DISTANT SOUNDS OF SUMMER
Susumu Yokota, the name ring any bells? OK, bad jokes aside, I’m sure virtually everyone’s familiar with the workaholic behind the echoing lattices of delight that make up such recordings as Grinning Cat and Sakura, as well as the deep, jazzual and funky ’80s house of albums like Zero. You might not know that he also runs his own record label, Skintone, and is an exhibiting graphic designer who makes all his own record covers; quite frankly, he’s probably the only person in the world who can rival Madlib for ludicrous amounts of diverse creative output. Now that’s cute, because the promo sheet under my beady eye compares Susumu’s “supernatural kind of funk” to California’s most blunted. Except they spell it Mad Lib, which sounds like a pendant to Stephen Malkmus’ Pig Lib, only for wackos (sign me up!).
Anyway, if you haven’t heard anything by Mr. Yokota, you’re missing out because he’s justly famous for being able to create wondrous atmospheres from the barest assortments of intertwined sounds, and he’s not afraid of being pretty or lush, either. A good place to start might be Symbol, which uses a very well-known selection of classical music as the starting threads, and which everyone except Wire magazine loved. My personal tip would be Grinning Cat, but for goodness’ sakes don’t start with The Boy and the Tree, because it’s all weird concussive dub gongs instead of bells on the breeze, and may dent your headspace.
Or you could start with this album right here, a fantastic display of all his internationally acclaimed production hallmarks. However, although Yokota is behind the boards, most of the music here is of Rothko’s making, and Rothko deserve more than a word or two by way of introduction. Initially consisting of nothing more than a trio of bass players and some FX (lofi gem In the Pulse of an Artery), the output of this loose collective around founding member Max Beazley moved through blissful ambient recordings (A Continual Search for Origins) towards the velvet intensity of A Space Between, where longtime collaborator and creamily voiced English poet/songstress Caroline Ross achieved equal billing, adding the folkish tones of her playing to Beazley’s ever-mellifluous bass fretwork, which has always been Rothko’s liquid spine. Along the way Beazley’s put out a slew of albums not mentioned above, found the time to collaborate with Four Tet on the gorgeous Rivers Become Oceans split 7″ and released Wish for a World Without Hurt, a reaction to the events of September 11th that saw him work with static merchant Black Bear and produce music like nothing so much as the ashes of the impact site crying to themselves.
Yokota veterans will find themselves instantly at home on the warm broken beats of opener “Deep in Mist”, where Ross’ voice blossoms in wordless flight, and second track “Waters Edge”, which wraps her into tiny tonal chant cycles (a Yokota peccadillo) beneath gently oscillating rings and resonating piano notes huge and softly heavy as summer cloud banks. Rothko stalwarts need not be put off by the threat of pounding beats, as these only take the aural foreground on a minority of tracks, and are anyway more sinuous pulse than kick. Rest assured that things retain a silkily organic feel throughout, that there are still drifts into near-silent idyll, and that Beazley’s high tones are as gorgeously evocative of sunlight rippling on water as ever (with a particular mention perhaps being due for “Brook and Burn”).
Everyone else can go out and get it safe in the knowledge that they are purchasing a collaboration by masters of their respective crafts, who in joining forces have created some of the best and most blissful music either have achieved. This is one of the ambient albums of this — and indeed most — years, and when I say ambient, I don’t really mean Eno’s airport soundtrack; apart from anything else, there is genuine songwriting and structure here. No, ambient, as in: You can do whatever you want while listening to it, but the music does not become background, it becomes part of you. One to slot next to Budd & Bernocchi’s “Fragments From the Inside” while blessing all musicians too productive to enjoy physical peace, who therefore need to create it in their minds, and let it sound like this.
A small body of such artists (Beazley amongst them) have been taking shelter from the underground cold at www.burningshed.com. I would humbly suggest that you go and peruse what they’ve got to offer, because it’s likely that you’ll find something there to cherish. I did.
Stefan Braidwood
25th October 2005
This collaboration between composer Yokota and Too Pure band Rothko features vocalist Caroline Ross, and all three equally shine. Opening with the hip-hop beat of “Deep in Mist,” faraway pianos, elegant bass, and lazy vocals prep for the mutations ahead-“Water‘s Edge” invokes the pagan poetry of Dead Can Dance, while “Path Fades Into Forest” is a warm, acoustic guitar-based track. Beats reappear in “Clear Space,” where a harmonica is as affecting as Ross‘ voice. Susumu & Co. have built careers subverting preconceptions about sounds, and discovering new ways to put them together-their combined experience makes Summer golden.
Rachel Shimp
Music as subtle and languid as it gets get without the musicians lying prone on the sofa, Distant Sounds of Summer is a high-powered ambient pow-wow that documents the atmospheric skyscrapers and sonic cathedrals which this summit meeting dreamed up. Susumu Yokota is the undisputed champion of understated slow-motion epics, while Rothko's Mark Beazley and vocalist Caroline Ross have been building quite a rep for their soft, hushed brushstrokes. So Distant Sounds of Summer is naturally awash with the kind of evocative echoes you'd imagine from such a pairing. You can spot Yokota's handiwork in the stilled chants in the background of Water's Edge, but the simple, unhurried lull of Deep in Mist is all the more remarkable for how it balances the various inputs without over-egging the result. Add in some unexpected alien funk (Path Fades Into Forest) and you, too, may find yourself purring at the sheer fabulousness of it all.
Jim Carroll
18th November 2005
A collaboration between two revered creators of exploratory instrumental beauty, the Japanese ambient/electronic mastermind Susumu Yokota and bassist/composer Mark Beazley (once of Rothko, by this point he was Rothko) -- with occasional vocal contributions from Caroline Ross of Delicate AWOL, who has also worked with each of the collaborators individually -- Distant Sounds of Summer tends to favor the eclectic, layered, sometimes overly busy sample-based approach of the former's mid-2000s work, but the latter's ever-graceful playing helps create a welcome point of continuity and calmness. After a somewhat off-putting opening with the stuttering programmed hip-hop beat that overpowers the would-be ethereality of "Deep in Mist," the album settles into lusher, more subdued territory, exploring an expansive array of textures and sounds (temple bells, harmonicas, bamboo flutes, droning synths) on top of Beazley's soothing bass tones, without always resorting to Yokota's familiar but somewhat intrusive percussion loops. Though the variety and experimentation is welcome and worthwhile, the album is perhaps at its best -- albeit its most new agey -- when Yokota is content to merely adorn and illuminate Beazley's placid, multitracked musings with sparse, atmospheric sounds and subtle tweakings, as on the title track, "Sentiero," and closer "Floating Moon." A notable and intriguing exception is "Path Fades into Forest," wherein a typically languid Rothko bass meditation gives way to a pulsing, funky house beat, to delicious effect.
K. Ross Hoffman
Though its pretty melodies and sparkling arrangements were seductive, Susumu Yokota's 2005 release Symbol impressed less for being too sample-based; rather than subtly integrating quoted material into his compositions, Yokota too baldly let classical composers do the talking for him. This considerably more satisfying collaboration with Rothko bassist Mark Beasley results in material that's greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, there are occasional moments of derivation (the funk beat in “Deep in Mist,” for example, cops Mike Clark's infamous break in Herbie Hancock's “Palm Grease”) but in general the album enhances Yokota's gift for crafting iridescent atmospheres with Beasley's distinctive bass work and Caroline Ross's fragile singing (an especially strong element, as it is on the mid-2005 Rothko & Ross collab A Place Between).
Though the songs often identify themselves as Yokota creations by their evocative titles (“Path Fades into Forest,” “Distant Sounds of Summer,” and “Floating Moon”), the participants' collective sound doesn't slot itself so easily into one camp or the other, possible exceptions including the gamelan ambient of “Sentiero” and “Waters Edge,” a setting of cycling loops, Reich-inspired vocal chants, and soft piano blur, both of which suggest Yokota most of all. The album is at its strongest when it pairs Beazley's often multi-tracked bass twang with Ross's sultry vocals (the dreamy trip-hopper “Deep in Mist,” “Lit by Moonlight”) though sometimes the arrangements succumb to excess; the entrancing “Brook and Burn” is weakened by the unnecessary inclusion of beats and slashing electric guitar, while the lovely meditation “Distant Sounds of Summer” is similarly marred by intrusive scratchy noises. And in the soundscape “Reflections and Shadows,” Ross adopts a more robotic delivery that nudges the album towards AGF territory—an interesting experiment but one that hardly plays to the collaborators' strengths. All of them do align, however, during “Path Fades into Forest” where Beazley's relaxed bass solos unhurriedly against a percolating microhouse groove. The 50-minute collection isn't perfect, then, but still includes enough strong moments to recommend it.
January 2006
While it may be true that patience is a virtue, with ambient music it is a downright necessity. With Distant Sounds of Summer, two musicians representing the best aspects of the ambient genre have come together to create something that rewards such patience, but also offers a bit more for the casual or partially impatient listener to hold onto. The ever-prolific Susumu Yokota comes from the electronic/production perspective and offers smooth beats and rustling percussion to complement the atmospheric guitarwork of Rothko's Mark Beazley. Additionally, holding over from another recent collaboration with Beazley, Caroline Ross of Delicate AWOL provides lush vocals for Yokota and Beazley to work into their mix. The results are just short of heavenly.
"Deep in Mist" kicks off the affair with a bolder hip hop beat than Yokota has used in a while. With the beat, a deep but sparse bassline lumbers along with some subdued piano in tow, and before long, Beazley's twanging guitar emerges with Ross's voice, floating quite ethereally above it all. The overall effect is a truly comforting sonic gauze. Most other tracks are more reserved, like "Lit by Moonlight" or "Distant Sounds of Summer" where the tracks are dominated by gorgeously languid guitar playing with Yokota's electronic embellishments periodically emerging and disappearing like a haunting fog. However, the album as a whole morphs continually, and it never really rests for long with any one sound. While Beazley's guitar and (samples of) Ross's voice are the most dominant instruments throughout, there are plenty of stretches where neither are heard. As with all Yokota projects, this album is the result of precise control and deliberate constraint, making it a lovely way to sooth frayed nerves or a troubled head.
Dave Gunrey
The air is clear, just stirred by a breath of wind.
A blade of grass between the teeth.
Legs stretched out, eyes half-closed on the vast open blue: a reversed and motionless sea.
From afar, the lazy toll of bells.
Speckled cattle traverse a brilliant green: moving spots on the rounded velvety shapes of the pastures.
Silence is traversed by the sinuous density of waves generated by guitar strings: a liquid massage at the base of thoughts.
Pulsating and vaporous trails of an invisible sound vehicle traveling toward its destination: the funny shell at the bottom of your ear's fleshy cavity.
Echoes of overlapping and distant voices, impossible memories of an indeterminate East: dream of a midsummer afternoon.
Senses numbed, the world around numbed.
A kind of beatitude.
In which float fragments of visions: moods in the form of sounds.
Towards the end of 2005, Yokota, in collaboration with Mark Beazley of Rothko, released this “Distant Sounds Of Summer.”
It is a work characterized by rarefaction, oriented towards an ambient that is at times naturalistic, bucolic. In which the soft and dissolved sound of Beazley's guitars proves to be perfectly functional (which I read is the leader of an unusual post-rock band, the Rothko, which included three bassists).
Ten tracks, mostly instrumental, very evocative. Suspended between the descriptive temptation, which indeed also includes the use of cowbells, and hypnotic and ecstatic dilation. Suitable for soundtracking afternoons sunk in indolence or evenings dissolved in the quiet observation of a time that seems in stand by, hostage to an apparent circularity.
Yokota dispenses stylish sounds, rare rhythmic bases always destined, except for a couple of episodes (where he seems to want to break it), to support the fluidity of the compositions.
The voice appears rarely, gliding over the waves of the liquefied sound compound prepared by the two. And it's that velvety, warm, and persuasive voice of Caroline Ross, co-author, the same year, along with Rothko, of another interesting album, “A Place Between.”
A summer of almost impressionistic evanescence, the one evoked by the Japanese and his companion.
But the “distance” of “his sounds” from the desire for any elsewhere has never been so minimal while I listen immersed in a sultry afternoon of this urban June.
Oradek
26th June 2006
WATERS EDGE EP
Two different sides of the prolific Japanese producer Susumu Yokota: Sound Of Sky is a slick, efficient album of jazzy House, while the collaboration with London bass trio Rothko serves up pure Ambient. Maybe it's because it makes you feel like you're in a chintzy wine bar, but for all its subtlety and craft, the smooth confections of tinkly melodies and soft beats and breaks on the Sound Of Sky set leave me completely cold. Fortunately, Waters Edge has much more depth to it, revealing why Yokota's Ambient incarnation is so popular. The title track drones along with mesmeric, Meredith Monk-like vocals and repetitions, while "Lit By Moonlight" is as dreamily evocative as anything Labradford have come up with.
April 2002
After his exceptional 'Sakura' LP on Leaf a while back, Yokota's stock has fallen sharply with an endless stream of sub-standard deep house records. So it's good to hear him back at his best on four tracks of elegant, rippling ambience, with chiming guitar flourishes added by the similarly over- productive Rothko. A minor triumph.
May 2002