Well, this is exciting. On the 1st of August 2025, Jon Tye's Lo Recordings is releasing an incredible project that has been several years in the making, "Susumu Yokota - Skintone Edition Volume 1", presented with the generous assistance of the Yokota family.

Here's the CliffsNotes: "Skintone Edition Volume 1" is a 7-album box set that collects half of the fourteen ambient/ambient-slanted albums the late, great Japanese composer, producer, DJ, and visual artist Susumu Yokota released through his Skintone label between 1998 and 2012. As one of the most internationally influential figures to emerge from the Japanese musical canon during the '90s and 2000s, his is a name that needs no introduction over here.

In terms of box content, we're talking "Magic Thread", "Image 1983-1998", "Sakura", "Grinning Cat", "Will", "The Boy and the Tree" and "Laputa". Fittingly, Skintone Edition Volume 1" will be made available in vinyl, CD and digital formats, with a second box set ", Susumu Yokota - Skintone Edition Volume 2", due to follow in 2026. Fittingly, the first volume coincides with the 10th anniversary of Yokota’s untimely death and the 30th year of Lo Recordings.

Full disclosure: I've got some personal skin in this project. In 2023, Lo Recordings approached me to write a new set of liner notes for the repress of Yokota-san's "Sakura" album that appears in this collection. That request came off the back of a major feature story I wrote about the life and times of Yokota-san for Wax Poetics with the great Ken Hidaka. You can read "After The Cherry Blossoms Fall" over here.

In the wake of that article, Hidaka-san helped me create an audio tribute to Yokota-san for Dublab, which you can listen to here. In recent years, I've also written about Yokota-san's "Baroque" album for Resident Advisor and paid tribute to his peers at Sublime Records for DJ Mag.

Here's a quote from DJ Miku that I think sums up a lot about why Yokota-san's music still resonates so strongly in this mortal coil. “Songwriting was like a diary for him. You would not rewrite your diary. I think he was more interested in the track’s momentum than in perfecting it. It was important for him to create music from what he felt in the moment. That’s why I think Yokota’s work is very emotional. He was never one to sacrifice the soul of a track to make it sound better. In other words, there is no lie in his works.”

It's also worth noting that over the next fourteen months, Lo Recordings will reissue all 14 Skintone albums as standalone releases in LP, CD, and digital formats. So, if going the whole hog isn't your thing, you'll be able to pick up the crucial cuts you need piece by piece. Unsurprisingly, all music has been fully remastered.

Finally, here's some more specifics on the "Skintone Edition Volume 1" release package.

13 Disc Vinyl Box Set:

- Custom Limited Edition Outer Box: Block-printed, foiled silver linen, wrapped with a deep night sky finish.
- 13 Vinyl Discs (6 double LP albums, 1 single LP album)
- Coloured vinyl (7 colours)
- Printed inner sleeve for each disc, featuring custom fonts, spot gloss and colour matched Pantone
- Extensive Sleeve notes for each album
- 4 page insert + 4 panel poster

7 Disc CD box set:

- Custom Limited Edition CD box: Wrapped in uncoated black paper finished with a High Gloss Black on Black block foil print
- 7 x CD album. Each in a 6 Panel DigiSleeve printed and formed on 300 gsm uncoated board
- Included printed sleeve notes

Skintone Edition Volume 1 is due for release through Lo Recordings on August 1 2025, in vinyl, CD and digital formats (Pre-order here).