Kaleidoscope

Volume 2 - Album 6

The longest album in the Yokota catalogue and arguably the deepest. Endlessly inventive and wondrous. Yokota at the height of his powers

A1: Your Twinkling Eyes
A2: Her Feminineness
A3: 9 Petals
A4: Sprouting Symphony

B1: Photosynthesis
B2: Stain on My Heart
B3: Metalic Energy
B4: Patinated Room Key

C1: Wave Drops
C2: Lily Scents Jealousy
C3: Blue Moon
C4: When I Shut My Eye

D1: After Falling Twice
D2: 2 Skys
D3: A Pebble on the Verge of Breaking
D4: Red Moon

Including an essay by Cate Brooks in the liner notes...

... “Kaleidoscope may be the ideal entry point to his world, due to its perfectly eclectic nature. There is so much to discover within its hour and nine minutes; treat it as a gateway to his universe and sensibility, before delving deeper and exploring other prismatic worlds you didn't know existed...but were curious to discover.”...

Kaleidoscope is a stunning encapsulation of Yokota’s quiet honing process. His deeply emotive approach to sound collage is singular, and Kaleidoscope’s introspective breath is a reappraisal. Over the fourteen albums Susumu Yokota released on his Skintone label, he had already wholeheartedly turned his hand to spatial concrète, groovy organic house, expansive downtempo atmospheres, and shoegazing pop. This 16-track sprawl is a slippery, sedating testament to the processual. In a fugue-like return to his earlier ambience in records Sakura and Grinning Cat, the sonic elements of Kaleidoscope contort and warble with a resounding sense of sonic alchemy. It is distinctly alien, shapeshifting and camouflaging across so many forms. This is its great beauty, more entrancing and hypnotic from every angle.

As a series of digressive and vivid vignettes, each track brings new flurries of feeling. An unparalleled entry point to Yokota’s formidable and shapeshifting discography; one which encapsulates his musical philosophy perfectly.He often used the analogy of ‘Kona’, a Japanese descriptor for powders; fine assemblages of grains which, once disturbed by a gust of wind, never return to their former shape, and on Kaleidoscope, chameleonic sonics overlap like fragmented forms in its namesake device, merging and splitting to create new and vibrant hues. The conceptualisation of the abstracted prism is perfectly suited to the masterwork; which encourages a holistic perspective on its predecessors. This is Yokota at his most complete, revelling in the bold re-framing of the untreated, familiar and nostalgic whilst presenting vibrant new layers of sound completely divested of their sources. Each element - a series of sonic artefacts - are presented, rotated and analysed to a point of disorientation. Just like forms distorted in a prismatic mirror, sounds occasionally morph into recognisable shape, only to swiftly slink back into abstraction. It is mesmeric and, true to form, encourages a sincere feeling of symbiosis.

The middle section of the record drones like rain, resonant then garbled, mysterious and colourful in a kind of free association collision. Even the most straightforward tracks are perfectly impossible to place overall, like the stunning ‘Stain On My Heart, which drops a cooing gospel choir into a humid realm of dewy drumwork and disembodied cries. Even more compelling are the ostensibly synthetic entries, like ‘Photosynthesis’, where what might’ve been a Middle Eastern kamanja refrain contorts under hotwired, resonant drones like a voice garbled and warped by humming telephone wires, and ‘Metalic Energy’ [sic] where (presumably) Yokota’s voice recites a soviet number-station sequence of utterances through a b-boy vocoder, before being eclipsed by lapping, cybernetic waves of FSOL-like vocal strobe. It is utterly immersive, both as a reappraisal and as a peek into a different world. Attempting description feels reductive to work so spectral. There is not much more to say than Kaleidoscope is crucial to the catalogue, a work of amorphous wanderlust.