About —

Susumu Yokota (April 11, 1960 – March 27 2015) was a Japanese record producer and composer of ambient and electronic music.

Yokota redefined ambient music with a series of 14 extraordinary albums, released from 1998 through to 2012. These albums were originally released on his own Skintone label. Now remastered on coloured vinyl with new liner notes and reimagined artwork, the LPs make up two volumes of the deluxe Skintone Edition box set released by Lo Recordings. Commune along with listening rooms all over the world, will play selections from the set this evening.

Over a 20 year period Yokota released 30 albums and countless 12s under a variety of aliases, across more than a dozen pre-eminent labels. Yokota received domestic and international acclaim as a house and techno DJ and producer throughout the nineties. Part of the vanguard of the Tokyo scene, his influential release Acid Mt. Fuji inspires techno artists to this day.

In 1998 though, at the height of his success, he established his Skintone imprint, which came to eclipse all of his previous achievements.Skintone shone a light on the diverse new directions in which his creativity had blown, from delicate, cyclical tape-loop meditations to neo-classical compositions. It also gave him the autonomy to combine his visual and music-making practices and, importantly, to create at his own pace. The label was a great success and his experiments proved foundational in the global 00s ambient canon.

Sakura, the third album, was instantly recognised as a pivotal album setting the world alight with its dazzling and immersive transcendent beauty and fostering an expanding loyalty among many musicians, including Aphex Twin, Björk, Brian Eno and Philip Glass.

This Skintone Edition will be available as 2 box sets - the first volume coincides with the 10th anniversary of Yokota’s untimely death and the 30th year of Lo Recordings.