Biography of ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U
Twenty million people watching a Tokyo DJ booth
The Boiler Room set recorded in Tokyo at the end of 2024—released the following year and already nearing twenty million views—didn't soften anything: bare-chested, impossible transitions, and an hour ranging from The Prodigy to SOPHIE, from hardcore to acid house. ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U went from being a secret of the Japanese scene to a global phenomenon without changing his expression: DJing as if his entire body were inside the mixing desk.
Osaka, Future Terror and Zone Unknown
Born in Osaka in 1979, he grew up among the Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles vinyls his father sold in a garage. He started DJing in 2008, asking for a late-night slot in a small venue with huge JBL speakers: Slayer played right after Richie Hawtin and the room exploded. The turning point came in 2014, when he met DJ Nobu and was invited to Future Terror in Tokyo. Since then, he established himself as the DJ's DJ in Japan and founded Zone Unknown in Osaka and Kobe, a party that even featured Arca singing live over his set, as well as Palmistry or Kamixlo. Until then, he balanced DJing with a construction job.
The tumor that turned DJing into a profession
In 2016, an epileptic seizure and a malignant brain tumor took him out of construction: two craniotomies, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. He left his day job and turned DJing into his profession. He got his first passport at 37 to play in Shanghai. Then came three consecutive editions of Berlin Atonal, the RA.849 podcast for Resident Advisor, and in 2022, Midnight is Comin' for the Singaporean label Midnight Shift: a descent into ambient, drone, and noise with tracks by Japanese friends, praised by Pitchfork as one of the most immersive mixes of recent years.
A selector without a genre map
His CDJ technique—and a curiosity that ranges from teenage metal to Underworld—allows him to unite techno, gabber, trance, pop, noise, and hardcore without the floor breaking. Since 2019, he has participated as a DJ and performer in TRANCE, the long-duration installation by Tianzhuo Chen. In 2024, he appeared as a DJ at an underground party in the film Happyend by Neo Sora. After leaving Osaka for Tokyo around 2019, his calendar has opened up to Coachella, the Montreux Jazz Festival, Sziget, and supporting The Prodigy in the UK, with a "no war" pendant around his neck and the same premise as always: if the music is good, it fits.
