KALEIDOSCOPE
Susumu Yokota's name is still heavily associated with the wide-reaching success of Sakura. It must be both boon and bane. On the one hand, there must be the pride of having produced one of ambient and electronic music's most perfect crystallisations. On the other, it marks an exceptionally high-tide mark to measure his oeuvre by. It seemingly hasn't affected him all that much, though. After all, not only has he produced over 20 albums, but no one release sounds like another, ranging widely from last year's dark, female-dominated pop album Mother, through to house excursions and a host of unique ambient releases.
It's no surprise then to find that Kaleidoscope continues with Yokota's tradition of quality and invention. One reason for its appeal is its sense of unity and narrative. The 16 short tracks are all around four minutes in length, making them feel like chapters in a story, or perhaps the geometric shapes in a kaleidoscope that build and reduce when they move and overlap.
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 the story to unfold. The voices in "9 Petals" and the bells and bird sounds in "Painted Room Key" could be both Asian or European, whereas the choral singing in "Wave Drops" and "Blue Moon" suggest a more distinctly European place—until they're contrasted with Buddhist chanting drones and bamboo percussion, that is.
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," whereas the reuse of particular "place" sounds, like the birds and church choirs adds to the feeling of return. It is perhaps only in the last two tracks where the album feels as though it strays from the narrative path. Taken in one sitting, though, Kaleidoscope is the aural equivalent of a Wong Kar Wai or Kim Ki-duk road movie with Asians and Westerners travelling in parallel in the reciprocal culture. Like much of Yokota's discography, it's a magnificent feat and a rewarding listen.
Chris Mann
22nd October 2010
Susumu Yokota has a sort of binary career as both a respected house music DJ and a creator of experimental ambient recordings. Kaleidoscope is very much in the latter vein, a strange, aptly titled, and frequently gorgeous tapestry of loops, washes, chimes, and pulses that never has anything to do with dance music but makes frequent sonic reference to the traditions of electronica, dub, classical minimalism, and Brian Eno-style "discreet music." "Your Twinkling Light" combines shimmering loops with fragmented vocals to strangely moving effect; "Sprouting Symphony" is sweetly pretty; "Her Feminineness" throbs with an eerie darkness; "9 Petals" sways in waltz time, while an unidentified soul singer is played on a wind-up Victrola in the next room; "Patinated Room Key" sounds like the song of a cyborg whale gliding through the waves of an electronic sea. At various times there are samples of choral music (note in particular the sonically grandiose "Blue Moon," which defines an enormous aural space and gives you the feeling of attending Mass while orbiting the moon), and at others there are vocoder sounds so fragmented that they're barely recognizable as originating with a human voice. This is one of those albums you should listen to at least twice before deciding what you think of it, and when you do, you'll find that the second listen is substantially more entrancing than the first.
Rick Anderson
Surely by now one of the great figures in ambient electronic music, Susumu Yokota's body of work continues to expand with this exceptionally good new long-player. Kaleidoscope is described in the press release as "the mother of all hypnagogic albums", noting that the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds have both cited Yokota's music as an influence. It's definitely safe to say that the spirit of the times is gradually re-syncronising with this artist's particular brand of loop-stacking ambience, and tracks like 'Stain On My Heart', 'When I Shut My Eye', 'Your Feminineness' and 'Blue Moon' all seem to exhibit a certain dreamlike quality that's not too far away from something the Olde English Spelling Bee label might put out. Kaleidoscope could at times pass for the soundtrack to some early '90s anime movie as cropped from an old VHS, but this being a Susumu Yokota album there's also plenty of beautiful, virtuosic sonic manipulation afoot, as on the sublimely warm and tactile '2 Skys' and the watery synth-play of 'Wave Drops'. Excellent.
2010
I've been hearing this guy's name every now and again for years and years but, to my knowledge, I think this is the first time that I've ever actually listened to him. Well I'm trying to listen but the op art displayed inside the packaging is diverting my attention towards its disorientating ways. I guess coming to his music as a newcomer I'm struck by how relevant it appears with respect to what's going on with current musical trends of late.. It's easy to draw comparisons with the whole hypnagogic thing, the output of labels like Ghost Box, the droney ambient types, the recent exponents of New Age or what might previously have been termed 'folktronica' etc. etc. but obviously the key part of it is that he's been at it since waaaaay back and, as such, is pretty much an expert at throwing it all together in constantly engaging way. You don't have to listen for long to realise his influence, nor his quality.
Brett
30th September 2010
Ambient music, in the sense that Eno originally created it, has the power to transform the space it's played in as surely as repainting the entire room would – and over a long career, Susumu Yokota has refined the art of producing atmospheres that are an immense pleasure to inhabit. These 16 rarified pieces of rippling light and shadow are among his finest work, the subtleties of their shifts of mood and colour so engrossing that you may find yourself playing any given one over and over out of sheer fascination.
30th October 2010
Inspirational Japanese electronic artist releases his latest opus.
Since his magnificent Sakura (2000) and Grinning Cat (2001) albums the electronic music world has been in thrall to Japan’s Susumu Yokota, a laptop composer whose prolific output of at least one album every year since 1998 is at odds with his compelling creations. When so much of today’s dashed-off ambient music comes off as characterless, indistinguishable and meaningless burble, Yokota shows the way. Not that he should thank us for calling this hour-long opus ambient.
Yokota has released techno, breakbeat, even funky commercial house down the years and it’s this broad-ranging, never-say-never attitude that the spoddy electronicist summons here for an album that’s perfectly impossible to categorise. Eschewing the quasi-classical trance and strict minimalism that’s been cited as a major influence by the terrific Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds and others in that fine field of modern ambient, Yokota knits together an album that’s altogether more fun, demented, freewheeling, colourful, narcotic and oddly human.
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 this gently-applied but rampant eclecticism. Your Twinkling Eyes, with its overlapping, looping acoustic guitars and prismatic chimes, suggests a sort of Far Eastern Caribou; the unsettling avant-clang and ghostly choral sounds of Her Feminineness awakens a sense that it’s not all sunshine and fluffy white clouds here; and 9 Petals is a child-friendly romp built on what sounds like the rhythmic, chugging loop of a fairground ride and features the same alchemy of electronics, sax-parping and chanting that Moondog nailed and which Johnny Truck won over fans of freaky music with on his fabulous Sister Woo track.
The chosen character worming its way through Yokota’s latest album – irrational, prone to mood swings and suffering (or benefitting) from synaesthesia – requires all his entrancing sounds, whether they’re odd, beguilingly beautiful or nerve-fraying. And this seamless patchwork of sunny psych-pop, leftfield clatter, shadowy two-step, harmony-based euphoria, Steve Reich minimalism and kaleidoscopic melodies is so much more emotionally walloping and relevant than all the perennially downbeat, whoosh-and-sigh whale music that gives ambient a bad name.
Chris Parkin
2010
Since 1993, Susumu Yokota has built an impressive catalogue of more than 30 albums, and numerous EP’s and 12″-es.
On Kaleidoscope he presents 16 new tracks, over 1 hour of music.
Yokota can’t be accused of making it easy for himself. But, even better: his musical ideas are still as fresh as if this was his debut release.
Susumu Yokota’s music is often catalogued under ‘ambient’ music, but it hardly ever is – there is simply too much going on.
“Kaleidoscope” is a very appropriate title for these electronic sound sculptures.
I can almost imaging Susuma recording almost every single sound of everyday life and then finding a spot for it to use in a composition, in strange conjunction with other sounds he has recorded or created.
Vocal samples of a soulful background choir, people singing in a church service , street sounds, weird screams, vocoder samples, all embedded in electronically created and unpredictably sculpted backgrounds.
These are never just plain simple ‘environmental‘ recordings, because all fragments are presented far out of their original context. Like the album title suggests it is a kaleidoscopic, unrealistic view of the surrounding world.
Susumu Yokota once again proves he is a master master of Sound Art.
Without the heavy pretentiousness that sometimes goes with the genre, Kaleidoscope offers a refreshingly enhanced and unrealistic view on the sounds of our surrounding world.
13th October 2010
It can be difficult to keep pace with the output of an artist as prolific as Japan’s Susumu Yokota. He has sustained a remarkable work ethic, producing at least one album a year since 1998. Often unfairly classified as an ambient artist, Yokota also has interests in a wide range of electronic music, producing house and techno albums and working as a DJ. Perhaps due to the difficulty in navigating his back catalogue, he is often praised chiefly for the classic Sakura album from 2000, although there are many other highlights well worth investigating.
This latest work is a worthy addition to his catalogue. It is perhaps arguable that Yokota does not cover new ground here, but Kaleidoscope is certainly an impressive synthesis of his musical preoccupations. It is recognisable as the work of the same artist that made Sakura – it has similar dreamy and mysterious qualities. Yet it also captures the considerable development Yokota has made in the intervening 10 years. On Kaleidoscope, Yokota is considerably more engaged with melody and rhythm. He has also expanded his use of human voices to wondrous effect.
In addition to the familiar speech patterns Yokota has often used, he has more recently explored the sound of pop melodies and female voices. Some of these concerns reappear on Kaleidoscope, sometimes in grander form. The beautiful, pulsating Strain of My Heart sounds a little like the recent Wildbirds And Peacedrums voices project reimagined in an electronic setting. The delicate, quietly unnerving Your Twinkling Eyes uses brief sampled snippets of voices in a way not too dissimilar to Burial or Four Tet, although far more blissful and gentle than anything those artists would produce.
Everything on Kaleidoscope is meticulously orchestrated to achieve an effect. There’s the disorientating, clanging weirdness of Her Feminineness or 9 Petals, or the near pitchless, mechanical sound of processes on Photosynthesis. Elsewhere, Yokota achieves a mesmeric, shimmering effect on pieces such as Painted Room Key. Sprouting Symphony has some of the overwhelming, melodic euphoria of early Aphex Twin.
A number of the track titles and the overall sound of this album suggest that Yokota is investigating the relationship between humans and nature. Occasionally the use of indecipherable, half buried voices suggests that the natural world could perhaps subsume mankind rather than the other way around. Or perhaps it’s simply a way of exploring our symbiotic relationship with nature. Whatever the underlying concerns may be, Kaleidoscope is a fascinating, highly attuned work that once again demonstrates Yokota’s musical and creative awareness.
Daniel Paton
4th October 2010
Who makes ambient records in 2011? Even Brian Eno, who is usually given credit for kicking off the genre, is back making albums with banging percussion tracks.
One problem for ambient music was its hi-jacking by the twinkly-twinkly New Age brigade, and there are so many reprehensible examples of this (NZ’s Jeff Clarkson, stand up: firing squad, ready!) that those exploring atmospheric sonic drift with intelligence and imagination are too often tarred with the twinkly brush. Another reason for the low profile of ambient music is that people simply love rhythm, and you can’t tap your foot to this stuff. Disparaging friends refer to this as “sleepy-time” music, and they have a point: I dozed off while listening to Kaleidoscope, twice. In its defense, however, I was making up for a particularly poor sleep the night before.
Susumu Yokota is one of the ambient world’s contemporary heavyweights, and Kaleidoscope, his 20th long-player, has been getting sterling reviews. I can see why: it’s a return to form after a number of misfires in recent years, and comes close at times to the intoxicating audio hallucinations of Sakura (1999) and The Boy & The Tree (2002). A decade ago, Yokota seemed to have found his most fertile ground, effortlessly creating rich, resonant soundscapes that were as simple and surefooted as a Japanese watercolour, but beguiling and unknowable at the same time. The recordings released through esoteric English label Lo Recordings were reliably in this tradition, but Yokota had a second career making rather mundane House and Techno records, and at some point, in error, he tried to combine the styles. Instantly, the magic, his illusion, was gone; and recent albums have been frustratingly hit and miss affairs.
Kaleidoscope gets back to his strengths, at least in part – that ability to use sonic means to transport the listener as if narcotised, then cut loose on LSD. In the right room, at the right time, parts of this album will appear as vivid and trance inducing. But while Yokota mostly gets it right, there are a few moments that sound humdrum, automatic; where he lets the loops do his work for him.
My favourite Yokota album is Image 1983-1998, a record that uses loops in inventive and charming ways. Where that album uses unusual female voices and circus sounds in an entirely novel way, and has the cheek to salvage hissy old recordings of rudimentary guitar playing that somehow fill the listener with a sense of wonder, Kaleidoscope sometimes has the opposite effect by using similar techniques. Perhaps transposing one sample onto another bed of looped sounds has simply become too easy, because there’s a sense of process here that leads to loss of wonder.
But despite my suspicions, Kaleidoscope frequently works, and it’s worth pointing out that unlike so many amorphous ambient albums, while there are no beats, there is a sense of rhythm, and melodic development that will keep most normal human beings awake and engaged.
Gary Steel
8th October 2014
Original Review in Japanese:
万華鏡を回しながら覗いてみれば、変化する美しい図形のさまざまな鏡像が見える。横田進にとって32枚目となるオリジナル・アルバムは音による万華鏡だ。さまざまな音の断片、さまざまなテクスチャー――アコースティック・ギター、鐘の音、ピアノ、声、ストリングス、ポップ・ミュージック、雑音、などなど――がループして、そして変化していく。ゆっくりと催眠状態を誘うという点で言えば、昨今のチルウェイヴ／グローファイともリンクしそうだが、しかしここにディスコビートはない。ビートそのものがない。スティーヴ・ライヒめいたミニマル・ミュージックのアシッド・ハウス・ヴァージョンというか、ごくごく初期のポポル・ヴーに見られるロマン主義的風景のIDMスタイル的展開というか、アンダーグラウンドなクラブ系としてはこの国で最初に国際的な成功をおさめた横田進による『カレイドスコープ』は、作者にとって久しぶりのアンビエント作品となった。
それはこの20年の、横田進の不変的な資質がよく出ている、とも言える。結局のところ......彼の初期の作品のトランス・テクノにしても、90年代半ばのディープ・ハウスの作品にしても、彼の自主レーベル〈スキントーン〉における実験作にしても、３拍子のテクノにしても、そしてこうしたアンビエントの作品にしても、横田の音楽を特徴づけているのはヒプノティックである種ドラッギーな......要するにまあ、ハンパない強度を持ったエスケイピズムにある。反復とその変化は意識と睡眠のあいだをうまく潜り抜けて、長い距離を走っていくようだ。やがて意識は茫洋として、そしてどんどん遠くなる......。
これは明らかにトランスを誘発する仕掛けを持った音楽で、作者は立川市にある自宅のベッドルームに佇みながら、世界中にいる彼のリスナーがこのアルバムでうっとりと夢を見ている姿を想像してはほくそ笑んでいるに違いないのである。ヘッドフォンやイヤフォンで聴きながら外を歩けば、見慣れた景色も変色し、歪んで、うまい具合に迷子になれるだろう。このところ"愛""母"といった象徴的なテーマの作品が続いていた横田進だが、『カレイドスコープ』は20年に渡って彼が手掛けてきたトリップ・サウンドの最新版として楽しめるわけだ。
リリース元はここ５年、彼の作品をリリースしているロンドンの〈ロー・レコーディングス〉。アンビエント作品といってもアルバムには短い曲ばかりが16曲収録されている。すべてが３～４分程度の曲で、この手の音楽が陥りがちな冗長さはなく、次から次へと曲が変わる。インストゥルメンタルの曲において曲名はリスナーにとってひとつの重要な手がかりだし、せっかくなのでいくつかの曲名の（僕の勝手な）訳も記しておこう。"あなたの煌めく目""彼女の女らしさ""9枚の花びら""発芽シンフォニー""光合成""ユリは嫉妬をかぎつける""私が目を閉じたとき""二回落ちたあとに""ふたつの空""破壊の寸前の小石""赤い月"......などなど。10曲目の"ユリは嫉妬をかぎつける"では突然「あとで気づいた......」という日本語の声がする。
「あとで気づいた......」、いったい何に？
English Translation (via Google Translate):
If you peek through the kaleidoscope while spinning, you can see various mirror images of beautifully changing shapes. For Susumu Yokota, his 32nd original album is a kaleidoscope of sound. Various fragments of sound, various textures—acoustic guitar, bell sounds, piano, voice, strings, pop music, noise, and so on—loop and then change. In terms of slowly inducing a hypnotic state, it might be linked to recent chillwave/glo-fi, but there's no disco beat here. There is no beat at all. Susumu Yokota's 'Kaleidoscope,' which was the first underground club to achieve international success in this country, is a Steve Reich-style version of minimal music reminiscent of Steve Reich, or rather an IDM-style development of romantic landscapes seen in the very early Popol Vu, and marks the author's first ambient work in this country.
This can also be said to reflect the unchanging qualities of Susumu Yokota over the past 20 years. After all...... Whether it's his early trans techno, mid-90s Deep House pieces, experimental pieces on his independent label Skintone, triple-time techno, or these ambient pieces, what characterizes Yokota's music is a hypnotic and somewhat draggy feel...... In short, it lies in escapism with extraordinary intensity. Repetition and its changes seem to skillfully pass between consciousness and sleep, running long distances. Eventually, my consciousness became hazy and grew more distant .......
This is clearly music designed to induce trance, and the author must be smiling as he sits in his bedroom at his home in Tachikawa City, imagining listeners around the world dreaming dreaming dreamily on this album. If you walk outside listening with headphones or earphones, even familiar scenery will change color, distort, and get lost in a wonderful way. Recently, Susumu Yokota has been producing works with iconic themes like "love" and "mother," but "Kaleidoscope" can be enjoyed as the latest version of his trip sound work spanning 20 years.
The release is by London's Law Recordings, which has been releasing his works for the past five years. Although it is an ambient work, the album contains 16 short tracks. All pieces are about 3~4 minutes long, and there is no redundancy that often leads to this type of music; the tracks change one after another. In instrumental music, the song title is an important clue for the listener, so since I have the chance, I'll also note some (my own personal translations) of the song titles. "Your Sparkling Eyes," "Her Femininity," "Nine Petals," "Symphony of Germination," "Photosynthesis," "Lilies Catch Jealousy," "When I Close My Eyes," "After Falling Twice," "Two Skies," "Pebbles on the Verge of Destruction," "Red Moon...... And so on. In the tenth track, "Yuri Detects Jealousy," suddenly a Japanese voice says, "I realized it later......" is heard.
"I realized it later......"—what exactly is it for?
Tsutomu Noda
1st October 2010
Original Review in German:
Der Pfad zur Freiheit kann mitunter langwierig sein, von Holzwegen, Sackgassen und Hindernissen gesäumt. Im Falle des japanischen Electronica-Pioniers Susumu Yokota erscheint das musikalische Erwachsenwerden eine zunehmend aktive Suche nach den unscheinbaren Seitenwegen, nach den Abzweigungen ins Unterholz. Von den simplen aber höchst effektiven Acidelectro-Tracks der frühen neunziger Jahre (in guter Erinnerung: Panicwaves auf Harthouse) über den Loopambient der nuller Jahre wurden Yokotas Beats immer kleiner und die Struktur seiner Tracks immer freier und unvorhersehbarer. Der vorläufige Höhepunkt dieses irrlichternd suchenden Zugangs zu Musik ist sein circa 15. Album, Kaleidoscope, auf dem er das kontrollierte Abschweifen, das intensive Verwischen von Sounds zu bisher unerreichter Perfektion treibt. Klangmaterial und Form folgen bei Yokota keinem vorgegebenen Schema. Von grummelndem Dubstep zu intensiv pulsierenden elektroakustischen Klangschichtungen mit Industrialgeklopfe bis zu hausmusikalischem Pianopop fächert sich sein Klangbild auf. Das vermittelnde Element zwischen den stilistischen Extremen ist eine psychedelisch trippige Stimmlage, die Yokota nicht zufällig zum Vorbild für jüngere Improv-Elektroniker wie die Emeralds machte. Yokota ist angekommen im Dickicht.
English Translation (via Google Translate):
The path to freedom can be lengthy at times, lined with wooden paths, dead ends and obstacles. In the case of the Japanese electronica pioneer Susumu Yokota, growing up musically seems to be an increasingly active search for the inconspicuous side paths, for the branches into the undergrowth. From the simple but highly effective acid electro tracks of the early nineties (fondly remembered: Panicwaves on Harthouse) to the loop ambient of the noughties, Yokota's beats became smaller and smaller and the structure of his tracks became more and more free and unpredictable. The preliminary climax of this will-o'-the-wisp approach to music is his approximately 15th album, Kaleidoscope, on which he drives the controlled digression, the intense blurring of sounds to hitherto unattained perfection. Yokota's sound material and form do not follow a predetermined scheme. From rumbling dubstep to intensely pulsating electroacoustic sound layers with industrial knocking to house music piano pop, his sound image fans out. The mediating element between the stylistic extremes is a psychedelic trippy vocal range, which not coincidentally made Yokota a role model for younger improv electronic musicians like the Emeralds. Yokota has arrived in the thicket.
Frank P. Eckert
19th October 2010