Audiopile Review: Making the leap out of the cassette underground, Tokyo-based producer Soshi Takeda has now had all three of his cassette releases, which began back in 2020 with Memory Of Humidity, committed to vinyl. After Studio Mule pressed his 2022 release for Constellation Tatsu, Same Place, Another Time, and Dotei Records pulled the three best tracks from his debut for an EP reissue, 100% Silk reissue their 2021 release for Takeda, the sublime Floating Mountains. For those just hearing this name for the first time, Takeda follows in the classic tradition of Japanese house producers like Soichi Terada and Shinichiro Yokota—classy and atmospheric albums well suited to home listening but driving enough for heady dance floors. Takeda takes the atmospheric side of that lineage and ratchets it up a few notches, fitting the organic, wooden percussion with heaps of humid ambience and oceanic pads. This should be a shoo-in for those that have already come to love the recent set of ambient-house LPs on the 100% Silk label from artists like Foans, and Hunter Thompson’s dual projects—Akasha System and DJ Panthr. Could have used this one at the start of the summer, but music like this will bring warm radiance all year round.

Tokyo visionist Soshi Takeda’s second album took shape across eight months of the winter and spring, inspired by an iconic mid-80’s photography book of Chinese landscapes. Scenes of lantern-lit fishing boats on misty mountain lakes seeded a mood of hidden paradise, with ancient waterways snaking secret paths into the past.

Recorded at his home studio using hardware synths and samplers from the 1990’s, the six songs of Floating Mountains (plus digital-only bonus track, “Deep Breath,” from the 2nd Life Silk compilation) evoke shrouded vistas of liquid skies and shining lakes, like some Li River twist on Balearic half-light house. Shades of cosmic drift and crystalline electronica ebb and flow within the nocturnal pulse, pagodas and pearls reflecting the waning moon: “I hope you can feel the cool and exotic atmosphere.”