(l-r Shinsaku Ohsaki, Terukuni Makabe, Masami Shimomura)
On this rainy Tuesday evening, we had the pleasure of meeting the label managers of p*dis at their office located along the tiny backlane streets of Shibuya, Tokyo. The narrow winding busy streets no less made finding the place difficult (however, Nature Bliss office was harder to find !). I knew it was located next to the GAP store but to our surprise the location stated on our map was actually a chruch in the middle of this busy shopping district. Then, we soon realised there was a small pathway leading up to the offices located within and behind the church facade.
Along the way, we noticed p*dis mailbox which confirmed that we have found the right place. HEADZ, another brilliant japanese label happens to be on the same building as well. At the office, we were greeted by Masami Shimomura, the manager of p*dis as well as the Yacca label (which deals with New Folk such as Akron/Family and Jackie-O Motherfucker). She spoke very fluent english, not a surprise since p*dis solely deals with foreign artists and labels. As some may know, p*dis was formely called Plop led by Nao Sugimoto who has since left the company to establish Nature Bliss. Many especially English readers had a hard time to comprehend the reshuffle within the office. Back in the days, I first heard of the label Plop after some releases by artist such as FilFla, Sora, Kazumasa Hashimoto. Plop is a division of Inapartmaint. Inc which is the main company housing many smaller labels. Since Nao left Inpartmaint.Inc, Masami replaced him and changed the name to p*dis. A note that all previous releases of Plop will still be under the property of Inpartmaint Inc, however the new Plop releases will be handled by Nao under Nature Bliss.
Makabe-san, who runs the postrock label Thomason sounds (Miaou, Tracer AMC) came to greet us. During our short tour of Tokyo last November, we were orginally scheduled to perform with Aerial and Miaou at Shibuya O-Nest. Unfortunately, due to unforseen circumstances the gig was cancelled because of some funding issues which led to Aerial pulling out the show. Nonetheless, I felt the need to express my thanks to Makabe-san for inviting us in the first place, we hope to work with him again in the future. We also met the stylish Shinsaku Ohsaki who runs the underground hiphop label Hue and a song-orented one called Lyrico as well. Inpartmaint.Inc now mainly these labels Yacca, Thomason Sounds, Lyrico and Hue under their wings.
During our meeting, we talked about future collaboration and i wished for p*dis to understand more about the Singapore (and the rest of South Asia) scene and culture, vice versa. Our friend, Hideho Takemasa also came along with us to promote his upcoming Tokyo event which will feature one of Singapore most respected artist, Zai Kuning. We believe that Asian artist and organisers should by now build a tighter community and create our own musical scene which is created and sustained beyond the more well-travelled Tokyo scene. Very often, language and culture is the barrier but this is less and less a problem these days as long as we try to communicate more with one another. I believe, in the next 10 years, putting all this into the equation...music produced in Asia will be on everyone's radar.
Masami-san and the rest of the crew were so incredibly warm and presented us with some unreleased sampler cds ( one includes the excellent upcoming album by Smile Down Upon Us ) and a new Carsten Nicolai cd under the moniker aleph-1, manufactured and distributed by p*dis. Thank you p*dis !
Link:
http://www.inpartmaint.com/pdis/
