Susumu Yokota

Japanese musician, producer and composer Susumu Yokota left a deep imprint on the electronic scene, from the 1990s until his death in 2015. Born in Toyama, in the prefecture of the same name, on April 22, 1960, he began his career as a house DJ in the early 1980s, after studying economics and design at university. Alongside his work as a graphic designer in Tokyo, he contributed to the Ebi and Ringo projects, while signing to other productions under the aliases 246, Stevia, Prism, Yin & Yang and Anima Mundi. After a first techno opus under his own name, The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection (1993), released on the German label Harthouse, Yokota stood out for the traditional Japanese music influences running through the filigree of the albums Mt. Fuji (1994) and Cat, Mouse & Me (1996), recorded for Sublime Records. Signing with English label Leaf Records in 2000, he adopted an ambient style with touches of downtempo, trip-hop, breakbeat, house and acid jazz, on albums such as Zero (2000), Sakura (2000), Will (2001), Sound of Sky (2002) and Baroque (2004), just a few examples from a prolific discography of some thirty titles. During the 2000s, his output underwent further metamorphoses towards IDM and minimalist techno, as evidenced by Triple Time Dance (2006), Love or Die (2007) and Psychic Dance (2009), before returning to a form of experimental ambient with Kaleidoscope (2010) and Dreamer (2012), his latest recordings. A discreet but no less influential and inspiring artist, mixing genres and blurring tracks, Susumu Yokota then battled illness until his death on March 27, 2015, at the age of 54.

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