SATOSHI TOMIIE Vinyl & CDs

Review: After a surprise sojourn last year as Sato, an alias he used to explore ambient and dub techno territory, Satoshi Tomiie has reverted to his given name for solo album number five - a thin return given he made his 12" debut way back in 1989. The New York-based Japanese great is in fine form from the start, effortlessly sashaying between hypnotic deep tech-house (the eyes-closed, early morning excellence of 'You Are Here'), spaced-out dub-house ('Number 1'), chunky-but-dubby deep house of the kind that his friend Francois K would love ('Magic Hour'), acid-flecked minimalism ('Blast'), vintage-sounding dub techno ('A52', 'Meditation in an Emergency'), locked-in soundscape house (the shuffling and yearning 'Phase Space') and sub-heavy ambient dub ('Fast Track').

Review: Artificial Owl Recordings welcomes aboard New Yorkers Satoshi Tomiie and Naotake Gunji for the label's fifth release; a recording of their collaborative A_A project and live show, which first came to light at the Fridman Gallery in Manhattan. A_A, an ongoing audio project, explores the visceral tension between floor-centric ambient electronica and improvised sound/audio performance. Here, found and object-activated sounds fire a collective dub trigger, producing a distinctly somatic regrounding across five original works.