¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U (Yousuke Yukimatsu) is a Japanese DJ from Osaka, born in 1979. He is known for an exceptionally broad approach to music selection: techno, ambient, noise, trance, gabber, bass music, experimental, pop, rock and metal can all become part of the same set without conventional genre boundaries. Yukimatsu began performing in 2008, and a major turning point came when DJ Nobu invited him to play Future Terror in 2014. He later launched his own event series Zone Unknown and TRNS-, took part in performances by Asian Dope Boys and appeared at Berlin Atonal for three consecutive years. Recordings for HÖR Berlin and Boiler Room significantly expanded his international audience, while one of the most important physical releases in his catalogue is the mix album Midnight Is Comin’.
Childhood and musical interests
Yousuke Yukimatsu was born and raised in Osaka. Music had been part of his life since childhood, although for a long time the future DJ did not view it as a possible profession. His father was a fan of Deep Purple and classic rock, and for a period the family even ran a small record shop.
Yousuke himself was initially drawn to popular music. During middle school, his interests shifted toward hard rock and metal, followed later by Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, The Prodigy and other artists from the alternative and electronic scenes.
This musical background is essential to understanding his later approach. Yukimatsu did not develop within a single club genre: rock, metal, pop and electronic music existed from the beginning as parts of the same collection. That same principle would later become the foundation of his DJ sets.
First performances
Yukimatsu started DJing relatively late. In 2008, he unexpectedly received an opportunity to play at the KUHIO PANIC party organised by SPINNUTS and MITSUKI. After that, he began actively looking for opportunities to perform in Osaka and nearby Kobe.
At the time, music was not his main profession. Yukimatsu worked in construction and bought equipment with money earned through physical labour. Before that, after finishing school, he had considered becoming a physiotherapist, but his interest in music gradually became stronger.
Even his early performances were notable for the unusually broad range of material. Yukimatsu could sharply change tempo and genre if he felt there was the right emotional connection between two tracks. As a result, his sets from the very beginning resembled musical montage more than a conventional programme built around a single style.
DJ Nobu and Future Terror
2014 became a key year. After performing alongside DJ Nobu and experimental musician NHK yx Koyxen, Yukimatsu was invited to open the main floor at Future Terror.
DJ Nobu’s series occupies a special place in the history of Japanese underground techno, so appearing at Future Terror significantly expanded Yukimatsu’s audience and strengthened his reputation among musicians and within the professional club community.
He increasingly began performing alongside artists whose approaches extended far beyond conventional techno. In 2015, Yukimatsu repeatedly supported performances by the experimental group goat, appeared on DOMMUNE, played b2b with Lee Gamble as part of a PAN showcase and opened for Oneohtrix Point Never in Osaka.
These performances clearly illustrate the direction of his development: rather than moving toward one defined club style, Yukimatsu became increasingly immersed in the territory between techno, experimental music, noise and avant-garde electronics.
Zone Unknown
In 2016, Yukimatsu launched his own event series Zone Unknown in Osaka and Kobe.
The name precisely reflected the concept: the programme was not supposed to fit any predetermined genre. Guests included Shapednoise, Imaginary Forces, Kamixlo, Aïsha Devi, Palmistry, Endgame, Equiknoxx and Rabit.
One particularly notable episode was a performance by Arca in Osaka, during which the artist performed vocals over Yukimatsu’s DJ set.
Zone Unknown became more than just his own party series; it also served as a way to connect Japan’s experimental scene with a new international club culture.
Illness and the decision to pursue music professionally
The same year, 2016, also became a major turning point in Yukimatsu’s personal life. After an epileptic seizure, he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour.
He underwent two operations as well as courses of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Before his illness, DJing existed alongside steady construction work; after treatment, Yukimatsu decided to leave his previous profession and devote himself entirely to music.
His international career therefore began to develop only after several years of local work and at a comparatively mature age. Yukimatsu did not follow the typical electronic-music model of the young producer rapidly breaking through early in life: his primary instrument remained not a studio discography, but the art of the DJ set.
Berlin Atonal and the international scene
In 2017, Yukimatsu performed for the first time at Berlin Atonal, one of Europe’s key festivals for experimental electronic music. He was invited back in 2018 and again in 2019.
Three consecutive appearances at Atonal became one of the most important international milestones of his early career. The festival’s space between techno, noise, ambient, experimental electronics and audiovisual art was almost perfectly suited to his musical method.
Yukimatsu later began appearing regularly at European festivals and clubs, including Berghain, Dekmantel and other landmark venues.
TRNS-
In 2018, Yukimatsu launched another series of his own at Tokyo’s WWW venue: TRNS-.
Like Zone Unknown, the project was built around the intersection of genres, although each programme could have its own thematic basis. Within TRNS-, Yukimatsu explored the relationship between club music and dancehall, metal and other musical territories.
The series became another expression of his curatorial approach: rather than organising parties around a specific genre, he built programmes around an idea and the possible relationships between artists.
Asian Dope Boys and TRANCE
A separate part of Yukimatsu’s career is connected with Chinese artist Tianzhuo Chen and the collective Asian Dope Boys.
Yukimatsu took part in extended performances of TRANCE, which combine electronic music, dance, costumes, video, religious symbolism and theatrical action.
In these productions, the DJ does not perform the conventional role of constantly maintaining a dance rhythm. Ambient, drone, noise and almost beatless passages can be just as important as techno or gabber.
His participation in TRANCE highlights one of Yukimatsu’s defining characteristics: he treats a DJ set not only as a service to the dancefloor, but as a form of dramaturgy.
Moving to Tokyo and Boiler Room x Super Dommune
Around the turn of the 2010s into the 2020s, Yukimatsu moved from Osaka to Tokyo. By then he already had an international reputation within the experimental electronic scene, but remained relatively unknown to a wider audience.
A major role was played by his Boiler Room x Super Dommune recording from 2020. The set became a clear demonstration of his method: experimental electronics, club music and widely known songs were combined without any attempt to build the programme around one genre.
The main connecting element was not style, but internal tension. One track could continue another through timbre, vocals, dynamics or emotional state, even when the pieces formally belonged to completely different musical worlds.
How Yukimatsu builds his DJ sets
The defining characteristic of ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U is his ability to work less with genres themselves than with relationships between tracks.
He can connect techno with pop, noise with trance, metal with gabber or ambient with an extremely hard club track. Yet such transitions are not used merely for the sake of surprise.
For Yukimatsu, what matters is the function of a track within a specific moment. One piece creates tension, another provides release, a third changes the emotional tone or prepares the next climax.
As a result, his sets can be unpredictable in terms of genre while still maintaining a clear internal logic.
Yukimatsu also makes no fundamental distinction between popular and underground music. A familiar pop song can be used with the same seriousness as a rare Japanese noise release if it serves the necessary dramatic purpose.
Mixing technique
Behind the apparent spontaneity of his performances lies precise command of CDJs and a vast amount of prepared material.
Yukimatsu does not always aim for long, technically invisible blends. Sometimes the exact moment of changing tracks becomes more important: a sharp transition can be more effective than a prolonged seamless mix.
He actively uses loops, EQ, tempo changes and rapid cut-style transitions. Individual tracks may be played significantly faster or slower than their original versions.
This approach allows him to treat existing tracks as material for a new work. That is why Yukimatsu’s performances are often perceived not simply as a sequence of recordings, but as musical montage being created in real time.
His physical collection includes thousands of records, although his actual musical archive is far larger. Yukimatsu constantly studies both new and old music, memorising not only individual tracks but also the possible relationships between them.
Lazy Rouse and Remember Your Dream
Yukimatsu has never built his career around a conventional producer discography. Most of his officially released works are DJ mixes.
The Japanese label Black Smoker Records released Lazy Rouse and later Remember Your Dream. Both releases presented Yukimatsu not only as a club DJ, but also as the creator of longer-form narrative programmes.
He has also recorded special mixes for Electronic Explorations, Rinse Radio and Grey Matter Archives. For the latter, Yukimatsu created a programme made entirely from music by Autechre.
003 Yousuke Yukimatsu
In 2018, the MBE series released the cassette mix 003 Yousuke Yukimatsu.
For this work, Yukimatsu used exclusively music by Japanese artists, creating an approximately ninety-minute survey of the country’s experimental scene.
The first edition was released in a very limited run of just 50 copies. In 2024, the mix was reissued.
Two Mixes
In 2020, French label FIRECAMP released the cassette Two Mixes By Yousuke Yukimatsu.
The two sides of the release represent opposite states within his music collection. The first focuses on ambient, drone and beatless experimental music, while the second moves through techno, tribal, bass music, trance and more physical club material.
This contrast reflects Yukimatsu’s thinking particularly well. Calm experimental music and extremely intense rave are not opposites for him; they are simply different ways of creating and changing tension.
Midnight Is Comin’
On 17 June 2022, Singaporean label Midnight Shift released Midnight Is Comin’, the most significant physical release in Yukimatsu’s discography.
It is not a traditional artist album. Yukimatsu acted as curator and mix creator, while the music itself was written by invited producers. Contributors included orhythmo, SPINNUTS, YPY, KEIHIN, DJ Nobu, Gabber Modus Operandi, Coni, CITY, Ryo Murakami, Sapphire Slows, COMPUMA and Albino Sound.
Musically, Midnight Is Comin’ differs substantially from Yukimatsu’s most energetic club performances. Ambient, drone, noise and experimental electronics occupy the centre, while the tracks develop through long transitions without the need to maintain a constant dance rhythm.
The project received strong reviews from the music press and at the same time became a kind of document of the Asian experimental scene. Rather than compiling well-known international tracks, Yukimatsu used his growing audience to introduce music by friends and artists close to him.
RA.849 and HÖR Berlin
In September 2022, Resident Advisor released the two-hour mix RA.849. It demonstrated the full breadth of Yukimatsu’s method, moving from meditative and almost beatless recordings to highly intense club material.
Even more significant for a broader online audience was his performance for HÖR Berlin in November of the same year. The recording quickly accumulated millions of views and introduced Yukimatsu to a large number of listeners with no previous connection to Japan’s experimental scene.
The success is particularly revealing: by the time the HÖR set went viral, Yukimatsu had already been performing as a DJ for more than a decade and had built a stable international professional reputation.
Boiler Room Tokyo and the global breakthrough
The next dramatic expansion of his audience came through Boiler Room Tokyo, recorded in late 2024 and published in January 2025.
The video went viral almost immediately: it passed two million views in roughly ten days, after which the audience continued to grow. For Yukimatsu, this marked a transition from cult status within professional and experimental circles to much broader international recognition.
His performance style drew additional attention. Yukimatsu physically reacts to his own transitions, dances and visibly experiences changes in intensity alongside the music. During the most energetic parts of his sets, he often removes his shirt.
This stage behaviour was not created in response to viral success: recordings of much earlier performances show essentially the same way of moving and reacting behind the decks.
Following the success of Boiler Room, his touring geography expanded even further, including his first full tours of the United States and appearances at major international festivals.
Yukimatsu as a selector
The career of ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U is unusual within contemporary electronic music because his own studio productions have never been its main driving force.
His central artistic work remains the DJ set itself.
Yukimatsu’s authorship appears through music selection, sequencing, contrasts, tempo manipulation and the ability to make already existing works interact in ways their original creators may never have intended.
Even Midnight Is Comin’ follows this model. Yukimatsu did not write the tracks included on it, but his selection and dramaturgy turn material by twelve different musicians into a unified work.
Selected discography
Official mixes and mix albums
- Lazy Rouse — Black Smoker Records
- Remember Your Dream — Black Smoker Records
- 003 Yousuke Yukimatsu — MBE series, 2018
- Two Mixes By Yousuke Yukimatsu — FIRECAMP, 2020
- Midnight Is Comin’ — Midnight Shift, 2022
- 003 Yousuke Yukimatsu — 2024 Edition — MBE series, 2024
Selected official and landmark set series
- Future Terror — 2014
- Berlin Atonal — 2017–2019
- Boiler Room x Super Dommune — 2020
- RA.849 — 2022
- HÖR Berlin — 2022
- Boiler Room Tokyo — 2025
¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U occupies a rare position in contemporary electronic music: his international recognition was driven not by a series of original club hits, but by the art of DJing itself. Yukimatsu can work with metal, techno, ambient, trance, noise, gabber and pop with equal seriousness, treating genre not as a boundary but as one of the tools of dramaturgy. His journey from small parties in Osaka and manual construction work to Berlin Atonal, Berghain and a viral Boiler Room set took many years, but the central principle has barely changed: what matters is not the category a track belongs to, but what it can do to a specific moment within a set.
