The artsclub isn’t best known for house and techno, but we have played host to some truly legendary sessions, especially on Sundays (read what the Your Mum visuals duo have to say about Lazy Dog in their interview this month), and two years ago Tomoki Tamura of the Geisha Disco Boyz stepped up to launch Disco Geisha.
Tomoki was already familiar to artsclub regulars as he had been working on the bar here long time ago, but he’s been an established DJ for a decade when he moved from Japan to London in 2004 he’d already played alongside many of America’s finest, from Derrick May and Doc Martin to the Body & Soul DJs Joe Claussell and Danny Krivit.
In London he teamed up with Kikiorix as the Geisha Disco Boyz and they started Disco Geisha as well as the thriving monthly Thursday nighter Holic (which currently alternates between East Village and The Arches in Southwark following the closure of the AKA) as well as regularly guesting at nights like Faith and producing as Tomoki & Nono.
Disco Geisha now features resident DJs Tomoki Tamura (Kikiorix is back in Japan), Italian DJ duo Eightbitrate, Naoki Shimizu, Supermethod and Derrick Torr firing up minimal beats alongside deep disco and soulful house electronica.Disco Geisha is ‘not too deep and not too hard or banging,’ says Tamura, and it attracts a cosmopolitan mix of British, Japanese and continental house connoisseurs like all the best Sunday sessions. It gets going early (free admission before 6pm helps) and there are their amazing Geisha dancers as well as live VJ visuals by Rhiz, Ryo Bamba and Iga Chiaki which can only be described as drop dead gorgeous.
It’s not only about housey beats either; last month’s live sets added ambient jazz, deep pop and funk but on June 28 the live action (from 7-9pm) includes minimal techno, folk-meets-shoegaze-indie rock and brooding electropop from the Greco-Swede band Noisetoy, Blitz & The Sheets and UK-based Japanese band Dobly.
How to sum up Disco Geisha? Sing this to the tune of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’: six DJs, five geisha dancers, lots of VJs, three live bands, two rooms of house tunes and tasty Japanese food too… myspace.com/djtomokitamura
28th June Sunday 2009 4pm-1am
Sunday Afternoon Party Disco Geisha
£5 b4 7pm /£6(free b4 6pm)
@Notting Hill Arts Club 21notting hill gate,london w11 3jq www.nottinghillartsclub.com Tel.020 7460 4459