Tenshin, which has the dual meaning ‘heaven’ or ‘transformation’, was Yokota’s first artist name. Then came his acid mononym Ebi (which translates as ‘shrimp’) on German imprint Space Teddy. This was followed by the first two album releases under his real name: The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection’ for Harthouse (Germany) and Acid Mount Fuji’ on Sublime (Japan).
After this came a string of aliases; Yin and Yang for Frogman Records (Japan), Ringo and Prism, also signed to Sublime (Japan), 246 on Sublime sub-label Reel Musiq (run by DJ Yama), Mantaray for the US label Silent, and Anima Mundi and Stevia on Newstage. A 1996 abstract ambient album came out under his Bamboo Data guise. Yokota also released under his own name for the majority of these labels - Harthouse and Sublime in the early years, but also for imprints Exceptional (UK) Play (Japan) and United Sounds of Blue, a Frogman sub-label.
Much to the amusement of DJ Toby and his contemporaries, Yokota’s Ebi project was named after a semi-hallucinatory imagining of a shrimp as a drum machine, a detailed legend of which can be seen on the insert for his second offering, Zen, on Space Teddy. The image sees the curve of the tail as the bass drum, the tip as the clap, the head as the snare, antennae as cymbals and the legs as rolling 16th beat hi-hats. Yokota later explained that “The most visible form (attributed to techno) was Ebi. Rhythms were transformed as Ebi jumping up and down. This experience of visualising sound led me to create electronic music”.
The coastal resorts in Goa had been a pilgrimage site for European hippies since the late 60s. By the early 1990s the developing trance scene had become integral to the region. Several of the DJs who visited Goa began to extend their tours to take in Tokyo clubs, which were relatively cost effective to reach from India.