LAPUTA

Volume 1 - Album 7

The mystical world of Laputa is perhaps Yokota's most challenging work but immeasurably rewarding. Beguiling and bewitching in equal measure.

A1: Rising Sun
A2: Lost Ring
A3: Gong Gong Gong
A4: Grey Piano

B1: Iconic Air
B2: Light of The Sun
B3: Trip Eden

C1: 23 Degrees Dream
C2: Hidden Love
C3: True Story
C4: Dragon Place

D1: I Am Flying
D2: Dizzy Echo
D3: Heart By Heart
D4: Hyper On Hyper

Including an essay by Richard Norris in the liner notes...

... “There is a building up and breaking down of the elements within the mix, in a careful and spacious construction. Something that appears to be far in the distance can gradually, or suddenly, break through front and centre. There are many styles of music that have been called deep listening - the term is even applied to a way of listening itelf. Laputa is a fine example of depth in music. It can also be heard as a ceremony, and as a trip..”...

Susumu Yokota’s Laputa (2003) is perhaps his most challenging, foreboding and perplexing body of work. Over fifteen undulating sonic fugue states, he guides listeners round a liminal world, made up of familiar materials but formed in a way defying all laws of perspective and physics. Like the impossible perspective of Giorgio de Chirico’s paintings, background murmurings give way to almost uncomfortably foregrounded chattering, and one perceived soundstage segues into another impossible tableau of sonic apparitions, some recognisable in form, but all boldly decontextualised and arranged in expertly cluttered amalgams. The twisting, ‘penguin pool at London Zoo’ form on the cover also alludes to this Escher-esque collision of sonic angles, its arcing petal-like plateau spiralling into oblivion and calling to mind Le Corbusier’s 1958 Philips Pavilion, housing Iannis Xenakis and Varèse’s similarly disembodied sequence of sonic artefacts, Poème Électronique. Although possibly Yokota’s first entirely beatless work, it does not share the capital A ambient nature of Eno’s forays into discreet music, or the soothing soundscapes more readily associable with The Boy and The Tree, his previous effort on the Skintone label.

Instead, it rewards deep and intentioned listening; watching sounds and textures pass by in a seductive dream sequence. Not one to stick on while entertaining friends or spring cleaning.

‘Rising Sun’ gently sets the tone for a vivid trip, with its deep, resonant monastic drones, band-passed signal interference and eerie operatic wails, before the antigravitational tone float of ‘Lost Ring’ leads the listener into the cosmic ping pong match of the onomatopoeic ‘gong gong gong’, a spiritual prequel to composers like Alexi Baris and Ulla Straus’ expansive audio patchworks. The mellower ‘Iconic Air’ fuses a plodding, space-lounge bassline with metallic dub techno sound FX and overtone atmospheres, and the nearly avant-pop abstraction on ‘Light of The Sun’ leads us into the plinky, isolationist centrepiece ‘Grey Piano’, channelling Arvo Pärt’s austere tintinnabulations. ‘7 Degrees Dream’ guides us back towards deep-space cocktail party ambience before the sinister, cinematic warning tones of ‘Hidden Love’ preempt the bitonal chaos of ‘Trip Eden’. The borderline cheesy, questing synths of ‘True Story’ are soon undermined by mischievous, formant-shifted vocalisations, and colossal synth stalactites glisten on the aptly named ‘Dragon Place’.

The almost disconcertingly gentle ‘I am flying’ eases us into soporific bliss, before ‘Dizzy Echo’, ‘Heart By Heart’, and the percussive stride of ‘Hyper on Hyper’ end the album on a flustered, breathless note, dropping us back to reality with a thud and a cosmic pat on the back.

Another factor setting Laputa apart from the eternal chin-stroke of both ambient and avant garde camps is its use of unflinchingly synthetic sounds and textures, as well as pop detritus. Take ‘Lost Ring’ for instance, where soaring, Jimmy Smith-style rotary hammond licks circle overhead, crying out in a vacuum otherwise permeated by mostly uncanny, humanoid chattering, or ‘23 Degrees Dream’, where 80s city-pop synth lines, clumsy blues guitar twangs, and shoegazy vocal mantras bob in the void. This aspect of Yokota’s music speaks to his profound mastery and appreciation of the twin disciplines of popular and ‘art’ music, a dichotomy which a handful of critics dourly and categorically failed to understand on the release of his first non-dance efforts. Sucks to be them. Laputa is the sound of Yokota casually shrugging off all expectations and artistic inhibitions.