Back catalogue: Techno (All)

Review: Susumu Yokota's venerated 1994 classic Acid Mt. Fuji is reissued in expanded, deluxe fashion, as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the label that originally released it. Japan's Musicmine - specifically its electronic subsidiary Sublime - released the album on June 29, 1994, simultaneously with Ken Ishii's Reference To Difference, as their inaugural joint offering. Tantamount to a fusion of ambient acid/rave - then still nascent in Japan - with new age music, Susumo Yokota was likely the best man for the job at the time. With his first album, The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection, he'd not yet established his electro-pastoralist style, yet it was Acid Mt. Fuji that divined the latter-day emotes of Sakura, a new age so adroitly fused with electronica yet emulable by few. Though the later years of Yokota's life have been couched in a good deal of privacy and mystery, Acid Mt. Fuji certainly betrays a fittingly shrewd and introspective character on the part of the artist, one that served him well. Its long, drawn-out nature soundscapes - tempered by the piquant sounds of modern synths like the TB-303, which animistically, pseudohallucinogenically blend with the animal sounds themselves - recall something like an alpine augur's waking dream.