Last Saturday there was a flicker of life from the Tokyo darker scene, and for once I was organised enough to make it to two clubs on the same night. First stop was Operation Karma, back in Tokyo (Roppongi, unfortunately) after a 3-year absence and a few events in Kawasaki.

Sadly the days of Karma being the hard-but-more-melodic counterpoint to NRGetic Romancer and Tokyo Hardcore Construction seem to have gone, as most DJs have abandoned freeform/NRG or dropped out of the hardcore scene altogether, but thankfully ASAHI was there to represent our kind of sound and I mainly headed along for his set. It turned out to be a superb hour of tunes that started with Private Demon and progressed up through the bpms to finish with Aryx’s Aurora. There’s a strong Guld influence to ASAHI’s sets, but I love the way he’s introduced some of the industrial/dark electro sounds we’ve heard at events like Dark Dimension. With terrible timing I stopped my video [see above] during BRK’s The Nobodies, just as he was about to mix into a great track from Grendel – unexpected, but I reckon it was the connection of the set and did wonders for the atmosphere.

Unfortunately ASAHI was timetabled to open the event, so the floor was very quiet until a few more of the Karma/Romancer crew arrived towards the end of the set. It was fantastic to see everyone though, and as we all settled into some dancing it made me realise how much I’ve missed having a healthy hardcore scene for the past couple of years. The music was taking a turn for the over-happy though, heavy on the anime samples and glass-shattering female vocals, so after sticking around for some of DAIRIN’s hard house I wandered over to Shinjuku and Decadance Bar.

Kohaku and the Dark Dimension crew have really done a fine job with this event, as now it has a large, eclectic following that rivals Tokyo Decadance but with far, far better music/atmosphere. Although there was no freeform this time, the timetabling is superb these days and seems to finish with a good couple of hours of very danceable industrial/dark psy, leaving it just late enough for the fans of the slower stuff to be willing to give it a go too. SHiN even sneaked in Hannya X during his dark psy set, and it went down a storm with everyone from the Romancer ravers to the goths.

The other highlight was finally catching one of Hiroyuki Takahashi’s live painting performances, which really lived up to expectations. Responding to the music and crowd as usual, his piece became darker and darker as the night went on – not the clearest photos in the world, but hopefully you can get an idea of the end result.