New releases this week: Ambient/Drone

Review: Lo Recordings begins a long-overdue reissue campaign of Susumu Yokota's quietly radical Skintone catalogue, starting with Skintone Edition Volume 1, a lavish 13-record box set on out variegated vinyl. This first volume assorts Magic Thread, Image 1983-1998, Sakura, Grinning Cat, Will, The Boy And The Tree and Laputa, drawn from a run of 14 albums Yokota released between 1998 and 2012. Initially self-released in Japan, they blur ambient, minimalism, house and Japanese folk with a painter's sensitivity, quietly encouraging a resharpening of the ambient genre outside the traditional Western canon (which Yokota was always happy to play on too). Pre-orders include original master downloads (excluding Laputa) and a code for the upcoming remastered editions; and look out for Volume 2 as well, which lands in 2026.