IMAGE 1983-1998

Volume 1 - Album 2

Mesmerising album of Yokota’s earliest sonic explorations that demonstrates his unique vision and sublime transcendence of boundaries.

A1: Kaiten Mokuba
A2: Tayutafu
A3: Fukuru no Yume
A4: Wani Natte
A5: Sakashima
A6: Morino Gakudan

B1: Nisemono no Uta
B2: Daremoshiranai Chisanakuni
B3: Kwano Hotorino Kinoshitade
B4: Yumekui Kobito
B5: Amai Niyoi
B6: Enogu
B7: Amanogawa

Including an essay from Robert Harris in the liner notes....

....’Listening on repeat it’s pretty hard to identify where the early 80’s become the late 90’s. A musical manifestation of time, not as a line, linear, but past , present and future co-existing together in the same place’....

Image (1993-1998) is the second release on Susumu Yokota’s Skintone label, and is a deeply personal, pensive and autobiographical sequence of organ, guitar and tape studies, released at a time when the majority of his output landed squarely in the house and techno spheres. It represents an unearthing of, and desire to return to his early experiments in ghostly pop formations, post-punk timbres and melody-led abstraction. The opening five tracks were recorded in 1983-4, and the remainder were devised as a continuation of those tracks between 1997 and 1998, when the Skintone label was launched and Yokota was taking tentative steps towards a more pared-back, tranquil and nostalgic soundworld.

The tracks recorded in 1983-4, around the time Yokota was recording his debut techno offering for Sven Väths Harthouse label, have a spectral and fragmentary air. ‘Kaiten Mokuba’ opens with the wheezing pall of a tipsy pipe organ, rocking to and fro in a tender and pensive opening fanfare, before the disarmingly pretty, folksy guitar ambedo of ‘Tayutafu’ unexpectedly grounds the listener in the same warm and oneiric terrain as some of Bert Jansch’s solo acoustic works.

‘Fukuro No Yume’ follows, a return to the dusty fairground organ nostalgia of the opener, before the jangly guitar pointillism of ‘Wani Natte’ immediately lays bare his Durutti Column influence, also calling to mind the later work of ambient songstress Colleen. ‘Sakashima’ brings the first chapter to a close with its purring static washes and tentative organ pulses, distorted and gated to the brink of recognition.

The latter two-thirds of the album, conceived as an escape route when the weight of expectation to produce functional house and techno records was mounting, is an audibly more accomplished but similarly frugal and meditative throwback to his earlier experiments with timbre and emotive minimalism. The arcing e-piano motifs and staccato strings of ‘Morino Gakudan’ lay the foundations for much of his later work on the Skintone label, and the cooing vocal intermissions over a bed of churning rhodes motifs on ‘Kawano Hotorino Kinoshitade’ sound uncannily like an offcut of 1999’s pivotal Sakura album.

‘Amai Niyoi’ answers ‘Wani Natte’ in its sparkling, 80s inflected guitar ostinati, adding charming melodica and droplets of bell-like synthwork, and the soothing closer ‘Amanogawa’ flies the closest to Yokota’s dance oeuvre, with wavering voices and supple melodies flitting around soft sine syncopations, prefacing the dissected trance sketches of producers like Lorenzo Senni by a decade.

The cover of the album shows a twig-like structure, branching off into curlicues and framed by Yokota to preserve a degree of ambiguity and strangeness. Presumably a close up of one of Yokota’s Marcel Duchamp-inspired assemblages, it is perfectly analogous to the music, which zooms in on sonic artefacts, acousmatically prising them from their sources and revelling in their stark, fundamental beauty. The voice of an organ is mangled through chains of effects, amplifying its oddly human wheeze and flutter, and delicately spliced vocal apparitions materialise at the back of the soundstage. With these early sketches, Yokota demonstrates his unparalleled command of timbre and pacing; every loop is given breathing space, and the music brims with humanity.