Each month in the magazine we play an artist or group a series of tracks which they are asked to comment on – with no prior knowledge of what they are about to hear.

In The Wire 497 it is the turn of bassist and breakcore pioneer DJ Scotch Egg, real name Shigeru Ishihara.

Here you can listen to a mix of the tracks our correspondent Daniel Neofetou played to Ishihara during the interview, which is published in full in The Wire 497. To find out what Ishihara said about them, subscribers can read the interview in our online magazine library here. Or you can buy a copy of the magazine in our online shop.

But first, a brief biography of our subject:

Shigeru Ishihara is best known as DJ Scotch Egg, the name under which he founded the seminal breakcore label and club night Wrong Music, alongside Henry Collins (Shitmat), Ben Hudson (Ebola), and Matt Lambert (Roger Species), who passed away earlier this year. As DJ Scotch Egg, Ishihara recorded a series of joyously aggressive chiptune records. After 2008, he retired the alias for his recorded music, not returning to it until his 2019 collaborative album Kanpai with Turkish rapper Ethnique Punch. In the meantime, he branched out into a dizzying array of projects.

In 2007, he founded the group Drum Eyes with Kazuhisa Iida of Boredoms, and in 2009, the two of them joined the reformed line-up of 1990s post-rock outfit Seefeel, with Ishihara recording two releases as the group’s bassist. Dub has also provided Ishihara with a fecund seam of influence, in projects such as the noise-dub band Devilman, with Gorgonn of Dokkebi Q and Taigen Kawabe of Bo Ningen, and the “tribal bass duo” WaqWaq Kingdom with Kiki Hitomi – which is a going concern, although their most recent release, Mind Onsen (2024), has little in common with dub, in keeping with Ishihara’s restless spirit of reinvention.

In 2019, a new avenue was opened by his two month residency at the Nyege Nyege villa, a creative hub and residency space operated by the Nyege Nyege collective in Kampala, Uganda. This resulted in the 2021 album Tewari, under his Scotch Rolex alias, along with a collaborative release with HHY & The Kampala Unit percussionist Omutaba and Shackleton. It was also at Nyege Nyege that Ishihara met Shanghai electronic musician GOOOOOSE, with whom he recorded a collaborative release, and Vilnius based Indonesian composer and instrument builder Mo’ong Santoso Pribadi, with whom he has formed the duo Takkak Takkak. Through Pribadi, Ishihara also undertook a 2023 residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, during which he engaged intensely with local genres, resulting in this year’s Scotch Sambal, released on Yes No Wave Music.

The Invisible Jukebox was conducted via Zoom, ahead of Ishihara’s three day residency at London’s Cafe Oto.

DJ Scotch Egg’s Invisible Jukebox tracklist (with timestamp)

Shitmat (00:00)
“Dubplatter”
From Full English Breakfast
(Planet Mu) 2004

Hrvatski (02:58)
“Vatstep DSP”
From Swarm & Dither
(Planet Mu) 2002

Bit Shifter (08:58)
“March Of The Nucleotides”
From Life’s A Bit Shifter
(555 Recordings) 2003

Karlheinz Stockhausen (11:18)
Studie 1
YouTube, rec 1953

Lightning Bolt (21:15)
“Crown Of Storms”
From Wonderful Rainbow
(Load) 2003

Seefeel (23:57)
“Polyfusion”
From Quique
(Too Pure) 1993

Scientist (29:55)
“Red Shift”
From Scientist Meets The Space Invaders
(Greensleeves) 1981

Sensational (33:29)
“Freak Styler”
From Loaded With Power
(WordSound) 1997

GOOOOOSE (35:50)
“Network 1”
(Bandcamp) 2017

HHY & The Kampala Unit (40:28)
“Lithium Blast”
From Lithium Blast
(Nyege Nyege Tapes) 2020