Today, the UK-based Leaf label announced the passing of Susumu Yokota, a prolific Japanese musician whose blend of electroacoustic music skirts the realms of ambient, trance, and house. Passing away this past March at the age of 54, after a prolonged illness, it is only now that his family has made this sad news public. In tribute to the musician’s groundbreaking career, Yokota’s friend, Leaf owner Tony Morley, has collected together six of his favorite tracks from legendary label releases like Susumu’s Grinning Cat, Sakura, and Mother LPs–to name a few. My Energy is available as a “Pay what you want” release, and at the request of Susumu Yokota’s family all proceeds will be donated to Animal Refuge Kansai.
These tracks provide an excellent entry point for those unfamiliar with the musician, as well as being a survey of highlights from his amazing oeuvre. Yokota forwarded 90’s-era trance and downtempo by adding acoustic elements, and while others would rush to follow suit in the 2000’s, this musician’s creative urges never seemed to be stylistically motivated. Instead, if he was drawn to house and trance, it was only because he recognized in the forms music’s ancient connection to experiences of expanded consciousness–whether this be the rapt listening required for more ambient trends in downtempo, or house’s drive for states of communal ecstasy. In addition, the musician’s love for these Western forms was often filtered through a cultural sensibility that valued the minimalist trends inherently present in them, making for a beautifully uncluttered music focused on bringing an experience of sonic space to the listener–rather than just a reiteration of stylistic tendencies.
After the embed, you can check out an excellent written tribute from Tony Morley in which he recounts several stories about his late friend…
Tony Morley, Leaf Label:
Last week we received news that Susumu Yokota has passed away at the cruelly young age of 54 after a long period of illness. We understand that he died in late March, although his family has only just released the news.
We released six of Yokota’s albums over a period of four years (1999-2002), including three that have come to be considered classics of ambient music: Sakura, Grinning Cat and The Boy And The Tree. Those records helped put us on the map, and are still some of the best selling releases in The Leaf Label’s 20 year history. Their word-of-mouth success was made all the more remarkable by the fact that Yokota barely promoted them, visiting Europe to play live just once in the entire period we worked with him. Yokota returned the compliment by releasing a personally selected compilation of Leaf releases on his own Skintone label (Leaf Compilation, 2001). My personal favourite of his albums was the first we released, Image 1983-1998, a collection of delicate, otherworldly archive recordings.
As well as his ambient work, Yokota was respected for his house and techno music, with releases stretching back to 1993.
I only met Yokota three times, twice in the UK and a third time when I visited Japan in 2001. Yokota drove me (sometimes at alarming speed) through the endless sprawl of Tokyo and Yokohama to the tranquil city of Kamakura, where we visited ancient Buddhist and Shinto shrines and an extraordinary vegetarian restaurant (a rarity in Japan) that only served variants of tofu (it tasted immeasurably better than that sounds). Later we visited an onsen (hot spring baths), a real Japanese treat. Though he spoke very little English, he was always a charming and thoughtful companion. A sign on a harbour wall in Japanese and English we saw on the trip inspired the title of a Leaf compilation: “Watch for tsunami when you feel earth quake”, an instruction that would haunt me years later.
