The more I research Kazutoshi Yokoyama’s Headphone, the more I’m struck by something I’ve discovered: Kazutoshi didn’t know what ambient was during its recording. Proving true the old adage, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” I find myself reconciling that nearly every tune on Headphone was made by someone approaching this kind of music with a tabula rasa.
Kazutoshi is best known as an integral contributor to the huge Japanese industrial rock band Buck-Tick. A native of Niigata, he was spirited into the band after working as a “sound manipulator” for the Buck-Tick frontman, who–drawing inspiration from Kazutoshi’s work with brothers-in-sound M-Age–turned to baggy dance music to reinvent their sound. On Hoshino Hidehiko’s contribution to their compilation Dance 2 Noise 001, Kazutoshi succeeded in evolving the “Buck-Tick sound” with the tonality of a newer house and techno scene.
At that moment in time, Kazutoshi’s sonic choices appeared tied, or at least indebted, to a world post-Pretty Hate Machine. The sounds he fashioned then could best be described as raw, muscular, and aggressive. Which makes the stylistic and creative shift just two years later feel so refreshing.
Signed to Victor’s fledgling XEO Invitation Records, Kazutoshi’s change in direction represented exactly what the label envisioned for its roster. Much like labelmates Nav Katze and the late, great Ken Morioka (of Soft Ballet fame), he returned to the longform, long-playing album format–music made to listen to and escape into on headphones. And much like them, Kazutoshi’s idea of forward-thinking contemporary music fit perfectly within the nascent IDM (intelligent dance music) scene, contributing to totemic compilations like XEO Chapter One: Real Techno Intelligence, which tipped their hat to the stylings of iconic IDM labels like Warp Records.
Breathing in the new alternative of the “alternative” scene, Kazutoshi Yokoyama’s Headphone–released in 1994–embraces a startling amount of homegrown sound and character. Recorded in Yokosuka, just outside one of Japan’s ancient capitals, its opening track “Snow” features temple bells and chants as much as the sonar-like clanks and plucks of his synthetic instruments, drawing from the slipstream of history. It’s a mysterious sound that drifts in and out of inorganic and organic shapes and motifs.
At times, it feels aligned with the utterly nascent, warm, and inviting folktronica of groups like Boards of Canada–predicting, in his own way, that very aesthetic. His locale-driven inspirations lead to esoteric, gorgeous “dance” songs like “Neptune.” On other songs, like personal favorite “Paradise Imitate,” meditations on nature, self, and the infinite are swept up in epic ambient techno colored by nostalgia. Rhythm enters, not to send the album to the dancefloor, but to center his themes around a certain hypnosis.
The deconstructing, slippery grooves of tracks like “Time Machine” pair perfectly with Kazutoshi’s idea of “headphone music.” On songs like it and “Exploration,” the ear candy–assembled with the ghost inside our infernal machines–becomes a seamless part of the album’s equation. At a time when Japanese IDM was in short supply and out of vogue, tracks like “Shakuna Vimana” and “Acid Test” capture the allure of the headier strain of techno taking root elsewhere.
The album ends on two equally mercurial tracks. On the ninth track, “Mine Furor,” ping-ponging percussion and throbbing basslines build and envelop the listener with dub techno that still sounds compelling. “Transmigration,” the track that jumpstarted Kazutoshi’s vision for this album, mutates multiple groove expressions into a kaleidoscopic effect–offering a mirror of what becomes possible when one remains curious enough to know, yet wise enough not to know everything.