Susumu Yokota

Image (1993-1998) is the second release on Susumu Yokota’s Skintone label, and is a deeply personal, pensive and autobiographical sequence of organ, guitar and tape studies, released at a time when the majority of his output landed squarely in the house and techno spheres. It represents an unearthing of, and desire to return to his early experiments in ghostly pop formations, post-punk timbres and melody-led abstraction. The opening five tracks were recorded in 1983-4, and the remainder were devised as a continuation of those tracks between 1997 and 1998, when the Skintone label was launched and Yokota was taking tentative steps towards a more pared-back, tranquil and nostalgic soundworld.

The tracks recorded in 1983-4, around the time Yokota was recording his debut techno offering for Sven Väths Harthouse label, have a spectral and fragmentary air. ‘Kaiten Mokuba’ opens with the wheezing pall of a tipsy pipe organ, rocking to and fro in a tender and pensive opening fanfare, before the disarmingly pretty, folksy guitar ambedo of ‘Tayutafu’ unexpectedly grounds the listener in the same warm and oneiric terrain as some of Bert Jansch’s solo acoustic works. ‘Fukuro No Yume’ follows, a return to the dusty fairground organ nostalgia of the opener, before the jangly guitar pointillism of ‘Wani Natte’ immediately lays bare his Durutti Column influence, also calling to mind the later work of ambient songstress Colleen. ‘Sakashima’ brings the first chapter to a close with its purring static washes and tentative organ pulses, distorted and gated to the brink of recognition.