A few years after
Susumu Yokota's 2015 passing, former collaborator
Mark Beazley of
Rothko discovered a DAT tape containing unreleased material by
Yokota as well as early, unfinished versions of pieces from his 2002 album
The Boy and the Tree.
Beazley gave the recordings to
Jon Tye of Lo Recordings, who released several of
Yokota's later albums, and
Tye faithfully completed the tracks, titling many of them after quotes from philosopher
Alan Watts' book Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown. Many elements of these cuts will be familiar to anyone who's listened to
The Boy and the Tree, including the cascading melody of "Ama and the Mountain" or "Spectrum of Love"'s wheezing harmonium loop, so it ends up resembling more of a remix album than a lost treasure. It isn't particularly better or worse than the album in question, it just seems to approach the same ideas from a different angle. In any case, the release contains ten pieces that generally consist of hypnotically looped samples of acoustic instruments, possibly including singing bowls, wooden flutes, and dulcimers. The tracks aren't heavy or chaotic, but they can still be quite densely layered, and they seem a bit too surreal and disorienting for relaxation purposes. Plenty of it is gorgeous and trippy, including the whirling, quizzical "The Reality of Incarnation" and the beachfront wash of "Direct Transmission."