Yosi Horikawa¡¯s beats burble, hiss, slosh and gurgle. On his debut full-length, ¡°Vapor,¡± the 34-year-old producer may wield some identifiably hip-hop rhythms, but they¡¯re tangled in a rich, intricately detailed tapestry of field recordings, sampled percussion, snatches of tribal chants and warm, guileless synthesizers. It¡¯s the best thing you¡¯ll hear all year that also bears a passing resemblance to naff ethnic chill-out act Deep Forest.
¡°My stuff gets mistaken for healing music quite a lot,¡± Horikawa admits. ¡°I like nature, sure, but I¡¯m not just looking to express something simple like, ¡®Let¡¯s give thanks to Mother Earth!¡¯ ¡± He mulls the idea for a while. ¡°When you listen to something, the surrounding environment has a big effect on you: the time of day, the landscape, the angle of the sun. ... It¡¯s not just about the sound: I want to capture the environment around the sound in my work.¡±
Though he only considered music a hobby until recently, Horikawa has been tinkering with sound since his parents bought him a boombox at the age of 12. A keen hip-hop fan (¡°mostly East Coast, underground stuff,¡± he says), the sight of rapper KRS-One using a pair of headphones in lieu of a microphone on the cover of 1993 album ¡°Return of the Boom Bap¡± inspired him to try the same thing himself. Before you could say ¡°Pete Rock,¡± he was making recordings of improvised percussion, using a can for a snare drum and the underside of his bed for the kick.
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