Susumu Yokota - Love Or Die

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Mingus on Thu 27 Mar, 2008.

Susumu Yokota: Love Or Die (Lo Recordings) New twelve track opus with titles that sound like they've been translated literally from their Japanese origins, if they belonged to an British artist no doubt they'd be screams of pretentious. The music is nothing of the sort however, track two: A Slowly Fainting Memory Of Love Respect, and Hatred is a haunting elegy full of chimes and tones anchored by clattering, percussive beats. Yokota blends soft keyboard lines,strings, warm padded washes and a busy tempo of beats culled from a host of genres- break beats, techno stomp to the soft lilt that underpins the guitar and piano refrain of track four. This prolific artist has a canny knack of taking key elements from modern electronica and dance and melding them into something accessible and unchallenging.

1. For The Other Self Who is Far Away That I Can not Reach
2. A Slowly Fainting Memory of Love and Respect, and Hatred
3. The Loneliness of Anarchic Beauty Achieved by My Ego
4. A Heart-warming and Beautiful Flower Will Eventually Wither Away and
Become Dirt
5. The Sin of Almighty God, Respected and Believed by the Masses
6. The Person's Hearsay Protects my Free Spirit
7. The Things that I Need to Do for Just One Love
8. The Scream of a Sage Who Lost Freedom and Love Taken for Granted Before.
9. A Song Produced While Floating Alone on Christmas Day
10. The Now Forgotten God of Rocky Mountain Residing in the Back of The
North Woods
11. The Sacred Ceremony Conceived by Chance from an Evil Lie
12. The Destiny of a little Bird Trapped Inside a Small Cage for Life

OVERVIEW:
Susumu Yokota is one of the very few consistently engaging electronic artists to emerge in the last 10 years. Always restless, always changing and yet always himself. Love Or Die sees him return to a more distinctly ‘ambient’ sound as found on his classic albums like ‘ Sakura’ and ‘Grinning Cat’ and yet as ever there are new variations and surprising juxtapositions, such as the drum and bass meets Windham Hill textures of ‘ The Scream of a Sage…’ or the Joe Meek breakbeat of ‘The Loneliness of AnarchicBeauty…’. The long Zen like titles seem to indicate that whatever the musical terrain, at the core of Yokota’s music there lies a deep and profound sense of purpose and focus.