Definitive Records asks interesting Vancouverites (and, occasionally, other BC-ers) to scour their sonic-led memories to pull out the three albums anchoring their musical tastes.

In this edition, we hear from Shotaro Jotatsu, a Vancouver-based DJ and host of Ishinomonosashi – a Japanese-run music and vintage pop-up. You can find him (as well as four other Japanese DJs) behind the turntables at the next edition, happening at Slice of Life’s Next Door space on Saturday, June 17th. Details and tickets (just $10 in advance) can be found here.

In the meantime, prepare your eardrums for the sonic adventure by checking out Joe’s top three albums of all time below:

Pete Rock | Soul Survivor

Back when I was around 20, a CD version of this album had been on heavy rotation since I found it in a thrift store. I later lucked out and found a vinyl copy of it in Tokyo. Needless to say, there was not any hesitation to choose this for my first memorial vinyl record. Seriously, all the beats on this hit me so hard, and it’s what got me into sample-based instrumental hip-hop and jazzy boombap. The natural low resolution that the samplers (possibly E-mu sp1200, AKAI S950) bring is JUST RIGHT and makes you want to listen to it repeatedly, even now in 2023…

Satchy | Warm Absence

I really enjoy sharing my favorite albums and thoughts on them with the people I meet. I have been sharing Warm Absence with them ever since it was released in 2022. This album brings a pure sound of warmness and the beauty of music to me every time I listen to it. The powerful humanized drums are wonderfully blended with the voice to create a beautiful sound of keys, guitar, bass, and sax…I’m even obsessed by the noises on this. I can’t fully explain, but it’s really something… It’s definitely one of the purest album masterpieces I’ve encountered in my entire life so far.

GING NANG BOYZ (銀杏BOYZ) | You and Me and Our World-War-Three-Like Love Revolution (君と僕の第三次世界大戦的恋愛革命)

My most influential and memorable album is from a Japanese punk band called GING NANG BOYZ (銀杏BOYZ), titled You and Me and Our World-War-Three-Like Love Revolution (君と僕の第三次世界大戦的恋愛革命). During my high school years, I remember my buddies and I hijacked the school’s PA broadcasting room, and there we played one of GING NANG BOYS song on full blast all across the whole school. That band expressed a lot of my unexplainable adolescent emotions at the time – like mixed feelings of distortion and disappointment. So whenever I have things to contemplate or worry about, or whenever I feel the need to go back to my roots, I play this album.