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Dirty Disco 622: A Global Deep House Journey From Tokyo to Paris and Beyond Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 621: A Deep, Warm and Balearic Journey Through the Global Underground Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 620: From London to Tokyo, A Global Journey Through Deep and Soulful Electronic Music Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 619: A Deep, Soulful and Underground House Journey Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 618: The Global Groove Renaissance Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 617: Bridges of Funk & Frequency Where Soul Meets Sound Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 616: How Music Connects, Heals & Transforms Kono Vidovic
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Dirty Disco 615: Futuristic Disco Meets Soulful House in a 2-Hour Journey Kono Vidovic
There are moments as a curator when an artist’s world doesn’t just enter your playlist, but rewires the way you listen. My first encounter with Yuu Udagawa had exactly that effect. Her sound isn’t simply deep house; it’s architectural, emotional, and strangely philosophical in the best way. You can feel the city in her chords, the tension in her drums, the breath in her synths.
So when Razor-N-Tape announced her Urban Physicality EP, I knew immediately that I wanted to sit down with her for this series. What I love about Yuu’s work is how she treats sound almost like sculpture. It’s no surprise when you know her background: art, philosophy, and an analog addiction involving machines like the Minimoog Voyager and Prophet ’08 .
In this “10 Tracks That Made Me,” Yuu opened up about the songs that shaped her perception of time, movement, melancholy, joy, and the idea that music is above all energy. What struck me most is how her memories move between Tokyo club nights, teenage record hunts, and moments of emotional clarity that only a life spent inside sound can give you.
Let’s dive in. These are the tracks that formed the blueprint behind Urban Physicality, and the deeper artistic pulse of Yuu Udagawa.
This was my first experience of music as something that expands the world. I heard it as a child, and it felt like a small portal opening inside my mind. It moved me that sound can shift perception and reveal emotions I didn’t yet have language for.
This track embodies the idea that music is pure energy. Damo Suzuki once told me this directly, and hearing Vitamin C made that truth physical. The rhythm feels alive, almost unpredictable, and it taught me to appreciate the raw, instinctive side of sound. CAN became a spiritual anchor for how I understand movement, intuition, and freedom in music.
Hallogallo taught me the beauty of time that stretches forward. Its steady pulse feels both minimal and full of movement, a duality that shaped how I hear rhythm today. I bought this record as a teenager, traveling between Shibuya and Shinjuku to search for music. It represents a period when sound began to guide my life more than anything else.
Also this track reminds me of the moment I first understood the idea that “music is energy,” something I learned from Damo Suzuki — a concept that has shaped the way I feel and create sound.
At Les holds a rare balance of elevation, melancholy, tension, and serenity. It showed me that electronic music can carry profound emotion without a single word. When I was younger and didn’t fit into mainstream culture, hearing this track loud in a dark club felt as if it accepted me and quietly melted my emotions back into flow. Its stillness and strength shaped how I understand space, restraint, and the emotional depth of subtle sound.
This track struck me deeply the moment I first heard it, opening a doorway into an entirely new world of sound. Aril Brikha’s synthesizer work has a distinctive presence—both human and architectural at the same time. His approach to electronic music became a pillar of emotion for me, shaping the foundation of how I create today.
Beau Mot Plage shattered genre boundaries for me, a hypnotic blend of jazz, Latin touches, fusion colors, and that sticky, intricate drum programming woven with expressive synths and guitar. It felt alive in a way I had never heard before. I played this track during my DJ debut at a Tokyo after-hours party, and I still remember how my hands trembled as I dropped the needle.
This track opened a different doorway for me, a bright, rhythmic kind of joy that felt both soulful and futuristic. The blend of synths, groove, and Chaka Khan’s unmistakable presence taught me that dance music can be emotional without losing its lightness. It also shaped my understanding of how melody and rhythm can create an uplifting world, one that still influences my approach to Nu-Disco and brighter grooves today.
Animals burns from the inside, a reminder of how groove and sound can be felt on a physical level. I saw Minilogue live countless times, and that was a different kind of magic: audiences moved to tears in the same moment, and nights where we danced wildly in the rain. Those experiences showed me how deeply sound can connect the heart and the body.
Live, this song is overwhelming. The contrast between fragility and strength, and the way light and sound shift together, left a deep mark on me. Retrograde taught me that emotion can be sculpted through dynamics, silence, and vulnerability. Experiencing it on stage felt like standing inside someone’s heartbeat.
This track showed me a future where jazz and electronic music breathe together. The interplay of harmony and rhythm feels both urban and deeply human. It carries a sense of quiet strength like the calm center inside a moving city. It continues to inspire how I shape energy in my own music.
‘In Your Eyes’, from my Urban Physicality EP, reflects my current artistic phase, a place where introspection, movement and stillness, past and future, groove and emotion merge into a single continuous layer within the chaos of the city. The EP traces how people drift, intersect, and quietly reconnect with themselves.
Yuu’s choices reveal something unmistakable: she creates from a place where introspection meets motion, where the pulse of the city becomes a personal language. Hearing her talk about these tracks added a whole new dimension to the Urban Physicality EP, and it’s exactly that blend of reflection and rhythm that makes her music so distinct.
Massive thanks to Yuu for taking us inside her world and sharing the emotional roots behind her sound. If you haven’t explored the new EP yet, now is the perfect moment. Dive into Urban Physicality on Razor-N-Tape and feel how groove, energy, and subtle emotion weave into something deeply alive.
Go listen. Support the artist. And let this record move you the way it moved me.
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DJ | MUSIC CURATOR & SELECTOR | PODCAST MAKER | BLOGGER Professional online interpreneur. Coffee practitioner. Electronic music culture maven. Total music guru. Infuriatingly humble problem solver. Food & sports fanatic.
Dirty Disco 622 is one of those episodes where everything falls into place: the selections, the flow, the emotional pacing, the labels featured, the cross-continental blend of influences and the […]
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