- A survey of experimental house by Japanese producers.
- Last month, Workshop, the German leftfield dance music institution, did what they do best. They released two 12-inches with zero fanfare, dropped to Hard Wax with their signature hand-stamped white labels. Workshop 28, the label's seventh various artists compilation, presents four Japanese producers bending dance music into novel and intriguing forms.
All the cuts here are great. Berlin-based Yone-Ko comes through with a blurry, piano-driven ambient house cut that carefully unfolds into dub abstractions, while Iku Sakan unfurls his hypnotic and blissed-out cosmic gamelan-kraut style with a "Cerebral Repertoire," an ecstatic, percussive drone that's easy to get lost in.
However, we look to Workshop compilations for secret weapons. This time around, the honors go to Yokohama-born, New York City-based artist Kiki Kudo. The track's central nervous system is a rave nostalgia piano line, which will keep punters locked in despite the fact that nothing else about the track is conventional.
TracklistA1 Yone-Ko - Strip Down To E
A2 Kiki Kudo - Grand Street Piano
B1 Iku Sakan - Cerebral Repertoire
B2 YPY - Zero