For several decades, Susumu Yokota has proved to be one of the most versatile and prolific producers and DJs in Japan. With releases spanning multiple genres that include house, techno, electro, trance, and ambient, Yokota is equally well-known inside and outside of Japan. He first made his mark on the club and rave scene, releasing a wide variety of dance music under his own name, as well as monikers including Sonicstuff, Ringo, 246, Stevia, and Prism. Yokota, who along with Ken Ishii was one...

For several decades, Susumu Yokota has proved to be one of the most versatile and prolific producers and DJs in Japan. With releases spanning multiple genres that include house, techno, electro, trance, and ambient, Yokota is equally well-known inside and outside of Japan. He first made his mark on the club and rave scene, releasing a wide variety of dance music under his own name, as well as monikers including Sonicstuff, Ringo, 246, Stevia, and Prism. Yokota, who along with Ken Ishii was one of the first Japanese to make it on the worldwide dance scene, got his big break internationally when German trance guru Sven Vath heard one of his tapes on the beach in Goa, India in 1991. Yokota was soon signed to Vath's Harthouse label, and released what would be perhaps his best known record, The Frankfurt-Tokyo Connection, on that label in 1992. The record was a major hit with the trance set, and Yokota soon found himself touring the European continent as a DJ, in 1993 also gaining the distinction of being the first Japanese artist to play at the world-famous Berlin Love Parade. From 1994, Yokota released prolifically under various names, experimenting with deep house, breakbeat, retro disco, and more experimental techno. Yokota made inroads with the home listening crowd with a series of ambient albums released between 1998 and 2001. Characterized by austere, beautiful soundscapes accented by discreet tonal shifts and hypnotic, patient melodies, the four albums in this "suite" showed the maturity hinted at in his more playful dance records. Among these albums, Sakura and Grinning Cat are generally regarded as ambient landmarks on a par with the better ambient work of Brian Eno and Nobukazu Takemura. Yokota works outside of music as well, having staged exhibitions of his artwork and showings of his video projects.