Chiba, Japan-based electronic producer and sound designer Yosi Horikawa managed to impress last year with his second album ‘Vapor’, which saw him crafting a texturally lush and rhythmically unpredictable fusion of synthesised post-hiphop influences and manipulated found sounds. A year on, this download only EP ‘Vapor Remixed 1’ collects together four different reworkings of tracks taken from that album, with each of the artists selected for the task wringing a diverse range of sounds out of the source material. Daisuke Tanabe kicks things off with a remix of ‘Kingdom Of Frogs’ sends clicking drum rhythms and shimmering glitchy effects wandering beneath gently blurred-out keys in what’s easily one of the more delicate moments to be found here, although the serrated electronics still manage to fray at the more gossamer edges.
Kidkanevil meanwhile takes ‘Stars’ off into playfully eccentric territory as sharp snapping hiphop snares crunch away against a backdrop of bright tumbling synth chords and laser gun zaps, before Fulgeance’s ‘Disco Aishiteru’ remix of ‘Beer’ offers up what’s easily this EP’s most hip hop-centred moment as MC vocals intersect with swaggering g-funk synths and a wobbling sub-bass presence that’s best described as Atari-gangsta. Finally, Kidkanevil closes things off with his own tribute to Horikawa ‘Thousand Year Forest (One For Yosi)’, changing the pace entirely with a bone-dry wander through delicately plucked guitar textures, shaker rattles and distant thudding drum beats that’s pure inner cinema on its own. Stellar stuff all round.
