Susumu Yokota

Susumu Yokota was an eclectic, highly prolific electronic musician and composer from Japan. Though he was initially known throughout the 1990s for producing dance music, he gained more of an international following around the turn of the millennium for his ambient and experimental works, which unfold with the patience of a butoh dance, all small gestures and gradually shifting layers of quiet sound. His earliest releases ranged from the acid trance of The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection (1993) to the breezy, Detroit-inspired techno and house of Metronome Melody (as Prism, 1995). Sakura, a set of ethereal, loop-based meditations first released in 1999, was praised by critics, and has since become regarded as an ambient classic. While much of his more well-known subsequent work consisted of ambient and downtempo releases, including 2001's Grinning Cat and 2004's classical-influenced Symbol, he continued to occasionally release techno and house albums, such as 2009's Psychic Dance.