Susumu Yokota

Although one of Susumu Yokota’s most stylistically varied works in the Skintone catalogue, Grinning Cat revolves largely around the piano- both sampled and seemingly played by Yokota himself. Across its thirteen deeply evocative tracks, he runs the gamut of emotions, stylistic hallmarks and timbres, albeit using a narrow palette of sound sources. A follow-up to the much loved Sakura, Grinning Cat represented an amoebic, energised and joyful chapter in Yokota’s career, where his recent successes and a move into a larger studio in Tokyo’s suburbs afforded him time to process his influences and refine his techniques across a multitude of styles, opening up countless potential directions for his work in the years to come.

While 1999’s Sakura seemed to draw heavily on the concept of ‘mono no aware’ or impermanence; a national melancholy associated with beauty and impermanence characterised by the meagre couple of weeks in which Japan’s cherry blossoms emerge, Grinning Cat latches on to the present moment with glee and inquisitiveness, fluctuating in tempo, rhythmic structure and arrangement in a way poignantly reminiscent of the chaos and delight of everyday life. “Last summer,” Yokota wrote, “I started to live with my girlfriend and also three cats: mother cat, Tabasa, her son cat, Bindi, and her daughter black cat, Noa. We all played together like having parties everyday at home. The everyday life with cats is like a fairytale, and also it was like I met the Cheshire Cat in Alice In Wonderland. In my works, I always create philosophy and ‘childlike’ images. This album Grinning Cat came into existence because of having this wonderful life”. It is this preoccupation with everyday wonder and mystery, closer to the buddhist concept of ‘yuugen’, which characterises Grinning Cat; a suggestion of profound beauty, mystery and joy in memory and imagination.