The standard is extremely high and a few attendees have gone on to have records pressed (often with the help of, or through Tony and Gavin) or radio airplay. However this coverage and promotion on radio and through record labels is small compared to the talent on offer. It is slightly depressing where the powers that be prefer the tried, tested and obvious over fresh, new, experimental music.

A shame as one alumni of CD-R is Tokyo resident Daisuke Tanabe (Tanabe upped sticks and moved to London for a period and was a CD-R regular), who although he has achieved his fair share of attention (though never as much continious support as should have) stands heads and shoulders above the majority of artists on the so called underground.

What Daisuke has in abundance is the ability to create infectious digital soul — hypnotic, blurred beats over a fractious sliced beat. Like a samurai warrior Tanabe cuts his sword over ‘Coil’ breaking wafer thin beats and ‘water margin’ melody lovingly ‘sings’ over the top.

The master then takes us one hundred years into the future with ‘No Guide Needed 2’ where archive, primitive computer noises touch a painter’s palette of rich, warm tones. Both tracks feature on an unreleased MP3 EP from last year (and criminally not picked up by any label).

Undettered Tanabe returns this year with a gorgeous piece of electronic trickery — ‘Worm Waffle Mitty’ gives us jittery, bright ‘pixel’ beats which seemingly ‘walk’ around different ‘platforms’ of the track picking flowery melody here and hip hop beats there. The electronic game imagery rings true but Tanabe is more than the sum of his (excellent) music parts. ‘Pigeon’ is a weird and wonderful ride into David Lynch soundscapes and almost as good. Here lies a super talented producer, seemingly paid periodically lip service by those in the music industry. The genius does not live in the underground, he lives on the outer reaches of your imagination where he creates inch perfect electronic music. And in spite of a lack of success, he is the master.

All tracks can be accessed through http://www.myspace.com/shakutorimusic and hopefully will be released very soon.