DJ Shufflemaster

Tatsuya Kanamori established himself rapidly as DJ Shufflemaster, one of the rare Japanese techno producers to earn worldwide attention inside the hard techno movement of the late 1990s through both original tracks and remixes. He began as a dedicated artist on Tokyo’s Subvoice imprint, issuing several of his earliest EPs there. His standing beyond Japan grew chiefly through close ties to leading European figures in the genre, among them Adam Beyer, Joel Mull, Ben Sims, and Cari Lekebusch. After remixing and collaborating with those artists plus additional prominent names, Berlin’s Tresor—then widely viewed as the foremost global hard techno institution—naturally extended an invitation for him to cut his debut full-length. EXP surfaced on the label in 2001, a balanced album packed with dancefloor-focused hard techno cuts that displayed Kanamori’s signature sound and thereby positioned him among the first Japanese producers to achieve international recognition.