Susumu Yokota - The Boy And The Tree (Leaf, 2002)

1 The Colour Of Pomegranates (5:13)
2 Live Echo (5:31)
3 Fairy Link (4:33)
4 Grass, Tree And Stone (4:39)
5 Secret Garden (6:10)
6 Rose Necklace (2:44)
7 Beans (1:20)
8 Plateau On Plateau (5:50)
9 Red Swan (4:27)
10 Thread Leads To Heaven (3:42)
11 Future Tiger (5:26)
12 Blood And Snow (5:01)

L’ami Susumu serait-il parti se régénérer dans un des jardins planétaires du Quatrième Monde avant d’avoir conçu cet album? Une hypothèse loin d’être improbable et que l’écoute répétée de "The Boy and the Tree" tend à conforter. Spécialiste du "miniaturisme" ambient, ce Japonais réussit une fois de plus à nous enchanter en signant un manifeste d’electronica pastorale et onirique. Influencé par Debussy en particulier et par la musique néo-classique en général, cet ex-maître de la "house" déploie ici de subtiles frises électroniques aux motifs "écolo-romantiques". De forme répétitives, lorgnant parfois vers les gamelans, ses compositions dénotent un goût toujours plus prononcé pour le travail sur l’échantillonage (énormément de boucles parsèment ce disque), sur la texture et sur le timbre. La synergie entre références environnementales et fonctionnalités technologique atteint ici son apogée. A la croisée de routes musicales improbables (celles de Jon Hassel et de Labradford par exemple), Yokota nous emmène dans un univers de conte ethnofuturiste où l’on rêve un jour de pouvoir se perdre!
Solenopole

Musical categorizations are tough.

Most recent musical commentary (my own included) has attempted to add more adjectives, further hyphenate and over-describe (see, preceding phrase) a genre or band. As much as I like to engage in this geeky exercise, I doubt it does justice to the music or musicians in question. Most music has some inherent, easily distinguishable characteristics that place it somewhere within a particular genre or movement, but this compartmentalization and lax categorization now verge on the ridiculous.

With Susumu Yokota’s The Boy and the Tree dribbling out of my speakers, I am having difficulty describing how the songs effect me. I thought that I would be able to come up with a succinct, genres-strung-together description of it, but realized that was a disservice. Although it’s easy to reference a particular sound to describe an artist, this action reduces the music’s inherent uniqueness. Except in the cases of true rip-off artists or hackneyed carbon copies, this pigeonholing has a detrimental outcome. Yokota has created such an interesting patchwork of sounds that he deserves some serious contemplation.

The Boy and the Tree pulses with a consistent timbre that lulled me into a state of relaxation. It was not a foam-mat, twisted-limbs, pilates-class kind of relaxation, but more of a well-rested glow. The panning, reverberating electric guitar lines and bird chirping forest sounds of the opening “The Colour of Pomegranates” struck me differently than expected. The album borrows heavily from various “nature” sounds, combining them with stringed instruments and percussion, and is always one step from delving into Nature channel stock footage or “Relaxing Sounds of Slumber.” A testament to Yokota is that, although these moods are suggested, he explores the details of their character as to not veer into focus group-tested hyperbole. Careful never to overplay his artistic hand, Yokota creates his own musical dialect, one that has been methodically filtered through various aesthetic inputs. This practice results in music that achieves its intended aims of tranquility and contemplation, but without all of the new age baggage that could accompany it.

“Thread Leads to Heaven” features a blended melody doubled, overlapped and (as per the title) threaded together. “Rose Necklace” adds an angelic vocal that speaks through an evaporating echo before descending into an incomprehensible synthesized spray. These water-based adjectives are intentional – Yokota’s continual shape-shifting evidence a real musical liquidity. Expertly manipulating sound sources and extracting their elemental qualities, Yokota creates compositions that are equally restrained and expressive.

Perhaps the single most impressive aspect about Yokota’s work is the passive manner in which it defies category. Exhibiting knowledge about the traps of recycled sound, Yokota practices careful control over his pieces. If all artists had such an acute perception of the music-making process, critic’s commentary and listener response would both benefit; until then, search out The Boy and the Tree for an intelligent approach to composition and a sustained delightful listening experience.
Dusted Review

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Request : Asa-Chang & Junray - Tsu Gi Ne Pu (Leaf, 2003)

1 Toremoro
2 Tsuginepu To Ittemita
3 Xylophone
4 Kaikyo
5 Kutsu #3

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Susumu Yokota - Grinning Cat (Leaf, 2001)

1 I Imagine (2:34)
2 King Dragonfly (4:42)
3 Card Nation (4:00)
4 Sleepy Eye (2:44)
5 Lapis Lazuli (3:49)
6 Balloon In The Cage (1:02)
7 Cherry Blossom (5:25)
8 Love Bird (3:49)
9 Fearful Dream (4:10)
10 Tears Of A Poet (4:36)
11 So Red (3:23)
12 Flying Cat (5:52)
13 Lost Child (3:26)

La base de ce disque repose essentiellement sur le piano, oscillant entre minimalisme et acid jazz, mélodies douces et simples, comme une plume effleurant l'air...

More than anything, Yokota's 1999 made me realize that I have a lot to learn about dance music, and my living room is probably not the best classroom. But it didn't affect the strong affinity I feel for Yokota's home listening material, a connection only strengthened upon hearing Grinning Cat. Where Sakura found Yokota exploring the sonic properties of the reverberating guitar, Grinning Cat focuses heavily on piano. The acoustic keyboard treatments vary from looped lullaby fragments, fuzzy with white noise on "Sleepy Eye," to the more traditional "Tears of a Poet," which seems like incidental film music from the 40's. Some of the piano parts are definitely sampled, with the loops cut in an intentionally jarring and disorienting manner. Others featuring winding melodies stretching across several bars which are surely played by Yokota.

The thematic unity of the piano aside, this record finds Yokota moving in ten different directions at once. It's almost as if these pieces were composed as singles, such is the varied feel. "Imagine" is a minimal affair, haunting and sad, with a floral melodic pattern set against samples and looped vocals. And then "King Dragonfly" comes right back with flanged drum programming, tribal clapping music and buoyant piano flourishes. "Card Nation" could be using a sampled Chopin Nocturne as its centerpiece, but it surrounds the tight keyboard loop with deep electronic percussion and distended Popol Vuh-style choir.

Grinning Cat runs the rhythmic gamut as well. "Cherry Blossom" chugs along on a 4/4 bass thump, dripping almost unbearably poignant shards of stained piano tone on top. "Love Bird" uses only handclaps and a shaker to set the tempo for the simplest melody on the record, Windham Hill as imagined by a computer. "So Red" takes a stab at laptop jazz, with tightly programmed snare rolls and a double bass ostinato.

The beautiful thing about this many-headed beast of a record is the possibilities for future directions. Yokota has a deep well of inspiration to draw from, and is extremely comfortable with a staggering array of styles. I may never begin to know and understand exactly where he's coming from, but I'm content to explore this patch for now. We'll see where I can go from here.

- Mark Richard-San, Pitchforkmedia

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Colleen - Les Ondes Silencieuses (Leaf, 2007)

1		This Place In Time (2:33)
2		Le Labyrinthe (5:15)
3		Sun Against My Eyes (4:22)
4		Les Ondes Silencieuses (6:09)
5		Blue Sands (5:16)
6		Echoes And Coral (3:09)
7		Sea Of Tranquillity (5:46)
8		Past The Long Black Land (3:41)
9		Le Bateau (7:09)
10		Unfold Out (5:36)
11		Serpentine (6:04)
12		I'll Read You A Story (5:18)

Our love affair with Cécile Schott (known to the world as Colleen) is well documented - all it took was her charming debut album 'Everyone Alive Wants Answers' and we were totally hooked. The Gallic mistress of modern electronic music had introduced a feminine side to a staid masculine world, and we had found an album we could sink into and fall in love with. Her use of samples was totally unique - rather than overlay sound upon sound to create a dense soup of noise she appeared totally happy letting the small silences speak for themselves, and it was this restraint that gave her an originality which would see her quickly become one of the most organic producers around. With her second album 'The Golden Morning Breaks' her status was cemented, but instead of pillaging samples from an extensive record collection this time she was manning the instruments herself, and the results were breathtaking. 'Les Ondes Silencieuses' is Schott's third full-length album (following the delightful Music Box sequences of last year's mini-album "..Et Les Boites A Musique") and is by some distance her most refined, mature and successful emission to date. Schott has been released from the trappings of 'electronic music' - 'Les Ondes Silenceuses' is built around minimal acoustic composition : not quite modern classical, avant folk, restrained rock or psychedelia (although it probably absorbs little tiny parts of almost all of these) and in its wilful subtlety it's one of the most beautiful records we've heard this year. Utilising an array of instruments ranging from what sound like Tibetan singing bowls (I think they're actually Crystal glasses) through to gently strummed acoustic guitar, chimes, cello, violin, the spinet (a smaller relative of the harpsichord) and Clarinet - Cécile plays every note on this incredible album and the arrangements and compositions are so restrained and timeless it's quite hard to believe that this is the same artist who relied so heavily on samples a few years back. Schott has always displayed an understanding of timing and harmony, but here it feels like this talent is finally explored to its fullest; every change and every note of every distinct segment is there for a reason and takes you into deeper realms of her emotional landscape. There is nothing twee or unnecessarily bijou about this album - in fact in places it's almost uncompromising in its vision - but the end result is a sequence of tracks that's magical to listen to, and we mean that in the most literal sense. One of the loveliest record you'll hear this year - this comes to you with our highest recommendation. Gorgeous.

Boomkat

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Colleen - Colleen Et Les Boîtes À Musique (Leaf, 2006)

1		John Levers The Ratchet (0:30)
2		What Is A Componium? - Part 1 (6:45)
3		Charles's Birthday Card (0:48)
4		Will You Gamelan For Me? (3:02)
5		The Sad Panther (1:53)
6		Under The Roof (3:09)
7		What Is A Componium? - Part 2 (3:06)
8		A Bear Is Trapped (1:04)
9		Please Gamelan Again (2:30)
10		Your Heart Is So Loud (3:56)
11		Calypso In A Box (0:47)
12		Bicycle Bells (2:28)
13		Happiness Nuggets (2:13)
14		I'll Read You A Story (6:51)

Colleen aka Cecile Schott is a lady we've always had a fondness for, throughout her last two endearing albums she defined a sound, an unpretentious delicate weaving of instruments and samples which tickled our eardrums in the most ethereal way imaginable. Armed with a loop pedal and a cache of instrumental weaponry she layered whimsical sound over whimsical sound and subtly carved out a niche for herself in the overpopulated world of electronic music. 'Colleen Et Les Boites A Musique' ("Colleen and the music boxes"), however, is her most arresting and sublime offering to date - constructed entirely from the impossibly beautiful sounds of chiming music boxes. Opening with the clanking and winding of 'John Levers the Ratchet', this is the perfect introduction, as if the record were being wound like a music box to run across its 40 minute life-span before returning to stillness. The music box has, of course, been used before within a contemporary framework (Aphex Twin's breathtaking "Nanou" for one), but the way Schott composes seems so obviously matched with the mechanical and naïve qualities we hear that she seems to own the concept. "Colleen Et Les Boites A Musique" is in fact so sublime that her output to date seems to have been merely leading up to this serendipitous moment - concept and execution coming together for a wondrous display of simplicity and beauty. Like the soundtrack to your favourite half-remembered fairytale, you won't find a warmer, more inviting record this year.

Boomkat

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Colleen - Everyone Alive Wants Answers (Leaf, 2003)

A1		Everyone Alive Wants Answers (3:32)
A2		Ritournelle (3:09)
A3		Carry-Cot (1:54)
A4		Your Heart On Your Sleeve (2:47)
A5		Goodbye Sunshine (2:49)
A6		One Night And It's Gone (3:42)
A7		Long Live Mice In The Metro (2:51)
B1		I Was Deep In A Dream And I Didn't Know It (2:56)
B2		Babies (3:34)
B3		Sometimes On A Happy Cloud (1:56)
B4		A Swimming Pool Down The Railway Track (4:15)
B5		In The Train With No Lights (2:02

“Everyone Alive Wants Answers” is the haunting work of 26-year-old Parisienne Cecile Schott. Her debut album release, she has previously released a gem of a 7" single (Babies) on Active Suspension, which brought her to the attention of The Leaf Label. An effortlessly charming album, naive instrumentals filled with warmth , melody and soul, played on a broken music box, a glockenspiel or a guitar. The recordings seem pieced together from an array of field recordings and home tapes, melodies and aroma’s slowly infused to create a homespun exercise in delicacy, beauty and a joyously moving appeal to nostalgic sensibilities and abandon. Gorgeous stuff, highly recommended.

Boomkat

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Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks (Leaf, 2005)

Stunning new album from Colleen, no doubt one of the records of the year. If Colleen were a painting she'd undoubtedly be a George Morland, combining a sense of the innocent and rural within a broader, more wraithlike landscape. Her second album for Leaf, 'The Golden Morning Breaks' sees Colleen (aka Cécile Schott) furthering her beguiling strain of purely instrumental, folk-speckled psychedelia. First up is the welling instrumentation of 'Summer Water', a fuzzy hearted collection of ethereal melodies structured in a style very similar to that of Russian composer Petrovich Mussorgsky. The muted mood continues on the rimy 'Floating in the Clearest Night', a song so fragile and diffused it's almost not there, whilst 'Sweet Rolling' brings to mind warm winds and falling blossom. Possibly the stand-out moment on 'The Golden Morning Breaks' is the haunted music box and backwards tape effects of 'I'll Read You a Story', where heavy harps are plucked ominously against a brooding, yet effervescent, backdrop. It's almost inevitable that comparisons will be made with 'The Golden Morning Breaks' and Mum's first album, but whereas the Icelandic quartet relied on elfin whimsy too often, Colleen is a far more textured and complex artist who will reward repeated home-listening. A massive recommendation.

Boomkat Review

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