Atobe, Shinichi: Silent Way LP

Elusive Japanese house auteur Shinichi Atobe ushers his lush and slinky first self-released LP on Plastic & Sounds, building on some quarter century of prized work for Chain Reaction and DDS. RIYL Susumu Yokota, NWAQ, Terrence Dixon, Soichi Terada, Chain Reaction. Atobe’s 8th studio album ‘Silent Way’ sustains a celebrated run of long players as ideal vessels for his spectrum of deep house and dub techno to flow within richly personalised themes. Rolling on from a pair of 12”s dealt on his Plastic & Sounds label in the past 12 months, the 10 track 2LP trades in purest strains of hair-kissing house slink and hypnotic techno, offset with a few fuzzy ambient and beatdown groovers that neatly temper his signature harnessing of aerodynamic groove and mix of mercurial and crunchy textures.  For 69 minutes Atobe upholds classic standards with a measured motion and subtly crafty variation of style and pattern. The ferric flux of dust-mite dance and Civilistjävel!-esque knocks to ‘intro 6 1’, and an 11 min beatdown ace that goes like ‘Mr. Shakir’s Beat Store’, are the odder integers of an album best defined by its dreamy house and techno flow. We’re talking the sweetest cuts of eye-fluttering leads and svelte, swanging bass on 'Phase 2’, and shades of US deep house puckered with unusual vocal and textural nuance on ‘Blurred’, thru to distant dreams of Afro-Latinate house smudged into the FM bells and samba whistles of ‘Aquarius’, with a fine touch of late ‘00s Carl Craig-type electro-house on ‘Fractal’ that gives it a crucial edge of trippiness in the final parts.