Summary: (http://testpressing.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/168-DR-ROB.png) The Tokyo-To Kissas were made, one a month, during 2007. My first year in Japan. Prior to the move to Tokyo, I had spent much of my free time recreating Harvey`s Moonshadow sessions in a shed at the end of our garden in Croydon, so I was already on a pretty mellow one. Then someone, probably Tim, gave me a load of Jose`s Café Del Mar sets, about ten of them on a CD. While a Pre-90s Balearic obsessive, my attention had been focused solely on Alfredo`s box, Blancmange b-sides, wondering why there weren’t more records like The Woodentops, and why you couldn’t get hired playing records like that anymore. I knew very little about the Café Del Mar. Although I had thrown up there once. Listening to Jose’s tapes, I thought “I’ve got loads of stuff like this. I can do this.” I had originally planned to sell all my records in Japan. To quit DJing. To let it go. Anyone who knows me will know that I am always saying this. But something always seems to come along and spark my interest again. DJ History, the Sarcastic mix, Baldelli’s tapes. I fast found that I couldn’t “do this” and that telling a hopefully entertaining story using largely beat-less instrumentals is a lot harder than you might think. A fact that anyone who has listened to a To Kissa can attest to. I was uneducated, but with assistance from friends like Moonboots and Jolyon, who provided mixes and IDs, I began to acquire “Café Classics” from Tokyo`s countless second hand record shops. Awash with Windham Hill and ECM. The To Kissas were really just compilations, made for friends, of what I`d found that month, with a few other things I thought might fit thrown in. Paul was kind enough to run with them. After I’d done a couple, I realised that they were never gonna be tributes to the Café. To this day I think I’ve only made one “mix” with a beach in mind. They were all made late at night, when the kids had gone to bed. And I had started drinking. That year I was a mess. I had quit my job to move and look after the boys. I was often on my own. After dropping my sons off at school, I thought about killing myself pretty much every morning. But then there would be the laundry and the vacuuming to do. I had just turned forty, and mid-life (well, you can only hope) and my hormones, as they approached the cliff at a clip, were a devil on my shoulder taunting me to continually prove that I was a man before it was too late. I never thought I measured myself that way. I guess we all do if we are honest. I was also hung up on the language. I was lost. I spent hours every day studying. And still I was lost. My frustration and fear would peak into bouts of anger. Tired of being ignored. Tired of being treated like an idiot. “I’ll have you know I’ve got a PhD.” But I was an idiot. I couldn’t read or write. And I was essentially deaf and dumb. Paul once said to me “You seem to be on a bit of a downer about Tokyo. How can you be on a downer in such a fantastic city?” He made me feel guilty. I was on a downer, and I was blaming the city, which wasn’t fair. Tokyo is an amazing place. It was just me. And my age. Consumed with regret (such a bad place to be) and having the “luxury” of the time to reflect on all my bad habits and daily mistakes. Driven crazy by all the hard naked bodies I would never get to see. The lingerie of dreams. Gone. Days bitter with “Why did I never sleep with a blonde when I was at university?” Nights awake thinking “I’ll probably never see my grandchildren”. “Never. Never. Never” was my mantra. The To Kissas were something to lose myself in. In hindsight, to wallow in. I’d never call it a night and it would always end with me waking on the floor, ‘Let It Bleed’ still playing, and the weight, or lack of it, of the two litre carton of sake informing me that it would be a few days before I would feel “normal” again. I missed my friends, and I missed my youth.
