The first release on Optimo Music founder JD Twitch’s new compilation-focused label Cease & Desist will be a collection of pioneering turn-of-the-90s British “Bleep & Bass” techno tracks curated by author and music journalist Matt Anniss. Join The Future: UK Bleep & Bass 1988-91 is a partner product to Anniss’s critically acclaimed book on the foundations of British dance music’s ongoing love affair with sub-bass, Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music. The book, which was published by Velocity Press in December and features a foreword by JD Twitch, documents in vivid detail the previously untold story of the Yorkshire-pioneered style and the impact it had on the development of UK dance music. The compilation is the first to focus on Bleep & Bass since the sound’s heyday in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It features a mix of historic cuts, period classics, overlooked gems and unreleased material. It was mastered for release by Warp Records co-founder and Forgemasters member Rob Gordon, a producer, remixer and studio engineer who arguably did more than anyone else to define the sub-heavy sound of the style.A1 Unique 3 & The Mad Musician - Only The Beginning ,A2 Original Clique - Come To Papa, B1 Demonik - Labyrinthe. B2 Nexus 21 - Self Hypnosis (Mr Whippy Remix), C1 Cabaret Voltaire - Easy Life (Jive Turkey Mix), C2 Alfanso - Dub Feels Nice (Version 4), C3 Ital Rockers - Dreams, D1 Man Machine - Animal (DJ Martin & DJ Holmes Primordial Jungle Mix), D2 Nightmares On Wax - 21st Kong, D3 Tuff Little Unit - Join The Future (Original Instrumental Mix) More

2024 Repress!

No introduction needed here, the collectors version of 2 previously re-issued LPs on Transmigration no available as one double LP. Now complete with Obi strip and insert.

Susumu Yokota's vision of techno - house, lovingly collected in collaboration with Space Teddy and the Yokota family. Presented through linear notes in English and Japanese with archival photos from Uwe Reineke and Mijk Van Dijk. All tracks have been remastered by Steffen Müller.
Very limited quantities! More

Offering a unique window into modern Japanese music, Time Capsule's latest release presents a group of artists who refuse to be bound by genre - mixing jazz, dance, reggae, psych, afrobeat, and indigenous styles into distinctly tropical fusions More

Tokyo DJ’s sonic memoir spanning two decades of life and music in Japan - Japan Vibrations Vol. 1 will transport listeners in time to energetic nights at Japan’s legendary club venues and delight with a spirited journey of musical discovery and reflection.

Dive into the exhilarating era of Japan’s electronic dance music scene from the mid ’80s to the mid ’90s with Japan Vibrations Vol. 1. The hand-picked collection by DJ and musical storyteller Alex from Tokyo pays homage to the trailblazers and innovators who shaped the landscape.

Set for release this autumn, the compilation serves as a time capsule recording a vibrant point in Japan’s modern music history. Likewise, a love letter from someone who lived it.

11 newly remastered tracks spanning ambient, downtempo, dub, world beats, deep house, new jazz, and techno. Together they showcase the creative ingenuity and energy of a paradisiac era marked by a symbiotic fusion of international sounds with distinctively Japanese influences. Experience the vibrations of pioneers Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yasuaki Shimizu. Culture-shaping forces Hiroshi Fujiwara, Kan Takagi, Susumu Yokota, Silent Poets, Mondo Grosso and Kyoto Jazz Massive. And new- generation artists Jun CMJK Kitagawa (C.T. Scan), Mind Design, Okihide, and Hiroshi Watanabe. The evolution of a scene, a moment, presented with the progression of a DJ set.

Hi-fidelity remastering by sound engineer Isao Kumano (PHONON). License coordination by Ken Hidaka, album artwork by Takehiko Kitahara.
Photography by Meisa Fujishiro and Beezer, and from Alex and friends’ personal collections.
Pressed by Mother Tongue Records. Distribution by Rush Hour.



Track info:

1. Haruomi Hosono — Ambient Meditation #3

The compilation opens with an invitation to tea in the dream layer. The tranquil track, dedicated to new age legend Laraaji and ambient great Brian Eno, features Hosono on the Prophet 5 synthesizer and the American multi-instrumentalist Laraaji plucking a glittering zither. Hosono released it in 1993 as the closing track of his Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge. True to its title, the album charts the early ‘90s contemplative turn of one of Japan’s most influential musical artists. Recorded in the tea-room modelled RACOON studio in Yutenji, Tokyo, the album weaves together house, techno, and ambient elements with Hosono’s signature eclectic-exotica touch. The result is a divine elixir, and this track is especially captivating.

2. Silent Poets — Meaning In The Tone (’95 Space & Oriental)

The bubbling dub is impossibly vibey on this remix of “Meaning In The Tone” by Japanese electronic duo (turned solo) project Silent Poets. The original track by Michiharu Shimoda and Takehiro Haruno appeared on their 1993 sophomore album, Potential Meeting. This ethereal, downtempo reworking came out in 1995 for the compilation album New Chapter for DJ/artist Nobukazu Takemura’s newly launched label idyllic records. Silent Poets went on to garner international acclaim for its catching sound palette—spanning dub, trip hop, acid jazz, and downtempo like this track—and holistic approach to art fusing music, design, and culture. Shimoda’s original music and brand Poet Meets Dubwise continues to capture the meaning in the tones.

3. Mind Design — Sun

Soft and resonant with a cinematic build up, “Sun” by techno unit Mind Design (Tomonori Sawada and Koji Sakurai) feels like daybreak at Mount Fuji. Sawada and Sakurai made the track (and all their music at the time) using a sequencer to run synths and rhythm machines, and a DAT recorder to capture everything in a single shot. In 1993, Mind Design signed to Transonic (predecessor of Trigger Label), Kazunao Nagata’s underground electronic music label, after the muiltitalented DJ, musician, mastering engineer, and producer saw the duo perform live at a Tokyo techno party. Mind Design’s first and only album View From The Edge followed in 1994, paralleling Sakurai and Sawada’s rising careers as sound composers and designers in the video game industry, where they remain active today.

4. Quadra — Phantom

A rare downtempo gem by Hiroshi Watanabe under his Quadra alias featured on his debut album Sketch From A Moment. With its gently swaying synths and confident percussive stride, “Phantom” is a total vibe. Watanabe, a prolific and versatile artist, is a man of many aliases (Quadra, Kaito, Hiroshi W, Tread [with Takehiko Kitahara], 32 project), label homes (Nite grooves, Kompakt, Third Ear Recordings, Ibadan, Transmat Records), and sound profiles (deep slow house, uptempo, melodic techno, to name a few). The mid ‘90s found Watanabe hard at it, studying composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston, spreading from New York the deep house gospel with EPs released on Japanese label Frogman, spinning hard house and techno at NYC clubs like the legendary “Save The Robots,” and more. “Phantom” captures the spaces between—a mid-album track with a subtle, unrushed flow. Nothing dramatic, everything chill and beautiful.

5. Yasuaki Shimizu — Tamare-Tamare

Few artists create a vibe as timeless, innovative, and totally fun as Yasuaki Shimizu. Singing and sax-ing (he does both on this track), connecting dots across the world, tinkering with scales and studio techniques—Yasuaki’s organic and highly experimental flickering about is an artform itself. Enter “Tamare Tamare,” an electro, world-fusion dance-floor killer featuring renowned Senegalese singer and musician Wasis Diop. Recorded in Paris’ ADS-Colour studio with Martin Meissonier, worldbeat and ethnic music producer extraordinaire (think Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Salif Keita, and Manu Dibango) and released on Shimizu’s 1987 Subliminal, the track shines like the sun. “Tamare Tamare,” as the maestro himself says, is a potent spell in sound form.

6. Ryuichi Sakamoto — Tibetan Dance (Version)

A groovy collage of deep slaps, snappy beats, feathery strums, ethereal windings, rolling keys, and plenty of experimental tweaks, the track feels like a joyful gathering of friends. And it should—Sakamoto invited his YMO colleagues and collaborators Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums), Kenji Omura (electric guitar) and string instrument master Ayuo Takahashi on the Japanese zither instrument the koto into the studio to make “Tibetan Dance”. The revolutionary Fairlight CMI synthesizer joined the party, too, providing the perfect foil for an epically funky, buoyant tune. This slightly stripped down, club-oriented version first saw the light of day in 2015 with the Japan-only re-issue of Sakamoto’s 1984 Ongaku Zukan, remastered in high-resolution format (DSD) by Seigen Ono. Our “professor" Ryuichi Sakamoto, prodigious (and pioneering) musician and beautiful human, passed away in March 2023. His astonishing body of work - some 25 solo albums, 41 albums with YMO, 14 live albums, 19 collaboration albums, and 40 EPs and singles - will enliven and inspire for generations to come!

7. T.P.O. — Hiroshi’s Dub (Tokyo Club Mix)

Thunderclaps and a driving downpour of beats—we’re deep in the club now, Japan vibrations at max amplitude. This atmospheric club classic tells a story of scenes and genres—whole worlds—merging at the close of the ‘80s in Japan. An early release by the powerhouse hip-hop label and posse Major Force, the track is a remix twice over. It started with the uptempo “Punk Inc.” by Tiny Panx Organization” (T.P.O.), brainchild of Hiroshi Fujiwara, Kan Takagi, and K.U.D.O. Next came the dub take by Hiroshi, supreme music and culture tastemaker. And here we have the Paradise Garage-inspired deep-house reworking by Sapporo-hailing DJ Heyta. Got that? Now imagine taking it in at the tiny basement club Aoyama MIX during one of DJ Heyta’s wildly popular Wednesday nights back in the day. Lights out!

8. Okihide — Biskatta

Cycling through sugar cane fields in Okinawa, intense sun overhead and a glistening ocean stretching out into infinity. That’s a sweet memory Okihide Sawaki was recalling when he made this track in his Kyoto “Sleepy Room” home studio. Okihide, a sound otaku since childhood (proud owner of a Korg Mono/Poly at age 12!), caught the attention of Fukuoka’s top DJ and producer Ken Inaoka in 1994 when he was playing live under the moniker Tanzmuzik at Shibuya On Air in Tokyo. Inaoka signed the young artist, now going just by Okihide, to his just-launched techno label “Syzygy Records,” and in 1996 A boy in picca season came out. This smooth, uplifting, Detroit-inspired jam from his eclectic, “intelligent” debut album is full of feeling.

9. Mondo Grosso — Vibe PM (Jazzy Mixed Roots) (Remixed by Yoshihiro Okino)

Peppy, elegant, and massively jazzy bops from 1994 that feel so familiar and fresh. The Kyoto-based acid-jazz collective Mondo Grosso roared to life in the early 90s, led by the multitalented Shinichi Osawa. “Vibe.P.M” (Jazzy Mixed Roots) appeared on the compilation Kyoto Jazz Massive (For Life Records), the brainchild and handiwork of Shuya Okino who, along with his brother Yoshihiro, formed the eponymous musical project (Shuya had been managing Mondo Grosso while working at the Kyoto club “Container”). Yoshihiro’s remix presented here is a slice of Japanese crossover jazz that “makes me feel so alive,” just like American vocalist Brenda Kay Pierce beautifully sings on the track. Thirty years on, Kyoto Jazz Massive and Mondo Grosso, together and as individual artists, continue to evangelize good vibes and heady crossover dance music.

10. Prism — Velvet Nymph

A masterful straight-up deep-house track by one of the masters of Japanese electronic music, the late Susumu Yokota. Working under the pseudonym Prism, and fittingly so, Susumu refracted and refined the Detroit techno sounds he loved into Metronome Melody, released in 1995 on the newly formed Japanese label Sublime Records ran by Yamazaki Manabu. The track and album came on the heels of several pioneering moments for Yokota and, by extension, the Japanese electronic music scene. First, he created a storm in December 1993 performing live at club Yellow as the opening act for Underground Resistance (their first appearance in Japan!). Then, in June 1994, Yokota rocked his unique acid-techno sound at Berlin’s Love Parade to huge fanfare (the first Japanese performer at the legendary technoparade!). The dearly missed Susumu Yokota left us with an amazing, eclectic body of work—some 70 albums and singles over 2 decades.

11. C.T. Scan — Cold Sleep (The Door Into Summer)

The compilation closes with an epic techno gem that spins the story of an era: Frogman Record’s 15-year history as a key incubator of Japanese techno music. Among those discovering techno music in the early ‘90s in Japan was a crew of club-going music writers and industry workers that included Kengo Watanabe, Tsutomu Noda, Dai Sato, and Masakazu Hiroishi who would all in different ways influence and innovate the whole scene. Watanabe and Noda launched the groundbreaking electronic music magazine ele-king. Moved by the Berlin techno scene and spurred on by German-Japanese techno ambassador DJ Toby Izui (aka Tobynation), Watanabe and Dai created the techno label Frogman. They tapped C.T. Scan (better known as synthpop artist and producer CMJK of J-pop fame) for the label’s first and final releases. This version of “Cold Sleep (The Door Into Summer)” appeared on Frogman’s 2008 entering-into-hibernation compilation, Fine – The Best of Frogman. Inspired by Robert A. Heinlein’s sci-fi tale about traveling back in time to find oneself, the track is reflective, floating, and gently futuristic. Looking back to create the future, the highest Japan Vibration. More

“‘A La Sala,’ I used to scream it around my house when I was a little girl, to get everybody in the living room; to get my family together. That’s kind of what recording the new album felt like. Emotionally there was a desire to get back to square-one between the three of us, to where we came from–in sonics and in feeling. Let’s get back there.” - Laura Lee Ochoa

The title makes it clear. A La Sala (“To the Room” in Spanish), the fourth studio album by Khruangbin, is an exercise in returning in order to go further, and do so on your own terms. It extends the air of mystery and sanctity that’s key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson, Jr. and guitarist Mark “Marko” Speer approach music. Yet if 2020’s Mordechai, the last studio album Khruangbin made without collaborators, was a party record whose ensuing post-lockdown tour enhanced the band’s musical reputation far and wide, A La Sala is the measured morning after. It’s a gorgeously airy album made only in the company of the group’s longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimal overdubs. It is a porthole onto the bounties powering Khruangbin’s vision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. A La Sala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy with the future in mind.

It is also a response to the unique moment Khruangbin finds itself in now: following a decade spent cultivating extraordinary music paths, beginning a year when they'll perform for more people, in more iconic spaces, staging a live show that pushes a creative envelope peculiar to them alone. (Look for the band at major festivals and venues near you.) 2024 feels like both marker and pivot, cementing Khruangbin’s stature as a commercially and critically successful group that continues to be guided by creative possibilities.

Such crossroads are familiar for iconic artists throughout the rock era — your Dylans, Stevies and Bowies, up thru turn-of-the-century Radiohead, all have navigated these straits. On A La Sala, Khruangbin also pulls exploration inward, spurning the din of the crowd’s expectations, mapping a personal direction home. The trio’s collective musical DNA and the years spent constructing it in Houston’s local-meets-global cultural stew ensure the band carries on sounding like no one but itself. A La Sala may in fact be Khruangbin’s purest distillation. A cascade of crisp melodies still emanates from Marko’s reverb-heavy electric, dancing gently around Laura Lee’s minimalist almost-dub bass triangles, while DJ’s drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwavering dance-floor on which all this movement takes place.

Where prior album-by-album growth seemed to point the narratives towards music’s polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound like known intimacies. What once seemed like sonic invocations — spaghetti-western film scores, found-sounds, dancing moments more living room than rooftop disco — are ingrained characteristics. This is who they are! And there’s a freshness to the instrumental interactivity on A La Sala that’s less concerned with getting further out than going deeper in. That depth is not about therapeutic self-reflection, but a profound desire to celebrate the world’s external wonders.
A La Sala invites intimate intercontinental partying. The first single is, after all, called “A Love International.” “Pon Pón” holds the band’s table at the West African discotheque; yet the joy now moves to the corner left of the dancefloor, where the back-and-forth between Laura Lee’s bass, DJ’s hi-hat, and Marko’s tuneful rhythm scratches, is a marvel of knowing head-nods. There’s “Hold Me Up (Thank You),” a familial sweetness in its spare lyrics, feeding off the rhythm section’s sturdy funk shuffle, and a chorus on which Marko’s guitar evokes both sides of the Atlantic in confident unshowy rhythms. They’re on “Todavía Viva” too, next to DJ’s noir-soul rim-shots, synth strings and a pregnant pause that is Laura Lee’s favorite moment on the album, the mood kin to the band’s glorious live interpretations of G-funk fantasias. And the rocked-up miniature, “Juegos y Nubes,” demonstrates Khruangbin’s Houston-born superpower to culture-mix, a dancing mood less concerned with worldly glamor than communal grooving.

“I read something long ago, attributed to Miles Davis. He said, ‘When they play fast, you play slow. When they play slow, you play fast.’ And it's definitely how I've approached looking at music: Don't follow the trends. And if the trend is this, then do something else.” - Marko

From the get-go, Khruangbin’s journey has been emphatically its own: a sound and visual representation with few precedents, ignoring pop expectations, relying only on internal inspirations, and a multitude of visions. It’s a mindset of penetrating the self, connecting to the surrounding world, modeling your own life experiences. This ethos is threaded throughout A La Sala, audible in the album’s form and function. (It’s even visible in the vinyl version’s physical package, which will be released as a set of seven distinctive covers and color-sets — more on which in a sec.)

The building blocks for the album’s 12 songs were jigsaw pieces found in Khruangbin’s creative past. Having stockpiled ideas originally set down as off-the-cuff recordings (voice-memos made at sound-checks, on long voyages, as absentminded epiphanies), they began fitting those pieces together in the studio. Which parts were apt? Which could be massaged and stretched out? Which inspired new sections or rhythms or musical interactions? Once more, Khruangbin’s familial DNA kicked in. Layer-by-layer, the intimate work, rework and re-rework bore new fruit. They also brought back a strategy once foundational to their records: seeding an album with field recordings.

Some results fold directly into A La Sala’s down-home feel. “Three From Two” and “May Ninth” are wistful mid-tempo numbers, with guitar melodies that reside somewhere between Bakersfield and by-the-riverside, cues that, for all its borderless inclusivity, another core Khruangbin value is being steeped in American roots. And in the landscape that music comes from. Like all albums prior to Mordechai, Marko made sure environmental sounds — natural and man-made — appeared as textures. (At times philosophically: the group recorded while cricket chirps played in their headphones, presumably for terroir.) It’s how A La Sala achieves such interconnected set-and-setting-ness.

Other results are more metaphorical, especially in Khruangbin’s flirtation with ambient spaces. The dramatically beatless “Farolim de Felgueiras” and “Caja de la Sala” both feature only Marko’s unmistakable guitar dueting with Laura Lee’s Moog, lightly layered with sounds of shoes on stone steps, and cicadas in an open field. The closing “Les Petits Gris” more fully reduces and fleshes out the ambiance, with a piano and a simple single-note bass pattern, Marko’s plaintive spare guitar echoing the melody of a ballerina-turning music box. It feels an apt way of ending — as a passing of this particular moment, preparation for the next one, soon-come.

Even the seven different covers that adorn A La Sala’s various vinyl editions offer a throughline from the music into Khruangbin’s current frame. Designed by the band using Marko’s multitude of travelog photos, they are windows from the band’s living room onto a set of daydreams, scenes of impossible skies, external glances illuminating what is going on inside. These are also directly related to David Black’s images of DJ, Laura Lee and Marko which accompany A La Sala, and to Khruangbin’s live staging reinvention. It’s all about looking out and looking back, in order to better look ahead.

“All the little moments you capture. You don't see how impactful they are until you hear what eventually comes of them. A lot of those scraps end up being the thing — and you don't realize it until it's ‘The Thing.’” - DJ
credits
releases April 5, 2024

Produced by Mark Speer & Steve Christensen
Written, Arranged & Performed by Khruangbin
Art Direction: Tiny Frees
Mixing: Steve Christensen
Mastering: Chris Longwood More