The following is an excerpt from an interview in the February G.E. 0388 issue of Flyboy Magazine. The writer for Flyboy is speaking with Utami Hasegawa, callsign [Sabrecat], about the origins of AWACS [TEMPO] and her career as a music producer and freelance AWACS operator.
FM: Your webpage gives a special shoutout at the bottom to a club in Nausicaa. Can you tell us about it?
UH: Yeah, The Bullseye. It’s a little flyboy club in a basement at the end of an alleyway deep in the middle of Nausicaa city.
Its owner is a weird old dude named Yuji. I never asked how old he is, but he’s clearly well past retirement age. Too old to be on the floor spinning around to breakbeats. Doesn’t stop him, though.
Apparently, Yuji was a wild dude in his younger years. He used to fly a Su-25 as an air mercenary during the conflict in Eurycleia, back before I was born.
His side lost.
When his employers got run out of the country and scattered, he managed to survive by stealing an EW plane and escaping to Nausicaa. He claims that he still has the plane in a rented hangar at the airport.
Anyway, The Bullseye is special to us. It’s one of the last places left in the city that still plays good jungle.
It’s also one of the last places left that has personality. The clubs in north-central or in the east seaport district are all obsessed with looking like a sci-fi space station or some sort of cyberspace. Spaces specifically built out to fit a certain aesthetic.
Not to knock any of those clubs. They’re great. They wouldn’t be around if they weren’t. But it’s different atmosphere for a different crowd and a different kind of music.
The Bullseye is just the basement of some building in central Nausicaa. They barely fit a club in there. There’s a support pillar in the middle of the dancefloor that we joke is gonna collapse one of these days from all the bass. It’s a perfect space, though. It can always fit just enough people inside. The worst it gets is sometimes there’s a line for the bathroom.
I never learned what’s upstairs. I think it’s just where Yuji lives.
But the Bullseye is the heart of the jungle scene here in Nausicaa. We call it a flyboy club, but all kinds show up there: Lolitas, JKs, furries, everyone. Everybody goes there for the music.
I don’t know where Yuji finds these people. The most insane DJs and producers you’ve ever seen, casually spinning the hardest tracks you’ve ever heard. They’re legitimate crazy people. A couple of them are professional DJs, but most of them are air mercenaries who come to Nausicaa to unwind between contracts and DJ as a paid hobby.
One guy did his entire set in his full flight harness. As his last track was fading out, he mentioned that he’d come straight to the club from the airport after flying his Viggen across the ocean from Urd.
Or this one shortstack Elven woman in JK fashion who strolled up to the ones and twos and hit us with bass so hard it literally staggered a few people. Imagine that, a little elven woman in a school uniform beating you over the head with wild breaks and teeth-rattling sub bass so deep you almost break your ankles, and all you can do is groove at it.
And then it turns out she’s an air mercenary too!
That said, it’s not like we don’t know what we’re setting ourselves up for. Y’know, with so many of our DJs and regulars being air mercs in their day jobs.
On the right side of the entryway is a board with photos of all the ones who we know aren’t coming back. The ones who played a set not knowing it was their last, then left on mission. I don’t know who started the tradition, but regulars like to sweep their hand across the bottom of the board as they walk in. To kinda acknowledge all the great entertainers who helped make the place what it is.
I guess that’s why we party so hard. Why everyone just cuts loose and has a good time. Why all the best DJs are air mercenaries.
If you know any set could be your last, why would you ever phone it in? If you know any dance could be your last, why would you ever be self-conscious?
But we know not to post a DJ’s picture up there until we know for sure they’re gone. It’d be super awkward for a DJ to come back after however long and see their own photo on the memorial board.
I know because that happened once. A DJ, I think his callsign was “Icepick,” saw his picture up on the board after he hadn’t been heard from in two-and-a-half years. So when his set was starting, he held up the photo from the board and yelled, “I lived, bitch!” into the mic right as the beat dropped. The whole floor went mad.
He managed to turn it around into something cool, but after that night, Yuji said the new rule was that we needed a confirmed K.I.A. before any DJ went up on the board.
But I guess that’s part of why I started Tempo. Maybe it’s a little sentimental, but it feels like I can be a guardian angel, looking out for the DJs I admire.
And bringing a little bit of The Bullseye with me over the radio.
…
Sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I? What was your next question?