Saturday, August 13th, was the day five of the Hip Hop Slam presents Positive Omen Japan Tour 2011. It was also the second last day of what has been a hectic intense six day tour of Japan by the touring US DJs: DJ Quest, Mista B, DJ ALF, and DnZ – who have been joined on the tour by Japan-based promoter Tomokuni Nishimura and also DJ Quest’s son Alex who recently celebrated his 18th birthday. An aspiring DJ, who goes by the name DJ Train, Alex even did a guest set on the ones and twos earlier in the week at the DoWith Cafe in Osaka spinning a bunch of funk records from his dad’s crates.
It has been non-stop for the DJs whose Saturday schedule started off with an early morning flight back from Okinawa to Tokyo via Haneda Airport. “Everybody was dead ass tired from the afterparty/session at Ottoboro. I think pretty much all of us was running on about two hours sleep. Now, I know how the recruits at Marine Corps Boot Camp must’ve felt during their final test of doing the Crucible,,” said DJ ALF adding that the DJs finally arrived at the Tokyo club Super Deluxe in Shibuya by about 5pm for the soundcheck. All were impressed with how cool looking a club it was, implying that it lives up to its name of Super Deluxe.
As for the actual performance DJ ALF reports that, “I ended doing my solo routine separate from the usual time that we did during our collective jam routine. Mista-B, Quest, and DnZ performed solo routines later as well. The collective set we performed flowed pretty nice where we did the party rocking scratched rigamarole again. The people that attended were amazed! Overall I felt really good about our set despite I was running low on fuel in terms of sleep.”
Up next is the touring DJs (after some – not a lot – sleep) is the sixth and final day which includes the final performance of the tour and in terms of turntablists in attendance – likely the most important since it will be at the East Japan DMC Finals (flyer below). Rather than doing a group routine together the four DJs will just do individual routines – edited down versions of their usual ones that will run just five minutes for each Mista B, DnZ, Quest, and ALF. Check back here over next 24 hours for a review/ update on these showcase sets and the DMC itself.
