory. I was just playing along with my synthesizer and I made some phrases on it. I just put them into a sequencer and that’s how I made that track.

You didn’t release another record until 2014 with Butterfly Effect. What were you doing in between 2001 and 2014? Were you still making music all this time?

Between 2001 and 2014, I had a daytime job to make a living—I was working in a warehouse. But despite having a job, I was still making music. I was also studying music theory and started understanding it deeper. Somebody from Demdike Stare contacted me through Basic Channel. And then, the release of Butterfly Effect happened.

How far do the songs on Butterfly Effect date back? Like, what’s the oldest song on Butterfly Effect?

I spent about five to six years making Butterfly Effect.

When did Demdike Stare reach out to you?

I can’t remember exactly what year. But it was around when I was 41 years old.

So this was around 2012? That makes sense. Did your approach to making music change as a result of learning music theory? Were you more considered in your approach to making the songs? Or were you working by instinct?

Yes, my understanding of music theory definitely affected Butterfly Effect. For the “Waste Land” tracks, I used Max/MSP programming and also modular synthesizers. For “Waste Land 2,” I used a Macintosh computer. Previously, I used to make songs just by instinct, but I thought by making music this way, there would be a limit. So that’s why I started to study music theory, and that definitely helped with making Butterfly Effect.

I want to know if there’s a significance to the track titles. There’s “Waste Land 1” and “Waste Land 2,” and then there are the “Free Access Zone” tracks from 1 to 8. What is the significance of the numbers? Are they variations of the same idea?

I didn’t want to have a specific meaning for the titles. That’s why I decided to have titles like “Something 1,” “Something 2,” etc. Maybe I was influenced by Autechre to not have specific meanings.

Are you mentally grouping these tracks together?

I didn’t particularly try to make a group of tracks. At some point I would have an image of these tracks, and that’s how they became grouped.

On Love of Plastic (2022), it has “Love of Plastic 1” followed by “Love of Plastic 5” and then “Love of Plastic 8.” And then a few tracks later, there’s “Love of Plastic 6.” Were you in charge of the sequencing? And was there a specific reason for why you sequenced tracks like this?

That was DDS’ idea.

On the album Yes (2020), there are track titles like “Lake” and “Ocean” and “Rain.” Were you thinking of nature when making these tracks? Do you have a particular relationship to the bodies of water around you?

Honestly, I don’t have any specific relationship to water, lakes, oceans, or rain. I didn’t really want any particular meaning in the titles. That’s why I chose those titles.

Do you listen to contemporary dance music producers at all? And if so, did they shape the dance music that you’ve been making throughout the past decade?

I think there’s definitely that influence in the newer records.

Are there any artists in particular that you’re excited by?

The UK house label Defected and Chaos in the CBD.

You started playing live recently. Your first show was as a DJ in 2017, and this was at KGR(n) in Shinjuku. What was it like to DJ?

That was my first DJ gig. I mostly played techno tracks, and played music by artists like Glenn Underground, music from the Chain Reaction label, and Vladislav Delay’s Luomo moniker.

You had made music for so long without having this live component. Did you enjoy DJing?

Yes.

You also performed again in April of last year. You played at WWW in Shibuya. Can you talk about what that was like?

For that show, I didn’t DJ. I played a live set with my laptop, Ableton, and the Ableton Push MIDI controller. During the performance, the speakers were very loud—I was listening to my own tracks at a very loud volume. That helped me think about how the sound of kick drums and the bass sounded through those big speakers. I guess that environment helped me to think about my tracks.

That’s interesting to me, because something I love about your music is the way it is mixed. The hi-hats, for example, will be mixed very loudly. I’m wondering how often you’re thinking about the mixing on your tracks? Are you meticulous about creating your tracks and how everything is mixed?

When I’m mixing, I’m using a mixer for recording and a DJ mixer. I connected those mixers to my computer. I’m listening and I’m trying to balance the kick, hi-hat, and everything. But I was listening through quiet monitors. During the 2023 performance, the loud speakers made me realize a lot of things that I didn’t notice through the monitors.

Has that changed how you currently make music?

Yes, it influenced me.

So, you have a new release called Ongaku 1 (2024). Did that experience affect those tracks?

Yes, Ongaku 1 is influenced by that experience.

Do you mind explaining how?

So, the specific influence is how I create the kick sound. For the new 12-inch, I sent the Ableton Live project file to Miles [Whittaker] from DDS. He listened to my original track and they reconstructed the new 12" from the original track.

You mentioned the kick drum. What did you do differently?

It’s a secret (laughter).

That’s okay. I wanna know, are you interested in doing more live performances? Whether in Japan or in Europe or America? Is that something you’d be interested in doing at all?

I would do it, but if it doesn’t pay much then I’d maybe reconsider.

Yeah, that makes sense. I have a few more questions. Is there a specific song in your discography that you consider your favorite?

“Heat 1.”

What about “Heat 1” is special to you?

I think it’s the best song I ever made.

Was it hard for you to make or was it relatively simple? Were you able to get it right away?

I spent a lot of time on the main riff (hums the synth riff). Originally, the sound was taken from a piano, but the sound wasn’t clear, so I switched to a synthesizer instead. The track was quickly made after that.

I see. What is your job currently? What are you doing nowadays?

I don’t have a daytime job. I just create music.

Ah, awesome. Is there anything you enjoy doing outside of making music? Do you have any other hobbies?

Sleeping.

Sleeping? (laughs).

Yes.

How many hours of sleep do you usually get each day?

Nine hours.

This is a bit random, but do you have a favorite food you like to cook for yourself?

Yaki Bihun [焼きビーフン, stir-fried thin noodles].

Is there a reason why you like that dish?

It tastes good (laughs).

You have videos that you sometimes post and in the background is a copy of The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead (1986). Why do you have that album in the background of your videos?

It’s my favorite album.

What do you like about it?

Between all of The Smiths’ albums, I think it’s the best.

So, you have this interest in rock music. Is there something about this music that you try to capture in your own dance music? Like, this is your favorite album, but obviously you make dance music and I’m wondering if there’s any relationship between what you make and the rock music that you love.

I think that rock music and dance music are two different things. The way the records are made is different and the mastering is different. What’s in common is that it’s still good music. That’s why I like rock music and dance music.

Do you have any thoughts about having a lot of fans of your music around the world?

It feels strange.

Why?

It feels strange that the music I make with my cheap PC has made it out to the world. Many people around the world are listening to music that comes out of this cheap PC. It feels strange, but at the same time, I’m also happy about it.

I always end my interviews with the same question. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

My perseverance.

How does that come into play when you make music?

When making my music, I think I have a higher standard of what I consider finished and not finished. That’s when it becomes useful.

What’s the longest a song has taken to make? Do you remember?

“Love of Plastic 1” took about a month to make.

Oh, that’s shorter than I expected (laughs). I’m wondering, was there anything you wanted to mention that we didn’t talk about today?

I will have a new album out this summer.

Does it have a title?

For now, I think it will probably be called Discipline.

With this new album, what does it feel like you accomplished that you didn’t accomplish on previous albums?

I’ve studied music theory more and I feel like I have evolved.

Shinichi Atobe’s newest 12-inch, Ongaku 1, can be found at Boomkat. His other music can be found at the same website. Some of Atobe’s music can also be found at the DDS Bandcamp page.

Shinichi’s Picks

I asked Shinichi to create a list of his favorite records. The following is what he sent me with the order unchanged. Discogs pages are linked for each entry. Shinichi informed me that “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” is his favorite song from The Queen is Dead, which is his favorite album of all time.

Maurizio - M4 (Maurizio, 1995)
Basic Channel - Quadrant Dub (Basic Channel, 1994)
Round Five (feat. Tikiman) - Na Fe Throw It (Main Street, 1999)
Vainqueur - Elevation II (Basic Channel, 1997)
Luomo - Tessio (Force Tracks, 2003)
François Kevorkian - FK-EP (Open, 1995)
Glenn Underground - Atmosfear (Peacefrog, 1996)
Mr. Fingers - Cerebral Hemispheres (Alleviated, 2018)
Satoshi Tomiie (feat. Diane Charlemagne) - Inspired (Sony, 1999)
Deep Dish with Everything but the Girl - “The Future of the Future (Stay Gold) (David Morales Classic Club Mix)” (Arista, 1998)
Autechre - Confield (Warp, 2001)
Massive Attack - Blue Lines (Wild Bunch / Virgin)
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead (Rough Trade)

Thank you for reading the 144th issue of Tone Glow. Literally just ask all your favorite artists for interviews—it’s that simple.

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