"I used to be a video-game nerd," says Takahide Higuchi, the experimental footwork producer also known as Shokuhin Matsuri in Japanese and Foodman in English. "I thought that guys who were popular with girls made music, but I was sort of stubborn and didn't try. Then, in my last year of high school I bought a music video game that had a sequencer. It was fun, so I decided to start making music."
The now-Yokohama-based Higuchi, 33, has been making electronic music since. He has had tracks on compilation albums here and is very active on SoundCloud. His cassettes have been released via independent U.S. labels Orange Milk, Digitalis and Noumenal Loom, and his latest output, an EP titled "oiss" through Yokohama-based label Ghost, is an outlandish take on Chicago's juke and footwork genres.
"Juke is a genre of dance music that originated in the so-called ghetto, but I feel like it's unconsciously heading toward becoming academic music that modern musicians are making," Higuchi says. "I personally want to explore footwork from an experimental angle. I feel like it has a lot of potential to be something other than dance music."