By: Si Forster
Susumu Yokota |
Released on September 11, 2000 via The Leaf Label
Last year saw The Leaf Label reach its twentieth anniversary. A record label dedicated to finding and releasing what they accurately describe as “That Beautiful Noise”, they’ve been succeeding in this with regular and quietly unassuming aplomb. It’s perfectly fitting that they celebrate their ongoing journey with a large boxset of their finest wares (which finally sees release this February), and it’s made all the more beautiful and poignant for featuring this wonderful record.
Susumu Yokota’s name may well be unfamiliar to many, but mention of his name will light up the faces of those who know him and his work. His death last year (at the age of just 53) was marked in much the same way as his life’s work was celebrated, by word of mouth and hushed tones. Here is an artist who people discover via anything other than “the usual channels”, his records are stumbled on through blind buys or impassioned recommendations from friends. And the one that gets quietly passed around and taken to heart more than any other is Sakura.
Released in Japan in 1999 and picked up by The Leaf Label in 2000, Sakura is a rare work of absolute genius where every experiment falls into the right place. The result is a rare perfect moment befitting its title, and is exactly the sort of thing that Word of Mouth was invented for.
Beginning with ‘Saku’, the album sort of follows established rules of what Ambience should be; gentle waves of unhurried pulses at just the right frequency to disarm and calm, with a few bits and bobs of melody floating to the surface every now and then to provide fragments of light. After that, the rulebook slowly sails out of the window as ‘Yokota’ brings in elements of his work as a House DJ as well as pulling in whatever he feels like to create a record of total oddness: ‘Uchu Tanjyo’ is mostly someone talking over a hypnotic drumbeat, Kotodomachi nicks its main vocal hook from Joni Mitchell’s 1969 ‘Songs to Aging Children Come’ to great effect, ‘Naminote’ takes its cues from weird jazz loops that are anything but ambient. You (not me, of course) can even dance to ‘Genshi’, should the mood take you.
Sakura is a record that will definitely surprise on the first listen, and should delight with each subsequent go. Unlike much of the genre that Yokota spends most of his time here gleefully poking through, it’s a very kinetic album that lends itself well to any journey, even if said journey just involves looking out of a window watching everything else go by. Susumu Yokota left behind a body of work that can confound just as much as it can enchant, with Sakura he has created a graceful masterpiece that hits every strange and beautiful target with each of its twelve tracks. He will certainly be missed by everyone who ever took his music to heart, but records as good as this will ensure a legacy of delighted discoveries for a long time to come.
