Kaleidoscope

Electronic music innovator Susumu Yokota is back with his deepest and most satisfying album yet. Kaleidoscope takes the listener somewhere really strange - just turn out the lights, lie back and sink into this vast ocean of sound. As far removed from ambient wallpaper as Black Sabbath are from Take That, the record nevertheless has a calming, narcotic effect that can induce a near-trancelike state. Sometimes dark and deep like Nurse With Wound, other times light and rhythmic like Steve Reich, Kaleidoscope is epic in range and masterfully executed - the work at which Yokota has always hinted. It has the raw, almost primal feel of his early albums along with the depth and complexity of his more recent releases. There's been a lot of talk about "hypnagogic" music in the press. If "auditory hallucination" is the proper definition of the term, then Kaleidoscope is the mother of all hypnagogic albums. It's no wonder that both Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds cite Yokota as a major influence.