In 1997, Rephlex released an EP by Kiyoshi Izumi featuring the track below, “Bedroom Glow.” A few years later he followed up with a full length album on Nobukazu Takemura’s Childisc label pleasantly titled, Orange Sunshine, the tracks of which, while appealing enough, sound nothing like “Bedroom Glow.” (Orange Sunshine is a nice little idm/ambient album). His most recent album, Protocol A was released in 2004 by Peace Records… and nothing has been heard from since.

There are these electo pieces which have something like a twist in it, that carries it forward creating an even more potent climax and sense of urgency. “Bedroom Glow” has it, as well as a piece by Conemelt and Squarepusher that I’ll write about in future posts. I’m not sure what to call it — kind of like the instrumental equivalent of a break but considering these pieces have plenty of breakbeat already that might be a misleading description. Like a break, the driving rhythm and melody is shunted, and a new melody picks up a little later. Eventually, the original rhythm and melody picks back up. The result I think is a much more sophisticated piece than one might be expecting. This piece mixes many familiar electro sounds along with a club whistle and what I think may be a Farfisa organ. I ripped it from vinyl, so I hope you also like the crackle and pops. Enjoy!

Izumi, like Doctor Y.S. is another musician I wish I knew more about, but alas, I can’t even find Japanese websites about him that can be garbled in translation. Thus the MOG player and its audio content will have to stand surrogate for all the juicy bits I’d like to add here for you.

About Aharon N. Varady

Aharon's Omphalos is the hobbit hole of Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project. He is a community planner and environmental educator working to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of libraries and museums. His advocacy for open-source strategies in the Jewish community has been written about in the Atlantic Magazine, the Yiddish Forverts, Tablet, and Haaretz. He is particularly interested in pedagogies for advancing ecological wisdom, developing creative and emotional intelligence, and realizing effective theurgical praxes. He welcomes your comments, personal messages, and kind words. If you find his work helpful to your own or you'd simply like to support him, please consider donating via his Patreon account.

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“Kiyoshi Izumi” is shared by Aharon N. Varady with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.