Susumu Yokota

Key tracks:

My Energy
Flaming Love And Destiny
Long Long Silk Bridge

Label: Lo Recordings

Read Description:

Experimentation with all form of dance and electronica. With a recent favour towards the gentler end of things.

Yokota has released techno, breakbeat, even funky commercial house down the years, and it’s this broad-ranging, never-say-never attitude that makes this most recent offering, Kaleidoscope, perfectly impossible to categorise.

It’s certainly not background music. As if to dispel any fears that it might be. Kaleidoscope’s three opening tracks provide a vivid introduction to a very visual narrative. Album opener “Your Twinkling Eyes” has a distant, intriguing atmosphere, with its overlapping, looping acoustic guitars and prismatic chimes. It suggests a sort of Far Eastern Caribou. Many tracks also give the sense of motion, particularly trains, such as the chugging motion of "Lily Scent Jealousy" or the drum loop of "Stain on My Heart".

Kaleidoscope's storytelling theme is only enhanced by the inclusion of male and female voices in many tracks - each song feels populated. The play off between Asian and Western voices and real life sounds builds a credible and complicated setting for this story to unfold.