Masa of Audio Active has gone AWOL. I'm at the new offices of his management company, Beatink, in Shibuya. Tae, who arranged the interview, is refilling my coffee cup and apologizing, telling me that the main man is not answering his keitai and nobody knows where the hell he is.

Masa of Audio Active

This doesn't bother me 'cos the last time I interviewed Masa, in April last year, he was 30 minutes late and rushed in muttering "traffic." And, here we go, dead on time, kind of, Masa breezes in, precisely 30 minutes late and huffing, puffing and murmuring "jet lag." Not an excuse that's gonna blow the house down, but more rock 'n' roll than "traffic," right?

He sits down. Stands up. Mumbles something. Rushes out of the room. Is back in a minute. Sits down. Tae pours him a coffee. He's as ready as he's gonna be.

Masa has a damn good reason to be late and flustered. Yesterday, Audio Active got back from a grueling 20-show November tour of Europe. And the band's parting gift in Paris was a 300,000 yen excess baggage charge, only to discover at Narita that the airline forgot to load their gear. The last thing Masa needs or wants is an interview. But he's here, God bless him.

Masa and his Audio Active cohorts -- fellow programmer 2dd, drummer Nanao (who's also one half of dub duo Dry & Heavy) and new recruit Kasai on guitar -- headlined gigs in Switzerland and Germany, toured with top pals Asian Dub Foundation in France and Belgium, and also gigged in Prague and Vienna. All to promote ace new album "Spaced Dolls."

It's not over yet. This month they lead the Happers All Stars tour through Japan with Dry & Heavy, Kyoto DJ duo 1945 and a bunch of others.

When I interviewed ADF they said the only way a Japanese band could break Europe was the Audio Active way by doing the "toilet tour," taking in the grubbiest venues imaginable. Audio Active first toured Europe in '94 and have been back every year since. Are they out of the toilets yet?

"It was still the toilet tour," Masa says, adding that a big reason for this is that Audio Active reinvent themselves with each album, thus alienating a portion of their fan base, while winning over a bunch of new acolytes.

That's believable enough. The first two albums were dub orientated, then with "Apollo Choco" they went dub-techno, followed by dub-pop with 1999's "Return of the Red I" and now, with "Spaced Dolls" they've more or less returned to their reggae roots, with a little jazz and hip hop tossed in courtesy of the Yokan Horns section and Tha Blue Herb rapper Boss The MC.

You would have thought that getting a distribution deal with a major label in Europe might have helped the cause.

But Masa says: "Many of our fans hate major labels and thought we'd sold our souls. Majors in Europe are horrible, but Warner-France works well for us. Maybe at first it didn't work, as our band is never going to be a high priority on a major. Promotion was not so good for our gigs and CDs. Last year we released "Red I," but no CDs were in the record shops in Germany. That was horrible. But now things have changed as we're on an indie label inside Warner."

How was the tour? "Same as usual. Unload stuff, soundcheck, dinner, gig, load up, drive to next town. Like our lives were looping. And when we did have a day off we were running round searching for laundrettes to clean clothes we'd worn for four or five days."

"Apollo Choco" and "Return of the Red I" were concept albums loaded with marijuana references. On "Spaced Dolls" it's only the title that hints at the band's favorite mode of relaxation, as the music is left to do the smoking.

"Especially on 'Red I' a lot of the titles related to marijuana. Some people told us it was too much, especially in Europe where they are accustomed to dope. They couldn't understand why we were doing it."

What did you tell them? "I said Japanese are not so educated about marijuana as Europeans. The laws in Japan are so strict. We're not aiming to change the law but change the attitude of the people. Maybe we said too much, but now our fans know where we are coming from so we do our talking through the sounds. We make smoking music but people can still enjoy it even if they're not stoned. When we create our tunes in the studio we don't smoke."

Listening to the seamless electro-dub glide of "Spaced Dolls" you can't believe that. It's obvious that opium-chewing Audio Active built a large log fire in the center of the studio and tossed on bricks of fine quality hash at very regular intervals.

"Spaced Dolls" has a couple of ventriloquist's dummies on the cover and I'm wondering who pulls the strings and who are the dummies?

"It's about people with no self-opinion, who just listen to their bosses. In Japan so many people are puppets. Now is a good time for these people to wake up and change."

One of my favorite tracks is a cover of Ken Boothe's "You're No Good." Who would you dedicate it to?

"I'd dedicate it to the people in power. Like the police. Not the cops in the street, but the cops on the highest floors in the center of Tokyo or people who work in the courts or politicians."

At our "Red I" interview the first thing you did was to confidently declare the album to be your "masterpiece."

"Every time we release a new album it is our masterpiece. 'Spaced Dolls' is now our masterpiece and I'm very happy with it."

Right, it's 4:01 a.m., running out of time and space, and I'm realizing that "Spaced Dolls" is a little masterpiece and I haven't praised it enough. We're on track four (again), "Basspace," and my woman is lying on the futon, happy and mellow, while my ass has been ushered into a mild dance groove on the tatami, and, hey, if you know a dude that appreciates the herb you could do a lot worse than slipping "Spaced Dolls" into their stocking this Christmas. You can get up or down to it, and all your favorite records are just like that, right?