Review: Susumu Yokota – Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscope is an appropriately-named record. Depending on how you look at it, Susumu Yokota’s latest offering can be viewed in a number of different ways. The collection of sounds and textures and songs that make up Kaleidoscope all point in different directions; there is not one unifying form or theme. There is nothing to suggest what type of music this is. Rather it’s a collage of ideas that implies many things, but never commits fully to one. It seems that, soundwise at least, Susumu Yokota has his finger in too many pies.
In fact, at times it seems that Yokota is straddling too many different genres. ‘Strain On My Heart’, with its stuttering rhythm and vocal samples recalls the future garage/two step sound of someone like Joy Orbison. At other points it seems that Yokota is keen on exploring the possibility that is contained within repetition, much in the same way that Steve Reich utilises loops within his work. Yet at other times, such as on ‘Blue Moon’, the eerie sounding synths and clanging bursts of percussion suggest a desire to mimic such avant-garde noise artists as Nurse With Wound or Faust. This cherry-picking of genres results in Kaleidoscope seeming quite unfocussed and not at all sure of what it wants to do or what it wants to be. This is especially true when you consider its epic running time, which points towards too many half thought out ideas, and not enough focus.
What Kaleidoscope does possess is a feeling. It’s an album that relaxes the listener, one that tries to subdue them and wear them down. The soundscapes are almost hypnotic; the use of repetition and loops seems like a way for Yokota to induce the listener into a trancelike state, somewhere between sleep and consciousness. That there is a song called ‘When I Shut My Eyes’ only adds to the feeling that this album seems to want to put you to sleep. Clocking in at over an hour, Kaleidoscope runs for far too long, and too often fades into the background. It becomes part of the ambience, rather than creating the ambience itself. Too easy to ignore, and too long, Yokota’s album never quite matches up to the multi-coloured promise held in the title.
– David Pott-Negrine
