From: "George Williamson" <georgewilliamson@btinternet.com>
quoted 2 lines I was wondering if people could suggest a good place to start with =
>I was wondering if people could suggest a good place to start with =
>susumu yokota?
2001 was a bit of a Susumu year for me. I bought quite a big chunk of
his back catalogue but am still missing a lot -- and although Susumu
is quickly becoming one of my very top favourite artists, I will
probably _not_ hunt down all his albums -- not too keen on spending
huge chunks of money on Japanese-only imports etc.
As I bought all the following albums quite quickly, they sort of gel
into one in my mind -- none of them has had time to become a firm
favourite, so I just give quick pointers to what they contain.
[BTW: You can buy most of these albums pretty cheaply from
http://www.posteverything.com/leaf/
They even have better descriptions of them than what I provide below.]
SAKURA
Most ambient of them all. Sparse with each individual track built
around only a couple of sounds. Nice atmospheric album that can work
very well as background music, too. No strong beats; gentle rhythms.
GRINNING CAT
More "orchestral", with which I mean that tracks involve more sounds
that are layered. Some gentle break-beats and a _lot_ of cut up
melody lines played on piano, repeating endlessly which should sound
irritating but doesn't. If pushed, I might name this one as my
all-round favourite of the albums.
WILL (Japanese-only CD)
Very different from the above, all of these tracks contain housey
beats but I do not think they would work particularly well in a club
-- but then again what do I know? If you get to listen to this one
in a shop, skip the first track as it is a generic poppy house tune
with a synth riff that does not work. Rest of the album is good,
though, and a couple of my favourite Yokota tracks are hidden towards
the end of the album. Still, maybe not the best album to start with.
MAGIC THREAD
A sort of hybrid of SAKURA and WILL styles: atmosperic and sparse
but with more emphasis on rhythms. This is the album I have
concentrated the least on so far, so cannot really say much more.
IMAGE 1983-1998
This is by far the least interesting of the releases for me but it
still contains a lot to enjoy. All tracks are again sparse, based
on melodies played on guitar and organ and not much else. One track
contains a sample of people singing a line from the camp disco
classic "I Am What I Am" which makes this album not a good choice
to play while having guests, unless you enjoy ridicule. :-)
In general:
One of the things I most enjoy about these Yokota albums is that
he makes modern sounding music that at the same time seems quite
ageless. He probably uses a lot of the same sampling & cut-up
techniques that many recent glitch artist without sounding gimmicky.
Some of his melodies are very child-like but not in the irritating,
poppy way (if that makes sense.) There's a definitely a lot of beauty
to this music.
Hope that helps,
Timo
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org