Product Description

Susumu Yokota has chosen an unusual path that revisits, contemplates, and deconstructs his own past. SAKURA completes the trilogy that began with Yokota's incipient IMAGE and reconciliatory MAGIC THREAD, bringing the re-enlightened artist to a new level of consciousness and musical mastery.
SAKURA opens with the elegant, Eno/Lanois-like melodic movementsof "Saku", "Hagoromo", and "Tobiume", but gradually revealsYokota's grander designs. SAKURA marries the softly thrumming electronic/acoustic weave of IMAGE with MAGIC THREAD's probing pulses and unraveled rhythms, realigning the elements of Yokota's dance-floor craft. But Yokota doesn't simply addbeats; he unfolds the geometry of his music, preparing it to receive rhythm. "Gekkoh" and "Hisen" tenderly reassemble Yokota's exquisite musical matrices around these complementary beat-and-pulse patterns. Yet SAKURA is imperfect--body andsoul without spirit--until "Kodomotachi" re-absorbs IMAGE'sstray vocal ghosts into the music's reunified structures. At SAKURA's climax, Yokota celebrates the rebirth of his music, and art and artist rejoice in a new completeness. The exultant jazz of "Naminote" and the reflective benedictions of "Shinsen" and "Kirakiraboshi" end Yokota's brilliant cycle of introspection and transfiguration on a soaring spiritual high.

Track Listing

1. Saku
2. Tobiume
3. Uchu Tanjyo
4. Hagoromo
5. Genshi
6. Gekkoh
7. Hisen
8. Azukiiro No Kaori
9. Kodomotachi
10. Naminote
11. Shinsen
12. Kirakiraboshi

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22145 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-01
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ambient music. Just leave the fridge on for an hour, put microphone close by, record and release in nicely packaged artwork. That's what the cynics would say. They've clearly never been anywhere near Sakura. While Japan's Susumu Yokota is better known for leftfield techno and weird-beard house, this venture into the world of chilled-out soundscaping is captivating enough to rank alongside any of Brian Eno's Music For... classics. Tapping into the spirit of Eno's 1970's experimentalism (think My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts), tracks like the Afro-tinged "Uchu Tanjyo" and "Hisen" capture the sound of global drifting beautifully. The pace throughout (apart from the jazzed-up "Naminote" and Moroder-ish "Hogoromo") is metronomic, but never soporific. On "Saku" and the celestial "Kirakiraboshi", there's a rare delicacy on offer that's overwhelmingly emotional. You'll never think the same way about ambient music again.--Calvin Bush

From the Label
press reviews:
"So exquisite you're almost afraid to touch it in case it breaks. Sakura's message is clear: listen up, mortals, and learn some fucking humility" Muzik, 4/5

"Intelligence, subtlety, insinuation - these are the elements that Yokota prizes most highly" NME, 8/10 and Pick of The Month

"In the grand tradition of Japanese minimalism, Yokota's supremely ambient sound odysseys beguile and delight, moving ever-so-slowly towards their gentle climaxes with gorgeous precision" The Face

"A stunningly beautiful record.....Susumu Yokota continues to show himself as one of the most gifted producers on the planet, and, not before time, the early works of Eno and Aphex Twin have been joined on their pedestal" Wax, 10/10, Abstract Album Of The Month

"Powerfully emotional...music that seeps into your bones... Sakura bears comparison with Eno's finest 70s recordings" The Mix, 9/10

"His ability to create blissfully enchanting music has been compared to that of Brian Eno... Fantastic sounds to immerse yourself in completely" DJ, 8/10

"Pretty much flawless" The Sunday Times

"An exquisitely chilled delight" Q, 4/5

"Cool, calm and collected, Sakura is the most well-chilled album of the year" The Independent

"Yokota manages to make the finest soul-soothing music out there. Incredible." Level

"Truly amazing, a perfectly poised amalgam of easygoing chillout and laidback warmth" The Wire

"God-like genius" Sleazenation

"Fragrant... delicate... intoxicating music" iDJ, 4/5

"Sakura floats and provokes, but the intricate view is never obscured by fluffy clouds" The Guardian

"It's the sheer physical and intellectual power that stays with you" Mojo

"Captivating enough to rank alongside any of Brian Eno's Music For... classics. There's a rare delicacy on offer that's overwhelmingly emotional. You'll never think the same way about ambient music again" amazon.co.uk

"Sakura is a revelation. The music on this superlative album is warm, otherworldly and deeply soulful" muse.ie

"Yokota is a master of understatement, using a voice that whispers but which rings out with the clarity of its distinct, masterful command and sheer melodic confidence. Words merely banalize the beauty of this recording. Go and listen" Motion

"gorgeous and essential" Overload

"One of the albums of the year" Ben Wilcox, Straight No Chaser

Customer Reviews

Awe-inspiring!
You could say an awful lot about this album, about the varying musical styles, tempos, spoken word parts, soundscapes, etc, etc. You could go on all day and many more eloquent and gifted reviewers have done so. I just wanted to put in my two pen'orth. This is without doubt the most beautiful album I have ever had the privelege to listen to! It is reminiscent of certain other artists, such as Eno, but it is different and unique. The Japanese background is inescapable and entrancing. Basically I think when Yokota wrote this he was touched by transcendent genius, he produced something that even by his sky-high standards is extraordinary! Every now and again an artist/group produces a moment of seminal genius and truly groundbreaking innovation (Slayer's 'Reign in Blood', Fairport Convention's 'Liege and Lief', Dylan's 'Blood on the Tracks', The Beatles' 'White Album', there aren't all that many really though). I am no musician and I don't have the skills to really judge the musical ability of Yokota, but to my ears this album ranks among the very finest ever made. It is beautiful, moving, exciting in places, almost soporific in others, exceptionally homogenous and well-put-together. I could go on, I won't, buy it and love it!

Achingly Beautiful
If you've followed recommendations to Susumu Yokota then this is a good place to start (then follow it with Grinning Cat or Sound of Sky). This is the apotheosis of ambient music: truly gorgeous and wistful. The track Kodomatchi is worth the price of admission alone. If everyone on the M25 had this treasure playing in their cars there would be no more road rage and everyone would look forward to traffic jams.

Mesmeric
There is a tranquillity in Yokota's 'Sakura' that in the hands of others would become sterility. With each track, Yokota seamlessly transports the listener through his idyllic paradise, presumably the isle much of this work is inspired by. From the opening, unadorned bass pulse of 'Saku', string-like synths arrive from what seems like miles away, wrapping themselves into a cocoon of dreamy, otherworldy music. The method will not blow you away, as there are barely any dramatic shifts in Yokota's armoury here, but like with the curtain of distant rainfall ever-present through 'Taku', this artist works through steady accumulation that is mostly just as satisfying and effective: you sense the artist revels in crystallizing a momentary wonder into a flowing, unravelling experience.
Unlike Aphex Twin's Ambient Works, there is little disparity of mood in this album. Whereas Aphex's work can shift from mesmeric beauty to the paranoid and nightmarish, Yokota's work presents a smoother listening experience, taking some of the aforementioned artist's stellar beauty and mixing it with the synth-rich warmth and playfulness of Air. Indeed, where Aphex's melodies would drift for the best part of ten minutes, Yokota involves livelier and more vivified arrangements that are in a constant process of evolution, gradually filtering in and out beautiful sounds, continuing others; for instance, the end of 'Tobiume' sees a mellifluous, reverbed guitar cleanly picking in the background: the effect is similar to Air's 'Walkie Talkie' album, yet in the hands of a master like Yokota, you are barely aware of the addition. As a result, 'Sakura' consistently represents an organic, natural experience, pleasingly removed from the austere, esoteric atmosphere of Ambient Works Volume II.
Other songs try and test the parameters of ambient to its limits. 'Uchu Tanjyo' brings some clattering, tribal beats to the sonic table, hatching a bubbling, tremeloed bass to their rhythm as a voice rambles over it all: the effect is interesting, but it is one of the lesser lights on this bright album, although in the context of the sonic landscape, you do feel as though this is just another of the surprises on Yokota's island - signs of life perhaps.
'Genshi' begins with a sinuous, burbling bass that threatens to at any point lift of into the realms of one of Yokota's house excursions; however, despite the insistent pace, a slow organ melody and backing strings are imposed on the rhythm, engendering the sense of watching the world go by from the train, that feeling of stasis and movement combined. It demonstrates the feeling of adventure in this work, even more so Yokota's dexterity in marrying disparate tempos to form a cohesive texture.
The end to this album is slightly disappointing, however. ‘Kirakiraboshi’ features some lovely twinkling melodies but ultimately lacks the strength of composition that is found in earlier tracks such as ‘Hisen’, as after a couple of minutes it fizzles out. Yokota could also involve more chord progression switches in his music a little more often, as it is the shift from the choral, classical instrumentation in ’Hisen’ to the soothing organ coda on ’Hysen’ that is the albums highlight. Although the steady process of weaving sounds in and out of set basslines does work on songs such as ‘Saku’, on others such as ‘Hagoromo’ the effect feels tedious and underwhelming.
Overall, however, a magnificent ambient album, and one that promises much for the future.