Susumu Yokota - Sakura

Susumu Yokota is a prolific electronic musician, and this is a fabulous offering from 2000. Highly recommended for fans of Eno, Cluster, and early ambient music, this displays strong influences from this scene right from the beginning. Opening track 'Saku' has gently pulsating synths, phased drones, and gently tinkling electric piano lines all wrapped up in a cosy cloud of reverb. This would be good isolation tank music, but is gorgeously engaging, too, as it develops organically into throbbing bass. 'Ucho Tanjyo' adds some grooving ethnic percussion, with some gent from distant shores mumbling cryptically, which works excellently with the tremolo, phased synths soaring in the background. 'Genshi' even has a kick drum and cymbals driving it along, but the same lush and lovely synth melodies are present throughout the album: this is almost a set of variations, until 'Naminote' rather strangely injects a bit of a swinging jazz vamp. Highly recommended.

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