Hip and occasionally flashy Minami-Senba feels like the perfect neighbourhood for one of Osaka’s most uncompromising record dealers. Eiji Taniguchi is a connoisseur of leftfield dance music – from disco and UK garage to old-school Japanese tunes and truly obscure Korean and Taiwanese grooves – and has become a minor celebrity among international diggers and DJs visiting Osaka.
The Vinyl Factory featured Revelation Time in its ‘world’s best record stores’ series back in 2017 and Taniguchi has only intensified his collecting efforts since, travelling across Asia in search of fresh tunes. As a DJ, he’s released several acclaimed compilations of Japanese dance music, most recently the masterful Virtual Dreams II, a deep dive into domestic ambient in the ’90s.