Tokyo Hot N0800 April 2012

While the world was downloading Spotify, N0800’s music lovers clung to physical media and raw noise. The district’s most famous venue, a fictional-but-typical space called (a pun on the district code), was packed every weekend with Shoegaze revival bands and IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) producers. April’s lineup was heavy on post-rock melancholy—bands mimicking té and Toe —with real-time visuals projected from malfunctioning VHS players. The crowd didn’t dance; they swayed, nursing $5 highballs and chain-smoking inside (smoking was still permitted in many small venues until stricter laws began in 2013).

Spring in Tokyo is always a manicured explosion of pink and white. But if you were standing at the grid reference N0800—the nebulous zone between the western skyscrapers of Shinjuku and the youth-culture capital of Shibuya—in , the air smelled different. It smelled of renewal, of digital rebellion, and of a city cautiously stepping out from the shadow of 2011. Tokyo Hot N0800 April 2012

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