NOGERA...Psychedelic Super Rock'nRoll Drummer. He started the drums at the age of ten, which he studied by himself. Inspired by R&B and rock music, he started his professional career in the late 70's as vocal & percussions of "Noge Harlem Band" in Yokohama Japan.In the 80's to 90's, he devoted himself to world music (Brazilian, African, Reggae, etc.), and he co-starred with various bands and artists, and he interested in the african dance, and studied it.He played as a drummer, percussions, and DJ in all kinds of dance music such as HipHop,Dancehall,House,etc and performed on the main concert hall and the stadium all over Japan, New York and France.In the late 90’s he discovered Minimal and trance music, and performed at "Rainbow 2000", the first large-scale outdoors techno music festival in Japan, with minimal techno unit "Hyper Cube Jr." After that he joined "KINOCOSMO", the trance music rock band. He worked as a staff and as a performer in various places in Japan, (New York, and France) and extended his activities to Taiwan and China. In 2001, joining to "SHPONGLE", he has made up a lot of wonderful shows as a member of SHPONGLE. Besides his live performance, he also got involved in another project called "Open Tuning", which means at the same time a spiritual purpose of greeting and respect for the land where party is held, and the technical meaning of tuning on music side. As an amazing music player, he is now a miraculous party monster and a essential artist of Japan.
Kotaro lives for music. He is a born and bred Tokyo boy who started his music career in the early 90's as an art director for club events. During that time he travelled extensively and bought back with him the music and the feelings he had experienced when travelling especially from the party scene he had been part of in Goa. He was only one of very few Japanese who had experienced this hot, new, electronic music movement that was to become the trance scene and got busy consulting as artistic director in record shops, organizing events and DJing. Kotaro was one of the first Japanese to DJ trance music in Japan since the scene started around 1994. As a DJ he is sophisticated and very innovative making him one of the hottest players here in Tokyo. He is continually evolving musically so its not surprise that every year without fail all of the main party organizers here in Japan. His reputation as a cutting edge DJ has spread to Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and India from where he is constantly receiving offers to play. For Kotaro part of DJ'ing is about making the perfect environment for good music. He has worked with many different record labels, music organizations and event producers not just as a DJ but as an event organizer, music co-ordinator, artistic producer and photographer. He is constantly introducing the scene to new and groundbreaking music that catches his ears from around the world. He has made an important role for himself here in our trance/techno scene because he has been there from the begining and continues to write the future with his slick selection of sounds.