Yosuke Tokunaga // 8 Quadrants LP

過去にSecond Sleepなどから発表している東京のアンビエント作家Yosuke Tokunagaが、2023年3月にドイツ・ベルリンのアンビエントレーベルVaknarから250部限定でリリースするレコードです。

マイクロスコピックなアンビエント・ダブテクノ〜アンビエント8曲を収録。DLコード付属。

Vaknarその他作品はこちら /// Click here to see more Vaknar releases available at Tobira. 

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Includes DL code. Edition of 250.

Vaknar:

" Not much is really known about the production process behind the sprawling works of Japanese composer Yosuke Tokunaga, nor about the artist himself. Yet this might be his most accomplished work to date, with 8 Quadrants yielding unique soundscapes that lunge and retreat in near mechanical movement, while warm volleys of low flung claps and thumps disperse over a bed of textural hums and lingering chords.

At times, Yosuke’s work manages to somehow form an atmosphere that can both feel airy and yet dense simultaneously; it is this juxtaposed mélange of sonic fabric that is at the core of his unique creations, and once again this is beautifully displayed on Yosuke’s latest outing, ‘8 Quadrants’, where he continues his unique practice of figuratively interpreting language through a sequence of delicate sonic sculptures."

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Review by Jack Chuter, ATTN:Magazine:

Everything travels in circles. 8 Quadrants is built on overlain repetitions running at disparate speeds. Percussive sounds spin through tight-knit delays, while melodies repeat after extended exchanges between sweeping synth chords or chopped-up piano. At points there are even “beats”, manifest as skeletal trip hop of thuds and claps and silences, or something resembling cannonballs being metronomically launched into the water; always in a discernible pattern, yet slow enough to verge on arhythmic. There’s no single tempo, and thus the perception of pace fluctuates depending on where one applies focus. Concentrate on those somersaulting delays and the music appears to hurtle at some speed; settle on the intersecting tidal ambiences and 8 Quadrants isn’t moving at all – the motions cancel eachother out and leaving just a back-and-forth tilt, like a small boat in restless harbour.

Amidst the flux of contradictory signals, the dominant feeling is that things aren’t quite connecting. The loops are misaligned. The textures, evoking both dreamt hazy gardens and clattering eroded junk, fail to find a midpoint between their disparate atmospheres. Like a hypothesis haunted by small pockets of incoherence, or a committee suspended in eternal deliberation, the album just hangs in the margin between the attempt and its fulfilment. It never gets there. Aptly, the half-hour duration feels just a fraction too short (and thus perfect), emulating the record’s lush spatial absences by making the post-runtime yearning apart of the experience itself – negation, and what does not occur, is rendered as vividly as that which positively manifests."

Artist : Yosuke Tokunaga

Label : Vaknar