Yohei Shikano debuts “Echo You Know” on Think! Records
Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, LA based composer and producer Yohei Shikano has been making music and creating sounds for over a decade now. With music under his own name as well as projects like My Hawaii and Moonie Moonie, the musician has also collaborated with the likes of Austin Lee Goza, Ross Garren, Point Lobo, writer/visual artist/animator extraordinaire, Mark Neeley and has even composed/produced music for the film "Hee" directed by Kaori Momoi. Yohei began releasing music during the Pandemic with titles such as “Rain Surrounds Us”, “Instrumentals - 2021/2022” and his 2022 full length debut, “In Between My Ears, There Is a Cloud and a Five Dollar Bill”. Recorded in Mt. Washington, CA, Yohei brought on musicians Daniel Seef, Ryan McGregor and longtime collaborator Miles Senzaki to help bring the album to life during the historical hellscape that was Covid. Different from his 2024 release of the quickly instant classic “Echo You Know” on Think! Records, Yohei explored various layers of hissing doom and edging hip-hop balance across the album’s 13 tracks. With some pieces reminding one of a mid-2000’s horror flick, the tones and dissonance based rhythms found on numbers such as “Not What You Wanted To Hear”, “We Were in Trouble” and “But We Still Don’t Know” radiate this atmospheric loop driven tundra of texture, chaos and science-fiction mayhem. A time for musicians to totally fold, or totally grow, Yohei took the highroad during the Pandemic and got to work.
2024’s “Echo You Know” is this wonderfully curated, cosmic garden of heirloom melodies that explore various potencies of reflective patience, a dilated choreography of sound and dream like sensory observations that can only be achieved through deep resonation with the planet. A humble marble of wet water surging through an emotional infinity, Yohei’s talent and relationship with sound simply shines through as he guides his listeners into this occupied bardo filled with the likeness of some Fantastic Planet vibrational backdrop. It’s blue sky ceiling punctured with near-death visions and monumental thoughts of what being a person of music is really all about as its creator peers through the slits of reality like some paper tear in the fabric of time. Praying across nearby fields of ancient grain, the audible atmosphere tips over into this radical pool of molecule and melody while a stage is set someplace in the far East. With numbers like “Night Radiant #1”, “Immediately, Went Up In Smoke” and “Ga Touji が 当時”, Yohei takes us to the edge of his dreams of what an extremely well done album sounds and feels like. A humble, handpicked treasure trove of melancholy mood stirring enlightenment, “Echo You Know” is an excellent demonstration of hard work, grace, community and inspiration in time starved of peace and love.
