Selections: Wata Igarashi

Wata Igarashi’s ‘Agartha’ on Kompakt was one of DJ Mag’s favourite albums of 2023. As Claire Francis put it in her write-up, the Japanese DJ and producer surpassed the already high expectations on his long-awaited debut, “crafting a truly unique musical statement that incorporates krautrock and jazz, and winds up sounding a bit like the electronic album Pink Floyd never made.”

Before the album’s release, Igarashi was already established as an electronic virtuoso, with his releases on labels including Midgar, Delsin and The Bunker NY demonstrating his beautifully psychedelic strain of techno. He’s a prolific self-releaser on Bandcamp too, and he followed up the release of ‘Agartha’ in November with the ‘Forgotten Tales’ and ‘Lost Journey’ EPs, both of which were produced around the same time as the album and found him exploring the outer reaches of kosmische and dubby ambience.

In January, Igarashi debuted on fabric Originals alongside DJ Nobu. While Nobu’s ‘Flares’ is a deep and eerie dive into a trippy techno wormhole, Igarashi’s ‘泡 (Abuku)’ is an ecstatic spiral of light and colour tailored made for peak-time. Pure joy. 

For his Selections, Igarashi swerves into techno mode, spotlighting the deep, weird and driving tracks that fill the high-energy peaks of his own sets. Dive in below.