Susumu Yokota – Symbol
Susumu Yokota – Symbol

Susumu Yokota – Symbol

Regular price £32.00 Sale

Label: P-Vine Records – PLP-7156
Format: Vinyl, LP, Limited Edition, Reissue, Remastered
Country: Japan
Released: 18 Aug 2021
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno, Ambient

First time on vinyl for Yokota’s ingenious and weirdly beautiful tapestry of classical samples

Originally released via P-Vine on CD in 2004, and now in a much requested probably-hear-and-gone vinyl edition, Symbol is a late career outlier from the much missed ambient godhead. His source material here is sampled classical music, which he chops, loops and layers along with his more usual synths and drum machines. He mainly appropriates music of the Romantic and Impressionist schools - Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven etc. but Meredith Monk's ecstatic vocals also make a few appearances. You might think that he will have chosen tiny snatches of obscure pieces, but not so. The album is full of very famous melodies made strange and new. The kind of stuff that even the most untutored ear would instantly recognise from a thousand car adverts. This is an odd and super-risky strategy. It could have ended up sounding like one of those hideous pop/classical hybrids on Music for Pleasure or similar that will always choke our charity shops. But in his hands it doesn’t. It’s undeniably beautiful: elegant, ornate and slightly mannered. One minute it’s fading into airily perfect stasis. The next it's jolting you awake with an uncanny valley moment of disassociated joy as two familiar but unplaceable melodies slide over each other hinting at a third.


In other words it shouldn’t work but, of course, it does.. (Mint / New)


Tracklist
A1 Long Long Silk Bridge
A2 Purple Rose Minuet
A3 Traveler In The Wonderland
A4 Song Of The Sleeping Forrest
A5 The Plateau Which The Zephyr Of Flora Occupies
A6 Fairy Dance Of Twinkle and Shadow
B1 Flaming Love And Destiny
B2 The Dying Black Swan
B3 Blue Sky And Yellow Sunflower
B4 Capriccio And The Innovative Composer
B5 I Close the Door Upon Myself
B6 Symbol Of, Life, Love, And Aesthetics
B7 Music From The Lake Surface