When Chiba-based hip-hop producer Yuta Yamaoka, better known as Pigeondust, isn't busy flipping through crates of dusty vinyl at used record shops, he's at home dissecting and connecting bits and pieces of sounds, lifted from those records.

"I could make music from scratch if I wanted to, but by sampling I can achieve something I could never have made by myself," he says. "If I take a five-second sample, that five seconds contains the essence of all the years of experience that particular musician went through up until the point that recording was made."

A producer in this day and age can choose from a plethora of affordable and easy-to-use music production software and hardware, and doesn't have to rely on borrowed sounds. But sampling is still the method of choice for Yamaoka.