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A Word With Matty Boylan
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Matty Boylan started off DJing in Adelaide before taking the leap across the pond to Kyushu, Japan, where he continues to live, work, and spin today. When Matty recently skipped back home for a few days, Merge took the opportunity to catch up with him and find out what life is like for an Adelaidean DJ up Nippon way. Here's what Matty told us over a thick Greek coffee outside Eros on Rundle Street.
Happy Days
Foreigners are still noticed and not really accepted into a community there. There is naka, which means inside and soto which means outside, they still have that mentality. So I spose the happiest point of my experiences in Japan was being accepted into a community, being a DJ and hanging with other musicians. When I first moved to Kyushu I sort of got thrust into it, I didn’t speak Japanese and I just started going to record shops and trying to dig and communicate through music etcetera. Eventually a record store/café called Tech Records took me under their wing, and I gave them a demo tape and they started to get me playing gigs and stuff and they really took the time, even though they couldn’t speak English, to sort of teach me their language and what I should do and just how to basically function in the country. I s’pose that was the happiest point in time because one of the guys was the five-years-running DMC champion.
Foreigners are still noticed and not really accepted into a community there. There is naka, which means inside and soto which means outside, they still have that mentality. So I spose the happiest point of my experiences in Japan was being accepted into a community, being a DJ and hanging with other musicians. When I first moved to Kyushu I sort of got thrust into it, I didn’t speak Japanese and I just started going to record shops and trying to dig and communicate through music etcetera. Eventually a record store/café called Tech Records took me under their wing, and I gave them a demo tape and they started to get me playing gigs and stuff and they really took the time, even though they couldn’t speak English, to sort of teach me their language and what I should do and just how to basically function in the country. I s’pose that was the happiest point in time because one of the guys was the five-years-running DMC champion.
Japan 101
My first thing to understanding Japan is not to understand. Never ask the question ‘why’ because if you ask Japanese people they can’t tell you why. Japan is such a diverse culture I could say one thing but then there would be just as many people who do the opposite. It’s amazing how accepted being drunk and an idiot is over there. You actually have the legitimate responsibility to be a bit of an idiot and a sleaze ball especially if you’re a male and it’s a totally accepted excuse. Other advice, if a guy tries to look at your dick or grab your dick, it’s just a form of curiosity and infatuation but don’t get agro over it, just roll with it. There’s that curiosity from a lot of men over there still.
My first thing to understanding Japan is not to understand. Never ask the question ‘why’ because if you ask Japanese people they can’t tell you why. Japan is such a diverse culture I could say one thing but then there would be just as many people who do the opposite. It’s amazing how accepted being drunk and an idiot is over there. You actually have the legitimate responsibility to be a bit of an idiot and a sleaze ball especially if you’re a male and it’s a totally accepted excuse. Other advice, if a guy tries to look at your dick or grab your dick, it’s just a form of curiosity and infatuation but don’t get agro over it, just roll with it. There’s that curiosity from a lot of men over there still.
Characters
Japan is full of bloody characters. At the moment one of the most amazing people I’m hanging around is an artist called cobble, who’s making it really big in the area where I’m living. He’s a live artist that basically just draws… live. He does amazing stuff and has started branching out into tattoo work and that, but he’s looking to come out to Australia and try and do some work over here. I swear he’s straight from a commune in the 60s, from Nimbin or something. He’s just a great bloke.
Other characters I’ve come across back down in Kyushu would have to be the Hoodlum Squad. A bunch of boys, who at the age of 18 were all basically garbage men but then put a hip hop group together with DJs and everything and opened up a clothing store and started hitting Kyushu pretty hard with almost like Japanese gangsta hip hop and starting to make it. They're all my little crew down there and every time I go back they’re getting a little older and getting into it more and covered in tatts. They’re just mental, they go all out.
Reggae Riffraff
After a mad event at club Sense on the Friday I managed to get about three hours sleep on the Saturday before my boys called me up and invited me to a reggae party under the bridge at Tenryu River. I was finding it rather difficult at this stage to even think logically in English let alone turn on my Japanese brain but I thought, “why not?” So we parked the car and headed out over the rocky river bank where the DJ booth was set up. They had a truck, and on the tray they had a huge stack of speakers that would have been close to 8 meters high. It was a wicked set up, $20 for all you could eat BBQ and alcohol. But, being a reggae party I had really expected there to be some joints getting passed around, you know that whole peace and love atmosphere - but not the Japanese. There was no weed, no peace or love. The DJs were getting into fights within the first hour of us arriving - and I mean smashing each other - while later on six guys jumped a dude, apparently because he drank the wrong drink. This all went down while they wore their Jamaican colours and music blasted out all the Jamaican ideals. Japan is like that, just so spontaneous and contradictory.
Eros on Rundle St.
We always used to just come down here on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning after not much sleep and drink Greek Coffee and San Pellegrino Rosso. You know, just hand out, lay low and do some people watching. I like the décor and it’s just a little bit out of the way, a better vibe than the north side of Rundle Street.
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