Takahide Higuchi is drawn to simple pleasures. The Japanese producer also known as Foodman first created music in a PlayStation game called Depth, and his rudimentary experiments with the technology sparked an understanding that anyone can be an artist, regardless of skill or expertise. That notion in turn informed a guiding principle of his creative practice: minimize excess and maximize impact. Foodman constructs miniature fun houses across 2014’s Drum Desu, a 20-track cassette filled with prankster synth exercises that exude naive charm, and on 2015’s Cloudwork he places a track filled with pneumatic drills (“Kougeki Robo”) alongside a dreamy footwork heater (“Hitou He Go”). His ability to traverse genres stems from his interest in sound design and the degree of attention he pays to individual tones. His music treats every noise as a world unto itself, where timbre and pitch can collide to create dizzying rhythms.
Foodman’s beloved 2016 album, Ez Minzoku, draws a line between Chicago footwork and traditional African rhythms on “Minzoku,” while “Rock” combines MIDI rock guitar and bright, straightforward synth tones into something resembling joyous children’s music. His ability to collapse musical styles and transcend taste (MIDI instruments appear across his discography) is among his greatest strengths; even the glossiest IDM visions on 2021’s Yasuragi Land don’t feel like a concession to trends as much as an expansion of his palette. “Sanbashi,” which forges a minimalist pop song from bare-bones percussion and the dreamy singing of Cotto Center, is especially thrilling. Foodman’s use of vocals on 2023’s “Pichi Pichi” is more oblique—the spoken or chanted lyrics excavate the percussive nature of the Japanese language and seamlessly fold it into the rest of the production. That new direction should come as no surprise for fans who’ve followed his career: according to the Foodman ethos, making music should feel like play
Foodman Jana Rush, DJ Hank, EQ Why, Mukqs, and Toxic Yuri Love Triangle open. Sat 12/14, 9 PM, location to be provided the same morning to anyone who buys a ticket via Resident Advisor (ra.co/events/2008798), $25. 21+