GRINNING CAT
“
Infinitely charming and eminently seductive Grinning Cat is yet more evidence that Chief Wizard Yokota is a master of building dream worlds”
Paul Sullivan
Upbeat piano driven follow -up to Sakura. Like an album length version of DarioG’s Sunchime, but good.
lf this fearless Japanese Ambient adventurer carries on churning out beautifully crafted new albums at his present rate people are going to get the impression that this stuff is easy to do. Picking up where Naminote – one of the stand out tracks on last year’s surreptitiously intoxicating Sakura – left off, Grinning cat tears off in that obvious new direction in the manner of a scalded one, and is soon so far around the block it can barely see the shops. Great lost Dollar instrumental B-sides blend with a mighty triangle sound and the clearing of a storm of rain to worryingly potent overall effect, and Fearful Dream is the stuff of John Carpenter′s worst nightmares. As to where Yokota might be heading next, the sax-break on Tears Of A Poet has a deliciously alarming ring to it
Ben Thompson
June 2001
Japanese polymath sets up home with girlfriend and three cats, then makes album about it. Sweet?
Three albums for the Leaf label have established Susumu Yokota - DJ, designer, photographer and musician - as the new master of ambience. As this fourth collection of crackles, chimes, claps, dusty horn samples and fractured piano melodies proves, however, his music is far more complex and stimulating than the dull background hums usually associated with that genre. Yokota claims Grinning Cat is born of domestic bliss It sounds anything but soppy and satiated. Certainly, there's an easy grace to the music, especially to the Satie-esque flurries of piano, but an oppressive atmosphere is constant. There's Zen tranquillity here, of a kind, but Yokota captures the stifling humidity of his homeland equally well, transcending Japanese designer cliches
John Mulvey
March 2002
The Shelter, Dublin
GIVEN that there have been more wishy-washy chill-out compilations released in the past few years than there are grains of sand on an Ibiza beach, one is entitled to feel a little weary at the prospect of engaging with an electro-ambient artist like Susumu Yokota. But this quiet, unassuming Japanese musician/producer is truly a gleaming pearl among stupefying swine.
The specialist music magazine The Wire voted his Sakura record Electronica Album of
the Year in 2000, while his most recent ambient release, Grinning Cat, has met with an equal level of enthusiasm.
This particular gig - one of only a handful of dates in Britain and Ireland, some of which saw Yokota share a bill with the avant-garde composer Philip Glass - was all about the languid, slow-motion moodscapes. The dark and doomy intimacy of Dublin's newest music venue, the Shelter,' was an appropriately nocturnal setting for a set which seemed to spring more from the dreamtime of the unconscious than linear, waking life. Although looking like a wide-eyed student, Yokota exuded a Zen-like calm as he flitted between his Apple Mac laptop, a turntable and an acoustic guitar.
Detractors will scoff that it it's just some bloke fiddling with a computer for an hour, but Yokota ministered to his equipment as though performing a sacred religious ritual. But even if there wasn't much of an element of visual spectacle about the show the music itself was thoroughly absorbing and involving.
In terms of reference points, Brian Eno's ambient catalogue comes to mind, as does early Aphex Twin - but Yokota ditches the psychotic tendencies of the latter in favour of a warm, humanitarian glow. Much of the first half of the set was given over to the Grinning Cat album, which creatively samples the hypnotic, repetitive rhythms of another darling of the American avantgarde, Steve Reich. Also swirling about in the mix are subtle, looped melody lines that seem to appear and disappear before your very ears. In fact, the whole sound is so mercurial, it's impossible to catch it or pin it down with mere words. Certainly, the audience of beardy, bespectacled Open University types lapped it all up, staring intently at the stage as if in a trance.
Nick Kelly
April 2002
Prolific Japanese techno/ambient producer Susumu Yokota has won many hearts around the world with his elegant excursions into sound. Albums like Magic Thread and Sakura have highlighted his talent for concocting magical soundscapes that ebb and flow as gently as the wind but contain a deceptively bewitching power.
Grinning cat is simply one more flight of fancy for Yokota, though is no less potent than previous works for the listener. Using some newly obtained pet cats as inspiration (he allegedly felt he had met the Cheshire Cat from Alice ln Wonderland such are the child‐like mechanics of Yokota’s mind), he has built another wonderful world of sounds and shapes,
Hypnotic piano loops are a firm Yokota favourite and on the opener ‘Imagine’ they’re played through a mist of gentle synth until meeting a ghostly female voice drifts and other, discordant sounds. Already you can sense that this music is as lucid and weightless as the stuff of dreams, but this is only one aspect of his child‐like innovations. On ‘King Dragonfly′, he enthusiastically indulges in some hip hop rolls and subliminal chanting as we‖ as disembodied sounds and errant clunks.
Throughout the LP, strange instruments and sound effects float in and out of the aural scenery like mysterious shadows, creating a feeling of caprice and whimsy.
Yokota has no problem with stopping dead in his tracks and changing direction, though he generally keeps the odd motif recurring so as not to stray too far from hypnotic remit of looped rhythm and sound.
Tracks like 'Sleepy Eye’ see Yokota at his lullaby esque best, a simple piano melody is fed through FX that give it a dreamy blur, before being joined by fairy‐tale glissandos. His techno influences come to the fore on the beat‐ridden but innocuous ‘Cherry Blossom’ while 'So Red’ uses acoustic guitar and disembodied voices in a kind of hard drive blues track.
Overall, Yokota's music will appeal to those who have a brain to massage or a child still alive in their heart.
Paul Sullivan
May 2001
YOKOTA is a prolific dude, and his fifth album in four years is a worthy successor to last year’s Sakura. The same organic, disorientating methodology is in evidence here. The standout track, Lapis Lazuli, cuts up Ravel to great effect, while Fearful Dream is all weird loops and beatless mayhem. Though the penultimate track, Flying Cat, is marred by the kind of clattering breakbeats that dance acts use when they are looking for a free jaz sound, by then you feel that Yokota has more than earned the right to play around a little.
Rob Chapman
May 2001
Put it down to language barriers or plain old cultural differences, but Japanese producer Susumu Yokota always offers a fresh perspective on dance music. Prolific to the point of hyperactive, his sublime house and techno and his textured ambience always brings something new and different to the table.
This new work, released on his own Skintone label, which documents his 'wonderful life' with his girlfriend and assorted pet cats is no exception; most of the album has a hazy, half heard feel, which only serves to enhance the floaty, piano led atmospheric beats and then decidedly organic, ethereal feel.
An evocative, uniquely atmospheric work.
Richard Brophy
August 2001
Prolific Japanese techno/ambient producer Susumu Yokota has an uncanny ability to weave silent narratives from an imaginary range of sonic materials. With previous LP’s like Sakura and Magic Thread having already converted many to Yokota’s peacable but compelling vistas Grinning Cat offers more intricately arranged patchworks. Viewed best as a kind of mood inhancing journey, the album takes the listener through moments of aching melancholy, snatches of innocuous melody, throbbing electronic pulses, hinted at fairy-tales and a dizzying array of texture and sound. Infinitely charming and eminently seductive Grinning Cat is yet more evidence that Chief Wizard Yokota is a master of building dream worlds
Paul Sullivan
1999
Single of the Month
The Leaf label is becoming the most inspirational label on the planet. Yokota describes this album as being inspired by his cats, yet this is as far from the bland pap of Lloyd Webber as you can get. A gorgeous feast of downtempo abstractions unfolds, with classical strings overlaid over jazz rhythms or perhaps a heartbeat, tender yet resonant piano, or acoustic and found sounds like wind chimes and handclaps. At times it hints at the exquisite spiritual minimalism of Arvo Part, at others an organic, otherworldly acoustic soul. Then again, sometimes it soundtracks the saddest film ever made. From playful and light-hearted to mysterious and menacing, this album amply displays the free spirit of its creator’s musical visions. One of the most beautiful and beguiling albums you will ever have the pleasure of listening to ever.
Wiseblood
July 2001
It's been a while since I last had a good ambient zulu boogie so hearing Susumu Yokoto's river deep compositions has brought me a little piece of nostalgic joy. Drifting strings and pianos cut up and fuse into the electronic farmyard beats and somewhere a child is born. All that good shit. Yokota is Leaf’s biggest selling artist and it's not hard to see why, there's a very finely tuned musical mind at work here making music that is appealing, intricate and emotional.
Edward Blake
Japan's Yokota has always been able to craft sublime ambient excursions or stylish dance-floor tracks. This sonic adventure is neither. Here, Yokota draws from electronica, dance, jazz, modern classical, gamelan, avant-garde and more, to create something that transcends both continents and genres. What's more, it has the uncanny knack of being simultaneously forceful, yet delicate. Take King Dragonfly for example, where Enoesque synths and fluttering pianos contrast with resolute breaks and Asian cascades. Or Tears of a Poet, where Debussy collides with Jazzy film-noir trumpet sighs. This album twists, swells and exudes a chilled brand of euphoria. Pure joy.
Paul Yak
June 2001
This sounds so fresh and invigorating, it's the musical equivalent of that tingle you get from a cold shower. It lifts the mood with hand claps, wind chimes, heartbeats, acoustic guitar, snake rattles, voices and sampled loops. This is no hippy paradise, though; the sound is very urban with a debt to Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. You hear the city in the subtle ambience recorded in different (presumably Japanese) rooms and used as instead of the grey of the
recording studio. It's good.
Mick Robertson
June 2001
Following on from Leaf’s release by Maintoba which has reviewers falling over themselves to find superlatives to describe the album, grinning Cat pushes the boundaries even further. Susumu Yokota is a Japanese producer with a fondness for the Leaf label, having mixed their Leaf Compilation to great critical acclaim. Grinning Cat is being licensed to Leaf via Yokota’s own label, Skintone. What you’ll find is typical of Leaf, expectations are impossible. Grinning Cat moves from minimal, distorted, distant piano lines to more abstract and ethereal sounds, to scratchy, disjointed electro style percussion. It can at times be moody, yet never dark. Often the textures can come across as whimsical as the title may suggest, though never simple. Why Grinning Cat? Yokota says he moved in with his girlfriend, and three cats, and playing with the cats was “like having parties every day at home.” it’s about as close as you’ll get to understanding Yokota’s profound musical pieces.
Clarke Nova
July 2001
Sakura, Japanese producer Susuma Yokota’s last album for the Leaf Label, was a quiet hit last year, critically lauded and selling far better than expected. A producer of electronic music in many styles, Sakura was the moment when his more ambient came to the fore. Grinning Cat, then, has been hotly anticipated in some quarters. It is, as you’d expect, along the same lines as Sakura, with looped samples and melodies interweaving in an understated, majestic fashion. Those expecting any real deviation from that pattern will be disappointed, but for the rest of us it’s just another great album. Comparisons have been drawn most frequently with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports but, whilst Yokota is undoubtedly working in the same area, Grinning Cat shows off his peculiar knack for melding different elements into a spine-tingling whole. Pipes, chimes, guitar, hand claps and all manner of other instrumentation ensures that the sound, although it seems remarkably fragile, never falls prey to the excesses of ambience or ends up as glorified elevator muzak
Paul Doyle
vol 2 issue 7
The World is Sound
The world, eh? It's a weird old place, alright. So much bad stuff (war, wasps), yet, paradoxically,
lots of good things too. Ignoring such grave attempts at profundity, here is a choice selection of said 'stuff, both ace and arse, to be found around the globe within the parallel world that is music.
SUSUMU YOKOTA
Hailing from Tokyo, Yokota is a crafter of slightly patchy House/Techno by day, but, more interestingly, an arranger of soft, silken electronic sounds by night. He releases here via the consistently creative Leaf label, key players in the field of bringing innovative worldly delights to these musically staid shores. Try checking the drifting ambient beauty of albums such as 'Sakura' or 'Grinning Cat' without picturing a solemn Japanese wizard dressed in white, casting musical spells of calming, intricate delicacy. Here he is eating what may well be a kebab.
February 2002