Sundaze 1643

Hello, F1 is back on track , this time on the phenomenal racetrack at Austin, Texas. Hamilton took a clear pole with the fastest time ever recorded there. Behind him Rosberg and Ricciardo with Verstappen fourth with a clear margin on Raikonnen and Vettel.  A rumour was spread that drivers had complained about Verstappen's driving style, strangely the riders named never get to see the back of Verstappens car, it was clear that these rumours came from Ferrari who are in a battle with Red Bull for second place in the constructors championship trying to intimidate the youngster...we'll see how that pans out.



Today's artist is a prolific, prodigiously talented artist, he was responsible for over thirty albums between 1993 and 2012, exploring the worlds of acid techno, trance, ambient, downtempo and beyond. His music was always completely individual, always esoteric yet never wilfully indulgent. His touch was that of a master craftsman, creating intricate musical jewels that sparkled like no others.... N'Joy

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Susumu Yokota emerged in the early '90s as one of the most versatile and prolific electronic producers going. In his native Japan, he was known for many years as a top-tier dance music talent, specializing in all varieties of house while dabbling in techno, electro, and trance for the Sublime, Harthouse, and Planet Earth labels. Alternate aliases for his dance releases included Ringo, Prism, and Sonicstuff. While his dancefloor tracks were funky and playful with a heavy debt to epic disco -- he even covered Idris Muhammad's underground disco classic "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This" -- Yokota's ambient work unfolds with the patience of a butoh dance, all small gestures and gradually shifting layers of quiet sound. He gained international stature with home listeners and critics with the release of a series of well-received ambient albums on the U.K. label Leaf, beginning in 1998 with Magic Thread, and following with Image: 1983-1998 (1999), Sakura (2000), Grinning Cat (2001), and The Boy and the Tree (2002). (Some of these releases originally appeared in small runs on Yokota's Skintone label.) Releases for Lo Recordings followed, including the Rothko collaboration Distant Sounds of Summer (2005), Wonder Waltz (2006), Love or Die (2007), and Mother (2009). Also an accomplished DJ, Yokota leant his mixing skills to the 2001 label retrospective Leaf Compilation. His most recent and ultimately his final album was 2012’s Dreamer, released on Lo Recordings.

Yokota’s family released a statement:

“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Susumu Yokota who passed away on 27th March, 2015 at the age of 54 after a long period of medical treatment.


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The Boy and the Tree pulses with a consistent timbre that lulles one into a state of relaxation. Not a foam-mat, twisted-limbs, pilates-class kind of relaxation, but more of a well-rested glow. The panning, reverberating electric guitar lines and bird chirping forest sounds of the opening “The Colour of Pomegranates” struck me differently than expected. The album borrows heavily from various “nature” sounds, combining them with stringed instruments and percussion, and is always one step from delving into Nature channel stock footage or “Relaxing Sounds of Slumber.” A testament to Yokota is that, although these moods are suggested, he explores the details of their character as to not veer into focus group-tested hyperbole. Careful never to overplay his artistic hand, Yokota creates his own musical dialect, one that has been methodically filtered through various aesthetic inputs. This practice results in music that achieves its intended aims of tranquility and contemplation, but without all of the new age baggage that could accompany it. “Thread Leads to Heaven” features a blended melody doubled, overlapped and (as per the title) threaded together. “Rose Necklace” adds an angelic vocal that speaks through an evaporating echo before descending into an incomprehensible synthesized spray. These water-based adjectives are intentional – Yokota’s continual shape-shifting evidence a real musical liquidity. Expertly manipulating sound sources and extracting their elemental qualities, Yokota creates compositions that are equally restrained and expressive.

Susumu Yokota - The Boy and the Tree    (flac  297mb)

01 The Colour Of Pomegranates 5:13
02 Live Echo 5:31
03 Fairy Link 4:33
04 Grass,Tree And Stone 4:39
05 Secret Garden 6:10
06 Rose Necklace 2:44
07 Beans 1:20
08 Plateau On Plateau 5:50
09 Red Swan 4:27
10 Thread Leads To Heaven 3:42
11 Future Tiger 5:26
12 Blood And Snow 5:01

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Susumu Yokota makes albums that increasingly worry the boundaries of IDM, ambient and sound collage. This is his most abstract and foreboding-sounding release yet. By now, the concept of the "parallel universe" probably rivals the theory of relativity as the best-known scientific/metaphysical concept of the 20th Century. The idea, of course, is that at any point in time, all available choices and possibilities are realized in an ever-blooming flower of multiverses. Susumu Yokota makes albums that increasingly worry the boundaries of IDM, ambient and sound collage. Yokota has come at abstract music from the origin of being a house DJ in his native Japan, meaning that his sensibilities are not always aligned with those who balk at the cheesy tropes of techno (warm synth tones playing major seventh chords, heavily reverbed female vocal samples, etc), yet too unconventional and complex for the trance crowd. Laputa is Yokota's most abstract and foreboding-sounding release yet. Almost entirely beatless, its pieces float quietly in and out of existence, operating according to their own logic and leaving the same faint, surreal impressions as dreams upon waking.

As the record's proclamatory title suggests, Yokota attempts to create a world in itself. His aim is not to transform your external environment, but to form one in your head-- if Eno's Another Green World presents a universe not unlike our own, where they still have swimming little fishes and bouncy pop music, Laputa presents an abstract and entirely unfamiliar space. Against various droney and spacious backdrops, Yokota presents independently floating and interacting bits of sound that suggest geometric patterns and shapes, such as the woman's voice at the beginning of "Trip Eden" that rises and reverses upon itself like a sleek symmetrical object.

Susumu Yokota - LaPuta  (flac  278mb)

01 Rising Sun 4:47
02 Lost Ring 3:42
03 Gong Gong Gong 4:25
04 Iconic Air 4:52
05 Light Of The Sun 4:08
06 Grey Piano 1:12
07 23 Degrees Dream 3:00
08 Hidden Love 3:50
09 Trip Eden 4:48
10 True Story 2:52
11 Dragon Place 3:51
12 I Am Flying 3:42
13 Dizzy Echo 2:19
14 Heart By Heart 4:04
15 Hyper On Hyper 4:04

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Susumu Yokota known as the most prolific supplier of high precision stylized electronic mood music. His albums typically fall into the ambient area, but on Over Head Yokota shows himself to have a more robust side. The albums has ten tracks are fall under the breakbeat techno moniker, notably as exactly produced as we are used to on his more subdued work. Overhead neatly bridges these two seemingly contradictory bodies of work, a downtempo set of deep house tracks that draws heavily on Middle Eastern (“Wheel Tower”), African (“Aerial Chamber”) and flamenco (“Bridgehead”) rhythms.Need ear plugs? It's not as bad that, though the programmed beats can sometimes sound strange with the ghost of Certain Ratio looming round from time to time..

Susumu Yokota - Over Head  (flac  362mb)

01 Aerial Chateau 5:24
02 Wheel Tower 6:03
03 Play Act Circuit 5:58
04 Rainbow Flag 6:18
05 Soul Cry 5:06
06 Blackout 6:25
07 Bridgehead 5:37
08 Area B 5:51
09 Golden Mountain 5:59
10 Open Door 5:53

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Musical styles come and go, but Yokota reigns supreme in a universe of his own making. ‘Dreamer’ is instantly familiar and yet full of surprises and like all of yokota’s best music, it leaves the listener in a state of wonder. This is meditative music but miles away from new age wallpaper. Eastern flavours permeate many of the tracks, often mixed with free electronic noise, to create what John Hassell called ‘Fourth World Music’, capable of transporting the listener to a brand new world.  Sounds that in other hands could have a disturbing effect are transformed into tools for opening the mind. Within ‘popular’ music there are dew that make music with Yokota’s depth and ease. His music never sounds forced, fake or phoney, never trite or tentative, always fully formed and wholesome. So it comes as no surprise that his fans include Thom Yorke, Brian Eno and Philip Glass and that ‘Dreamer’ is another superb addition to the Yokota.

Susumu Yokota - Dreamer  (flac  334mb)

01 Human Memory 5:52
02 Flitting Ray 4:02
03 Subconscious Globe 5:42
04 Inception 6:13
05 Double Spot Image 3:32
06 Quiet Room 5:20
07 Animation Of The Airy 6:04
08 Renounce The World 5:17
09 Brainwashing And Senses 5:27
10 A Day At The Planet 4:25
11 Legendary Stream 6:25

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