Biography
Susumu Yokota, a versatile and extraordinarily productive electronic musician and composer from Japan, first built recognition during the 1990s through dance-music productions before attracting wider global attention near the millennium with his ambient and experimental output. Those later pieces develop patiently, much like butoh dance, through understated motions and slowly evolving strata of subdued sonics. His initial recordings spanned the acid-trance intensity of The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection (1993) to the airy, Detroit-inflected techno and house of Metronome Melody, issued under the Prism alias in 1995. Sakura, an ethereal collection of loop-driven meditations first issued in 1999, earned critical praise and has come to be viewed as an ambient landmark. Although much of his subsequent best-known material took the form of ambient and downtempo projects, among them Grinning Cat in 2001 and the classically tinted Symbol in 2004, he still issued occasional techno and house albums, such as Psychic Dance in 2009.
Yokota’s very first release, the 1992 trance EP Brainthump, appeared on the German label No Respect Records under the Tenshin moniker. His debut full-length, The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection, credited simply to Yokota, came out on the noted Harthouse imprint in 1993; another German outlet, Space Teddy, soon began issuing his earliest ambient-techno explorations under the Ebi name. Through Japanese label Sublime Records he delivered Acid Mt. Fuji in 1994, followed in 1995 by Plantation, his lone album as Ringo, and by Prism’s debut Metronome Melody. He also partnered with Ray Castle in the ambient duo Mantaray and within the Goa-trance endeavor Sonic Sufi, each issuing a single album that year. Anima:Beat, a tribal-tinged techno album credited to Anima Mundi, surfaced on Newstage Records in 1996, while the self-titled debut of Bamboo Data, Yokota’s experimental collaboration with Thomas Bit, likewise appeared that year. Cat, Mouse and Me, the second album released under Yokota’s own name, arrived on Harthouse in 1997. As Stevia he issued Fruits of the Room, which touched on drum’n’bass, and as Prism he released the second album Fallen Angel, which fused breakbeat with deep house.
Throughout 1998 Yokota put out the breakbeat-driven Greenpeace under the Stevia name on NS-Com and the disco-house set 1998 on Sublime. He also established his own Skintone imprint and unveiled two of his most experimental works to date, Image 1983-1998, a compilation of previously unreleased pieces, and Magic Thread; both later appeared on the British label Leaf. The ambient-oriented Sakura from 1999 was likewise taken up by Leaf and received international acclaim, while Mix, containing more club-oriented reworkings of several of the same pieces, surfaced the same year along with another house effort simply titled 1999. Zero in 2000 included Yokota’s version of Idris Muhammad’s underground-disco staple “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This.” The following year he delivered Zero Remixes, the house album Will, the more experimental Grinning Cat, and Leaf Compilation, a mixed anthology of label tracks. Maintaining the dual character of his output, Sublime issued the club-oriented Sound of Sky in 2002, whereas the more abstract The Boy and the Tree appeared on Skintone and Leaf. Over Head, a collection of experimental breakbeat pieces, came out on Play Label in 2003, and the gently minimal Laputa followed on Skintone.
The deep-house album Baroque was released by United Sounds of Blue in 2004, and Symbol, constructed largely from classical-music samples, appeared on Skintone the same year. It received an international release on Lo in 2005, which also issued Distant Sounds of Summer, Yokota’s full-length collaboration with Rothko. Paralleling his earlier Leaf mix, he released Lo Compilation in 2006. Wonder Waltz, an album of waltz-tempo compositions featuring vocalists such as Kahimi Karie and Iva Bittová, appeared that year, and Yokota pursued his interest in the same meter with the techno album Triple Time Dance on Koplatiko. Love or Die and the retrospective Skintone Collection both arrived in 2007.
Following a brief hiatus, Yokota reemerged in 2009 with Mother, another vocal-centric release featuring his Lo labelmates Caroline Ross and Nancy Elizabeth, and returned to Harthouse with the digital-only minimal-techno album Psychic Dance. Lo issued his final two albums, Kaleidoscope in 2010 and Dreamer in 2012, both of which organized organic samples into trippy, surreal configurations. After an extended illness, Yokota died on March 27, 2015, at age 54. Several years later, Mark Beazley of Rothko located a DAT tape of unreleased Yokota material that included early versions of tracks later heard on The Boy and the Tree; he forwarded the recordings to Jon Tye at Lo Recordings, who released them as Cloud Hidden in 2019.
Yokota’s very first release, the 1992 trance EP Brainthump, appeared on the German label No Respect Records under the Tenshin moniker. His debut full-length, The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection, credited simply to Yokota, came out on the noted Harthouse imprint in 1993; another German outlet, Space Teddy, soon began issuing his earliest ambient-techno explorations under the Ebi name. Through Japanese label Sublime Records he delivered Acid Mt. Fuji in 1994, followed in 1995 by Plantation, his lone album as Ringo, and by Prism’s debut Metronome Melody. He also partnered with Ray Castle in the ambient duo Mantaray and within the Goa-trance endeavor Sonic Sufi, each issuing a single album that year. Anima:Beat, a tribal-tinged techno album credited to Anima Mundi, surfaced on Newstage Records in 1996, while the self-titled debut of Bamboo Data, Yokota’s experimental collaboration with Thomas Bit, likewise appeared that year. Cat, Mouse and Me, the second album released under Yokota’s own name, arrived on Harthouse in 1997. As Stevia he issued Fruits of the Room, which touched on drum’n’bass, and as Prism he released the second album Fallen Angel, which fused breakbeat with deep house.
Throughout 1998 Yokota put out the breakbeat-driven Greenpeace under the Stevia name on NS-Com and the disco-house set 1998 on Sublime. He also established his own Skintone imprint and unveiled two of his most experimental works to date, Image 1983-1998, a compilation of previously unreleased pieces, and Magic Thread; both later appeared on the British label Leaf. The ambient-oriented Sakura from 1999 was likewise taken up by Leaf and received international acclaim, while Mix, containing more club-oriented reworkings of several of the same pieces, surfaced the same year along with another house effort simply titled 1999. Zero in 2000 included Yokota’s version of Idris Muhammad’s underground-disco staple “Could Heaven Ever Be Like This.” The following year he delivered Zero Remixes, the house album Will, the more experimental Grinning Cat, and Leaf Compilation, a mixed anthology of label tracks. Maintaining the dual character of his output, Sublime issued the club-oriented Sound of Sky in 2002, whereas the more abstract The Boy and the Tree appeared on Skintone and Leaf. Over Head, a collection of experimental breakbeat pieces, came out on Play Label in 2003, and the gently minimal Laputa followed on Skintone.
The deep-house album Baroque was released by United Sounds of Blue in 2004, and Symbol, constructed largely from classical-music samples, appeared on Skintone the same year. It received an international release on Lo in 2005, which also issued Distant Sounds of Summer, Yokota’s full-length collaboration with Rothko. Paralleling his earlier Leaf mix, he released Lo Compilation in 2006. Wonder Waltz, an album of waltz-tempo compositions featuring vocalists such as Kahimi Karie and Iva Bittová, appeared that year, and Yokota pursued his interest in the same meter with the techno album Triple Time Dance on Koplatiko. Love or Die and the retrospective Skintone Collection both arrived in 2007.
Following a brief hiatus, Yokota reemerged in 2009 with Mother, another vocal-centric release featuring his Lo labelmates Caroline Ross and Nancy Elizabeth, and returned to Harthouse with the digital-only minimal-techno album Psychic Dance. Lo issued his final two albums, Kaleidoscope in 2010 and Dreamer in 2012, both of which organized organic samples into trippy, surreal configurations. After an extended illness, Yokota died on March 27, 2015, at age 54. Several years later, Mark Beazley of Rothko located a DAT tape of unreleased Yokota material that included early versions of tracks later heard on The Boy and the Tree; he forwarded the recordings to Jon Tye at Lo Recordings, who released them as Cloud Hidden in 2019.
Albums
