When I interviewed Taro Yasuzawa this time last year, he didn't let on that he was about to pull the plug on the event he'd been organizing for the past decade. A few weeks later, it was official: Taicoclub, the plucky all-night music festival that debuted in 2006, will be marking its penultimate edition this month before bowing out for good in 2018.
It'll be a shame to see it go. Held at a leafy mountain park in Nagano Prefecture, Taicoclub has been a regular highlight on the music festival calendar, partly by virtue of its peculiarity. It's a 24-hour party that isn't just about dancing, with a catholic booking policy that finds space for Warp Records stalwarts and underground techno DJs alongside homegrown pop acts who have scaled the upper reaches of the Oricon charts.
On paper, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. When we spoke last year, Yasuzawa said that Taicoclub's lineup had been a tricky balancing act, and was getting harder to maintain. He complained that younger music fans weaned on automated YouTube recommendations were proving less eager to step outside their comfort zones. In his view, the gulf between the Japanese and overseas music scenes was widening.