Wall Street brokers, Japanese breakers, British bikers: the music of shinjuku ZULU will move 'em all, hips and heart alike. Flowing through elements of house, techno, breakbeat, hiphop and world, (call it eclectronica, but only if you must) the 'ku 'lu crew captures the zeitgeist of the cities of the world in which the members have lived: Tokyo, New York, Moscow, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto-- but unleashes the energies of the areas from which they draw inspiration: America, the Middle East, Northern Europe and Africa. Derrick Riddock chats with K.I.A. 'bout beats, business and samurai-rockabilly:

C: How did you arrive at the name 'shinjuku ZULU'?
K.I.A: Well, I almost went with 'all the bright tribes' but that 'tribe' word is so overused...anyway I've always had a fascination with Japan and Africa. Shinjuku is one of the major downtowns in Tokyo. There's a ton of neon, huge skyscrapers with giant tvs on the side, the red light district is there, as is the city government, and the train station has literally millions of people passing through it every hour... it's sheer sensory overload. New York on fast forward. Zulu, of course, is the African tribe. Africa, to me...is the opposite of neon. So these two words came together in my head when I was half-asleep, and sounded so rhythmic and musical together I had to use it. It's kinda mysterious sounding, sounds like a chant or a mantra. Basically it's meant to be a name that is strong, and inclusive.

C: When you say 'inclusive' do you mean...
K.I.A: Different groups everybody belongs to, whether it's a gang of businessmen or a Native American tribe or a Serbo-Croatian left-handed Buddhist bowling club, or whatever. All of 'em. All of us.

C: Describe your music...
K.I.A: Someone once described our music as dance meets Dead Can Dance. But it's more like Grandmaster Flash meets Phillip Glass. Beats with beauty. Earthiness mixed with something celestial. What's still missing from a lot of electronica, there's too much "Who needs to feel when your feet just go?" My music's for the Dervishes, you know, who dance their way to God, or for the ravers into bliss, or for some Obeah ritual where you dance till you get overtaken by this huge feeling. For me, that emotional connect comes through the human voice; but by not always using actual words, you also don't limit the interpretation of the tune. Sorta like an abstract painting. The songs of mine with chants or word cut-ups short-circuit your literal mind and directly accesses your feelings. And the songs with real lyrics aren't of the 'Love you/ gonna do you' variety. You won't roll your eyes and guess the next rhyme.

C: So would you say it's dance music?
K.I.A: Well... yes. It works at the clubs, but the phrase 'dance music' seems like it sometimes has the word 'just' in front of it, and we make songs you'd want to listen to at home or in other situations as well. So...no. There are a number of chillin' tunes on the cd.

C: Tell me about the band.
K.I.A: It's me, primarily, with an orbiting group of people I want to work with. Vocalists, percussionists, jugglers...I made a couple false starts making music, once with doing the turntable thing in the 'eighties, which progressed to some nasty songs a friend and I slung together with a four-track and a bad drum machine. I just wasn't able to do the songs I had in my head,the technology wasn't there. So I focused on my painting, which was to cut and splice various technological and tribal elements together into something visually cohesive...then computers and the proper software came along which allowed me to do that aurally. So I really believe I wasn't meant to make music until a certain time.

C: How has living in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Toronto, influenced the music?
K.I.A: Obviously the more you see and hear, the more stuff you have to draw upon. Like one strong memory I have was from a trip to Istanbul... the city is full of mosques; at sunset each would play from the minarets the call to prayer. Each one starts at a slightly different ime, each one has a different voice, and you get these overlapping echoes happening. So for about this five-minute period, just as the sky's turning color, you're surrounded by wave upon wave of this absolutely beautiful, exotic, mystical singing, and it fills the whole sky. That experience is something I'd like to be able to--in fact, tried on the last track of the cd--to impart to people. That, and the hypersci-fi energy of Tokyo. And the light of Santa Monica. Actually, what's really interesting is seeing how cultures sample and filter other cultures. The samurai-rockabilly guys in Tokyo were a crazy collision of cultural aesthetics. Come to think of it, a friend told me there were also some rockabilly guys in Moscow. But if they battled, the Japanese guys'ld win. The Muscovites wore square-toed boots, but the Tokyojins wore wicked sharp pointy shoes. And their hair looked very, very hard.

C: So what's next for shinjuku ZULU?
K.I.A.: Writing more tracks for the next cd. Funk up the website which I want to exist not just as a place to get info and buy cd's, but as it's own interesting experience. It'll be a novel-movie-song-puzzle-game thing. At the very least there'll be hidden things, hidden lyrics, hidden images, which people will have to find, or will stumble upon.