Yasushi Takayama, from Toy’s Factory to Rush! Production
Updated: Jun 28, 2022
Our follow up interview wants to be a complete breakdown of Mo Wax Japan. Whether it be through music, design or fashion, Yasushi’s work certainly helped James Lavelle’s label to become this legendary sought after reference with a popularity that never faded. When this adventure came to an end, Yasushi created his own imprint and vowed to work with former Mo Wax artists such as Tommy Guerrero and Money Mark, but not only… 2023 will see Rush! Production’s 20th Anniversary, so let’s find out how it was launched and what it continues to achieve. Meanwhile, we wish Yasushi who turns 51 today, a happy birthday.
Jon
In my opinion, Toy's Factory gave James Lavelle an opportunity to create incredible packaging with renowned visual artists such as Sk8thing, Mankey and NIGO®, even though their names are rarely mentioned on sleeves. So who are these people and were you instrumental for them to meet in the first place?
Yasushi
When James came to Toy's Factory to start Mo Wax Japan, he and NIGO® were already friends for maybe six months to a year, and so James wanted us to work together with him. James is very good at socializing and making friends so he had NIGO® introducing me to people like Sk8thing, Mankey and other Harajuku [a district in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo that is a trend-setting are for fashion, it's also a major commercial and financial zone in Japan] designers. And even though James couldn't speak Japanese, he would just set up meetings with all these different designers and he would collaborate with A Bathing Ape (Bape) and other brands.
The Rabbit In Your Headlights single [TFCK-87962] was designed by Mankey. But the Psyence Fiction CD sleeves [regular and limited versions, both bearing the TFCK-87955 catalog number] as well as the Be There singles [TFJK-37918 & TFCK-87973 on vinyl and CD respectively] were all designed by Sk8thing, and as you might know he also designed the logo for Bape. NIGO® had the vision and he worked out the design with people like Mankey and Sk8thing, so that was also true for those releases.
Mankey and Sk8thing were both very important graphic designers at Bape. Mankey is the guy that came up with the Baby Milo characters as well as the Bapesta sneakers that have the star on them, and they collaborated with Hello Kitty and stuff. There was another person that was in charge of designing the clothes there and James Lavelle worked with someone named Kazuki Kuraishi who also used to work at Bape back then. He speaks English well and he was friends with James as well as Ian Brown, and collaborated with them on various projects.
Jon
Bringing all these emerging fashion designers to Toy's Factory was meant to serve James Lavelle's ambition for Mo Wax Japan. Not only did you create a whole range of clothes but there were also Medicom toys, RAH dolls, collaborations with Futura 2000, etc... And when you think of it, at the time it was aiming for the Japanese market only, because they were not sold in Europe or the USA. All this must have been quite expensive, so how did you convince your president to collaborate with this whole crew?
Yasushi
So back in the late 90s, Toy's Factory had a lot of momentum as a company and the president was also pushing us to work on new ideas, new projects and do things that other people weren't doing. The company as a whole kind of gave me the green light to go that direction and so doing special packaging was one aspect. One interesting fact is that the special packaging that Mo Wax Japan did, kind of influenced the other pop artists on Toy's Factory. So j-pop artists also started to do that sort of thing.
There is a pressing plant called Toyokasei in Japan and they were the only company in the country that was pressing vinyl back then, and so we would press all the CDs and LPs through them. Not only Mo Wax releases but also all the Ninja Tune stuff, and that was representing like three to five titles each month. Since we were placing a lot of orders with them, we were able to bring down the costs. We would get good feedback from people in the industry or the artists themselves who would say, "You guys are doing some really cool packaging," so that helped a lot. And as the UNKLE project was kind of the peak of all the special packaging, that allowed me to do it also for other projects.
Jon
Were you able to create test pressings at the plant?
Yasushi
Working with Mo Wax, one of the important points was to be able to release records in Japan earlier than the other countries. So we would try and make test pressings, but often we would be working under such tight deadlines that there wasn't enough time to get them before the street releases actually hit the market. In the end, I would just kind of let Toyokasei proceed with quality control.
Jon
Were you usually receiving Mo Wax DATs from the UK with unmastered tracks on them that you'd have to EQ in Japan before bringing them to Toyokasei, or was the music sent to you ready for mass production?
Yasushi
So with Mo Wax, I would often receive a DAT with the master of an album. But then another important sales point was to have exclusive bonus tracks for the Japanese market, so I'd usually get extra DATs for them. For example, I'd get three other DATs in case there would have been three bonus tracks.
The album might have been mastered in the UK, but I would have an engineer in Japan master the bonus tracks so it would fit the same sound as the album. We also released a bunch of compilations for Mo Wax, so that would be like 15 to 20 tracks. In that case I would have as many DATs sent to me and those would have to be mastered in Japan from scratch. For LPs of those compilations we would sometimes have to change the song sequencing compared to the CDs and that would also have to be done in Japan. As you could fit 79 minutes onto a CD, I would try to get as many bonus tracks as I could to fill it up. And as I was saying, oftentimes we were on a tight schedule so I would kind of leave the whole process up to Toyokasei because I trusted them.
Jon
Did James have any final approval on the artworks used in Japan, or was it your call?
Yasushi
At the beginning of the design process, James would have an idea that he would directly communicate to NIGO®, or he would tell me about it and I'd have to talk to NIGO® and Sk8thing about James's ideas. He'd go, "I've talked about these design ideas with Futura, can you talk to Sk8thing about that?"
Sk8thing would usually come up with ideas of things he'd be into at a certain time, and he was very much into the Tron movie [dir. Steven Lisberger, 1982] at the time of the Psyence Fiction release. I don't remember if it was James or Sk8thing who said to use Tron, but they talked about it and it became the main idea for the Japanese sleeves design. There was a rule that I would have to get final approval from James for the design before it came out.
Jon
As you said, James is a really minded kind of person and so I'd like to know if there are some ideas that were turned down by Toy's Factory because they'd be too expensive or impractical?
Yasushi
For the most part, all of James's ideas did come to fruition including compilations or working with Japanese artists. Although we were meant to release an album with Indopepsychics [DJ Kensei, D.O.I and NIK] but we didn't manage to sign the artists.
Jon
Toyokasei pressed all the records and CDs too, but what about the sleeve printing job?
Yasushi
Toyokasei is also a manufacturing company, so they made the packaging, printed the sleeves and pressed the records and CDs too. And I know that record sales dropped for a while, but thanks to the vinyl revival, Toyokasei has been at the top of the industry again for the last 10 years.
Jon
I have to say that Japanese records are always incredibly well put together. They have stiff sleeves to stand the test of time, they usually come with an obi and insert, there's no clicks or pops ever so they sound crystal clear and they are usually in good condition. I mean, compared to what you can get in Europe or even in the US for that price especially in regard to vintage music, I think it's important for a collector, and so I tend to purchase Japanese pressings.
Yasushi
In Japan it was the opposite back then. When it comes to Toy's Factory, one of the main reasons we were working with Toyokasei is because they were in Japan and we needed to work with a company that could accommodate our schedules.
But in reality, Japanese people always really preferred records from the US and Europe. Like for hip hop 12", we always thought that the way they were made in the US looked and sounded really cool. For like house and techno 12", we always really admired the records that came from the UK and Europe. We kind of liked the fact that their sleeves were very thin and glossy because we thought they looked better compared to the Japanese records that had thick matte cardboard sleeves. But now [that I'm older] I understand a lot of collectors around the world who like the Japanese pressings because of this actual packaging.
Jon
In May of 95, there was this first Mo Wax Tour in Japan, which was actually put together by Avex Trax, the label that was housing Mo Wax from 1993 to 1996. It was called The Battle Royal Tour and it featured DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, James Lavelle, U.F.O., Mondo Grosso, Monday Michiru, but also Futura 2000 and Katsura Moshino who both created live art installment on stage. Katsura Moshino also designed the different posters and flyers to promote what remains Shadow's longest Japanese Tour to date. So that was before the deal with Toy's Factory, but since you were already working with some of those artists at the time, I figured that you might have been to one of those shows.
Yasushi
Mo Wax was still kind of following that acid jazz scene at the time and [since I was into that kind of music myself], I did go to that event because I had been put on the guestlist through someone at U.F.O. That was probably at Liquid Room [Shinjuku, Tokyo on the 6th of May 1995], but I didn't talk to James or Josh at the time.
Jon
On the 6th of August 97, the Mo Wax Japan launch party was held at Aoyama Blue in Tokyo, and this time it was of course a Toy's Factory event. It featured DJ Shadow and James Lavelle plus NIGO® and Takagi Kan. What do you recall about that event and how was it put together?
Yasushi
The event wasn't just a regular concert, it was media orientated for Mo Wax Japan to gain attention and so I had a lot of executives come to the show from places like Tower Records and HMV. I remember that it was an early show, like from 7PM to 10PM. And then the president of Toy's Factory was also there giving a speech saying, "We're starting Mo Wax Japan so we want your support!"
A year before that, Mo Wax was still evolving into that acid jazz scene. But then at this event James wanted to show that he was going in a new direction with a different sound, and that's why James asked people like Takagi Kan and also NIGO® to DJ that night.
In terms of merchandising, NIGO® had produced special tee shirts [two different compressed tees shaped like Blade Runner guns] as well as a 12" round sticker. All these items had been designed by Sk8thing specifically for that event and only given to the media people who came to the show.
I don't remember exactly if the Creative Man agency contacted all the artists overseas or if it was us at Toy's Factory, but they definitely helped put on the show. I also remember James talking to Shadow and saying, "This is not a regular show, this is to promote the Mo Wax Japan label and there will be some interviews, so please come over." And I also remember Shadow saying, "I have these two friends who are very talented rappers and if I can bring them up then I'll come," so La