Bleep

Lo Recordings pore through the incredible archives of Susumu Yokota’s Skintone label with the first of many albums that graced its shelves. Magic Thread opened a new chapter in his career in 1998, inaugurating the label with Yokota’s masterful soundscaping. Quietly stabbing beats and sculptured rhythms pull from different sound sources: minuscule sounds are magnified into crunchy, twitchy, curiously stomping rhythms, while tangled melodic loops could be gauzy guitars, manipulated piano, or something else entirely. Glued together by woozy tape manipulations, Magic Thread found Yokota beginning to refine the musical language he had transmuted from the essences of dance, ambience, electronica, and acoustic influences.