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This article is a joint project with the radio program "Jeep® CREATIVE GARAGE" on J-WAVE (81.3 FM). AKO and HOUYHNHNM's editor-in-chief Ryo Komuta will be the program navigators, and will delve into the roots and staples of the guests on the theme of "standards" for about an hour on the last Sunday of each month at 10:00 p.m. In addition, using "radiko," a service that allows you to listen to the radio on your computer or smartphone, you can listen to the show in real time or at your own leisure with the time-free function. We hope you will enjoy this new approach to radio and HOUYHNHNM's together!

• Jeep® CREATIVE GARAGE
• Last Sunday of every month 22:00-22:54
• Navigator: AKO, Ryo Komuta (Editor-in-Chief, HOUYHNHNM)
• J-WAVE 81.3FM "Jeep® CREATIVE GARAGE
• www.j-wave.co.jp/original/creativegarage

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. what I got from the music scene in Kyoto in the 80's .

FPM Tomoyuki Tanaka has been active as a DJ and producer since the 1990s. His music, which is based on dance music, is widely recognized not only in Japan but also overseas, and he is still active on a global scale. Tanaka-san, in his brand-new "Compass," headed to Yokohama to dig for vintage clothing, which he loves in addition to music. In the car, we started with a discussion of Mr. Tanaka's musical roots.

My first experience of music was in junior high school . I decided to form a band with my friends! I decided to form a band with my friends and bought a bass guitar. That was around 1980, I think. At that time, Japanese pop and new music were very strong, and there were core bands such as YMO and THE PLASTICS, and the music industry was in a very exciting period. At first, we were a heavy metal copy band, and by the time I was in high school, we had evolved into an original new wave band.

MTV programs were commonly on-air on terrestrial television, and Mr. Tanaka naturally caught on to information about American hit songs. At the same time that the major Western music on TV and radio stimulated Mr. Tanaka's mind, the influence of the underground music scene in Kyoto was immeasurable.

When I was in high school, I started to listen to a lot of throbbing funk and free jazz. I was a pretty sophisticated high school student, now that I think about it (laughs). In Kyoto, there were a lot of really weird older people, and there were a lot of noise, hardcore, and new wave bands, so it was a messy place in a good way (laughs). The ska revival was also much earlier than in Tokyo; the British 2-tone ska revival represented by THE SPECIALS had completely descended on Kyoto by about 1983. It was really rich in music, and I was able to absorb a lot of different things.

What exactly did he gain from the Kyoto music scene? To such a question, Mr. Tanaka answered as follows.

What kind of music is cool? . There was a kind of value system that was born to judge such things. . At that time, there were regional characteristics in music. For example, Nagoya had advanced punk and hardcore music, and Fukuoka had so-called rock music. . In Kyoto, the music was new wave. There was a kind of longing for Tokyo, but on the other hand, there was also a sense of pride that "we were playing Kyoto music.

. the pleasure of collecting records I learned about in high school.

. He continued to be passionate about his band activities even after entering college. I didn't go to school," Tanaka says with a laugh, "I just played in bands all the time. I was totally pro-oriented," Tanaka says with a laugh.

At the time, I was working part-time as a dishwasher at a disco called Maharaja. I was in bands all the time, but that's when I first learned about DJs. I stood in a booth, put my headphones to my ears, and wondered what those people were doing. That's when I got interested in DJing. So I saved up my salary and bought a turntable and a mixer.

In fact, before he learned about DJing, an encounter that could be called a revelation came into Mr. Tanaka's life. It was when he was in high school. It was with the advisor of the light music club he belonged to at the time.

He was a biology teacher who wore glasses like John Lennon, but before he became a teacher, he worked at a broadcasting station in Kyoto. Before he became a teacher, he worked at a broadcasting station in Kyoto. The station would throw away unwanted records once a month, and the teacher would get them and put them in the club room. The teachers would get those records and put them in the clubroom, and we would split them up amongst ourselves. I was in high school and didn't have any money to buy records, but since I was given them there, I accumulated a lot of them. I put them in a color box and kept them at home, and that is when I discovered the pleasure of collecting records (laughs). (Laughs.) Then I learned about DJs at Maharaja, and I started DJing myself.

. finding vintage clothing and digging for records.

The band he belonged to was scheduled to participate in a certain compilation album, but the release label went bankrupt, and the project was scrapped. The band boom was also on the wane, and he gave up the idea of making a living from music. Tanaka, who was a college student at the time, decided to work for an apparel company.

I think there were a lot of clothes in Tokyo, but I am from Kyoto, so secondhand clothes were the standard. There were secondhand tool fairs at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine and Toji Temple, and I would buy secondhand clothes there. I went to high school in plain clothes, and I think my interest in fashion was high. We all competed with each other. High school students would say things like, "501® must have red ears," or "Superstars must have gold tongue and be made in France" (laughs). Anyway, I loved fashion as much as I loved music, and I thought that if I couldn't make a living from music, I would prefer apparel, so I ended up joining the planning department of an apparel company in Osaka.

. On this day, Mr. Tanaka headed to his favorite vintage clothing store. This time he visited "AnchoR Vintage," a vintage clothing store in Yokohama. She had known the owner, Mr. Shinoda, for a long time, but she had not been able to visit the store for a long time due to a lack of good timing.

I met Mr. Shinoda at a vintage event. . Every time we met, we talked about vintage clothing, and I always wanted to visit the store. . Today, I finally got to come, and the store is wonderful. . they have a lot of high quality items and the prices are quite reasonable. I think it's a wonderful store that shows the personality of the owner."

When asked about the appeal of secondhand clothing, he continued, "I guess it's the 'encounter.

Even if the design and shape are good, if it doesn't fit your size, it's no good. That kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience is what I like about it. Besides, things made in the past have dreams. People in the past thought hard and made things like this for us in the future! I thought. When you come across such an item, if it fits your body and is cool, you will be moved. Nowadays, you can find anything on the Internet, but that is boring. I want to be moved when I first encounter it.

While working for an apparel company, Tanaka always kept up his music activities, and in 1992, he started his own event in Kyoto. It was a regular party every Thursday, and the only music played was movie soundtracks.

. soundtracks have cool cover jackets, don't they? Used record stores sold soundtracks of movies that had not been released in Japan, and they were surprisingly inexpensive at the time. I bought the jackets completely. Movie music includes classical, funk, soul, disco, bossa nova, and so on. So I never got tired of it. I think Japan was one of the first countries in the world to pay attention to such genres.

However, while starting such parties, he had no desire to "sell" or "make my name known. I just wanted to buy the records I wanted and play them before anyone else. I just wanted to buy the records I wanted and play them before anyone else.

." "After all, in my twenties, all I could think about was records. At the time, I was making a career change from the apparel business to being an editor, and even then, most of my salary was lost to records. . but I wasn't interested in records that other people wanted. I always thought that there were good things lurking in records that no one else would look at. It's a little bit like looking for vintage clothing. It might be a bit like looking for secondhand clothes. I still search for records in that way, but what I was digging for back then is the foundation of my musicality today.

In the 1990s, Japanese music spread its wings to the world.

While continuing his steady musical activities in Kyoto, Tanaka also began to interact with DJs active in Tokyo. He invited artists such as Towa Tei, Yasuharu Konishi, Comoesta Yaegashi, and Kenji Takimi to Kansai for events. . These activities took his own career one step further.

At that time, Towa Tei and Konishi of the Pizzicato Five were already world-renowned artists. When they went abroad, they told us about us. He told them about us when he went abroad and said, "There are some interesting people in Kyoto. Then some DJs from Europe came all the way to Kyoto to see us, and they asked us, "Why don't you release your original tracks? They asked me, "Why don't you release an original track? Actually, on their advice, I started working on my own music, and the Berlin label decided to release it before the Japanese release (laughs). I was lucky.

This led Mr. Tanaka to resign from the publishing company he was working for at the time and relocate to Tokyo. While working as a freelance editor, he also began a full-fledged music career as a DJ and musician. The artist "FPM" was born.

DJing and editing are similar, of course," he said. . Because it means taking a huge amount of material, cutting out the parts you want to deform, and conveying them to the world. However, when I was doing music while working as an editor, people would say, "He doesn't think much of music. But I didn't mind at all, because although people say that FPM is a fashionable music group, I have been listening to the core, muddy music since I was in high school, and that has always been my base. On the contrary, I thought fashionable music was punk."

In the 1990s , the Japanese music scene was even more vigorous than in the 1980s , according to Tanaka. Major music drew the attention of the public, and while working in the shadows, "it was a luxurious time," he said, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the scene at the time.

The record companies gave us a budget for a single CD that would be unimaginable nowadays. Moreover, once the CDs were released, they sold well enough to recoup the cost. In the 1990s, when Shibuya-kei was in full swing, CDs sold extremely well. As I mentioned at the beginning, overseas releases were going well, and we even went to Berlin, London, and Amsterdam to record our first album, even though we were newcomers. It felt like a bubble, didn't it? (Laughs). I received faxes every day with various licensing contracts, and I signed the ones I thought were good, but among them was a contract for the soundtrack to "Sex and the City. At the time, I thought, "Is this a porno movie? But then, a few years later, it became a boom in Japan. Later, when it was released on DVD, I received the contract again, and I realized that it was not a pornographic film. My song was also included in the soundtrack of "Austin Powers.

In the 1990s, Japanese music spread its wings to the world. Mr. Tanaka explains the reason for this.

. the Japanese had a good sense and a way of cutting out samples. In short, they had a sense of editing. I think that was new."

We want to give the greedy generation a chance.

Tanaka has been active in music since the 1990s and still performs at 120 venues a year as a DJ. He also produces and remixes his own music as well as that of numerous artists. What is important to him in his musical activities?

. "I don't care about trends, I just want to keep making things that I am satisfied with. . It is easy to do what I am good at, but I get bored. . I want to try more things in order to expand my field. I want to make music that no one has ever heard before , and I want to try DJing that no one has ever done. It is important for me to always have fun and be excited.

Currently, Mr. Tanaka's musical vector is "music that I can listen to for the rest of my life.

. recently I've finally been able to look at myself dispassionately and work at my own pace, and now that I'm over 50, I'm starting to think, "What kind of music can I listen to for the rest of my life?" Dance music is basically ephemeral and aims to be cutting-edge, but I began to wonder what kind of music transcends such times and trends.

At FPM, Tanaka hopes to pursue music that can be listened to for a lifetime, while at the same time further exploring dance music.

I have also started a project called "dododod," which is dedicated to dance music. I want to make innovative dance music in the clubs. This project allows me to separate my activities from those of FPM, and I feel that my role in the project has become clearer. Nowadays, there are not as many upbeat stories in the music industry as there used to be, and I think there are many things that need to be done. At times like this, I am happy that I still have a number of music projects that I want to do.

And Mr. Tanaka says he has a sense of hope for the 20-somethings of today.

The children who will be in their 20s from now on are of the generation whose parents listened to FPM," he said. People say that today's young people are unselfish in every way, but I think that the children of the younger generation will become extremely greedy. I feel that they have a lot in common with my generation. We were greedy in every way. I would like to hear the music created by this new generation, and if someone amazing emerges, I would like to give him or her various opportunities.

. the "Compass" is more like a compact sports car.

While we asked him about his musical roots and current thoughts, when we asked him about his daily life, he told us that he "likes to ride in a car. However, he says that he does not need a car for his life in the city center, and that he often "dares to drive" in his daily life.

I don't often drive a car on a daily basis because drinking is part of my job, but I love cars. I don't often drive on a daily basis, but I love to drive. Driving is a special time for me, as it is the only time I can be alone and relax. When I finish an album, I usually check out the newly completed soundtrack while driving. The mastering studio where the album will be finished is in Kawasaki, and I always check the newly finished songs on the way home from there.

He said that he usually refreshes his mind rather than thinking about something else while driving.

. listening to music is fine, but sometimes I dare not play music and use the time to put my mind in neutral. It's more like resetting my head while driving. Sometimes I wonder if it would be nice to leave the city and live a life with a car. I sometimes wonder about that (laughs). Then I would love to drive a jeep."

What kind of image does Mr. Tanaka have of "Jeep"? What kind of image does Mr. Tanaka have of "Jeep"?

. Actually, my father always said he wanted to drive a jeep. . Jeeps are military vehicles in the first place. They are tough, rugged, and powerful. That's what I find attractive about them. I like old clothes and I love military things, so I admire a car that has that kind of core.

The Compass that Mr. Tanaka drove this time is a new model that inherits the design of the Grand Cherokee, one of " Jeep's flagship models, but has an attractive size suitable for city driving. How did Mr. Tanaka feel when he drove this vehicle?

. "I like the idea of a size that fits in with urban living. It can turn in small circles, and I had many opportunities to make U-turns, but the turning radius is also small in proportion to its size. I found that very attractive. It was very easy to drive. I had my doubts about the ease of driving a Jeep because of its size, but once I actually drove it, those doubts were quickly put to rest.

He went on to tell us this.

. it felt like a compact sports car. . The ride is comfortable, the comfort level is excellent, and the interior is nice. The design has a masculine image, but at the same time it has a sophisticated mood.

It is important to believe in one's own strength.

More than 20 years after his debut, Tomoyuki Tanaka, aka FPM, continues to be active at the forefront of the music scene. What is the driving force behind his activities? We asked him to tell us about the standards he sets for himself.

I think it's important not to push yourself too hard. . It's not about being lazy, but it's about trusting your sixth sense. I don't mean being lazy, but trusting your sixth sense. It may be wrong to choose a job based on preconceived notions, but if I feel that something is a little different, I try to follow my instincts. On the other hand, if I think, "Maybe I should meet this person," or "Maybe I should go here," I will do so. I have been relying on my own intuition, and although I have no evidence or reason to do so, I have often been better off if I have acted on that feeling. So, in the end, I think it is important to have faith in one's own strength (laughs).