Atobe, Shinichi

40 minute mini-album of minimalist Japanese house, beatdown and ambient themes from the elusive Shinichi Atobe, recorded some time over the last 20 years in Saitama, Japan, and given life by Demdike Stare’s DDS imprint. Highly Recommended if you’re into DJ Sprinkles, Larry Heard, Kassem Mosse, SND or indeed Shinichi’s previous releases... 
 
The reclusive artist has seen a lot of justified and overdue praise surrounding the reissue of his sole early release, the Ship Scope 12” which was originally issued by Berlin’s Chain Reaction label in 2001 and reissued by DDS last year, following on from the unexpected dispatch of his distinguished and brilliant Sprinkles-esque Butterfly Effect album. 
 
His new World LP will expand your preconceptions, coursing a beautifully louche vibe from the most minimal loops and motifs - the kind that one could play all day without ever tiring of hearing them. 
 
The supple, floating DX7 bass contours and vaporous jazz chords of Intro start up like some Chicago or NYC deep house classic lost in its own reverie, and could happily go nowhere for as long as it wants, before the rainy day piano house melancholy of World 1 promptly inverts that supple aesthetic with a fizzing, hazy sort of depth perception and World 2 switches up again to a sort of trim du momentum in stepping, swinging equilibrium, riding the groove like no other. 
 
Turn over and the lingering, slowed downstroke of World 3 sounds like it got waylaid from a 0PN session with Wolfgang Voigt, whilst World 4 jettisons the bass altogether to thizz and skip away in the highest registers with an intoxicatingly heady vein which makes the uniquely brittle but spacious breakbeat trip of World 5 so narcotically seductive. 
 
We hardly need to spell it out for you;- this is highly idiosyncratic, exceptional material, with warmest recommendations to anyone with a or taste for house and ambient electronica’s refined, soulful and experimental echelons.