Japanese street music icon, Yasushi Ide releases a new album featuring Don Letts, Josh Milan, Jeff Mills, DJ Krush, and more. Yasushi Ide is the Japanese street icon. In the '90s he was called "the Guru of Shibuya-kei" which was the movement of Shibuya style of eclectic pop by the artists such as Cornelius, Pizzcato Five, or Original Love who is once again recognized in city pop revival of recent years. (Yasushi Ide was a manager of Original Love, and also Kenji Ozawa). Through his works, he has been creating the global network of musicians such as Josh Milan of the Blaze, house music icon, Don Letts, the pioneer of connecting punk rock with reggae, and Jeff Mills, Detroit techno legend, and released a great amount of hi-quality music on his label, Grand Gallery. The Cosmic Suite project started in 2020, during the pandemic. It started as a project to reconstruct the parts of music Jeff Mills created for Chieko Kinbara, a violinist which Mills produced. However, it turned out to be 36 minutes of space-themed original track: Cosmic Suite. This masterpiece created a buzz in the music scene in Japan and overseas, and became Yasushi Ide's new beginning. In June, 2022, Ide released Cosmic Suite 2. Originally, Cosmic Suite was an instrumental. Cosmic Suite is the reconstruction of Cosmic Suite 2 with the element of vocals. In this project, Don Letts, Josh Milan, and DJ Krush are featured as guest musicians. Moreover, drums of Tony Allen, the legendary Afrobeat drummer, and Style Scott, a drummer known for his works in early days of ON-U label, and Gota Yashiki, a Japanese drummer known for his works with Soul II Soul are featured in this album. Also, Japanese brightest talents such as Kan Takagi of Major Force, Kaoru Inoue aka Chari Chari, Tomoyuki Tanaka aka Fantastic Plastic Machine and Calm are featured as artists and engineers. This is the true dream team of the Japanese underground music scene. Artwork by Josue Thomas (Gallery Dept). He is also featured as poetry reading artist in the first track of Cosmic Suite 2. Highlight of Cosmic 2 is include unique dub sounds in tracks such as "Lava" featuring UA, the Japanese singer often described as "Japanese Björk", and "Sumimasen Suite" featuring Rebel Dread (Don Letts). Also features Emilie Chick, Emily Capell, Afrika Bambaataa, and Reck.
Track List:
- Mirror (feat. Josue Thomas)
- Lava (feat. UA)
- The Battle Part.1 (feat. Emilie Chick)
- Sumimasen Suite Part.1
- We Need Power Part.1 (feat. Josh Milan)
- I'm Thinking, I'm Spacing
- Outer Space (feat. DJ Krush)
- Galactic Beats Part.1
- Hear, There (feat. Kan Takagi & Reck)
- New Beginning
