Artman is the current alias of the artist formerly known as DJ Kudo. While still a teenager, Kudo cut his teeth spinning disco in `70s Tokyo, and by the late `80s was one of the first DJs in Japan to champion techno and house. After hosting a hugely successful party, called Trance Night, at a small Shibuya venue named Cave, he was recruited as one of the residents at the newly launched, soon to be legendary, Nishi Azabu nightclub, Space Lab Yellow. Every Friday, throughout the 1990s, he held court there, at Zero – events which featured European guests, such as Laurent Garnier, Mixmaster Morris, and Sven Vath, and influenced a generation of Japanese producers. Susumu Yokota and Hiroshi Watanabe were both regulars. However, in 2000, Kudo felt that he needed to change tack. Restricted by banging techno sets, he retired the pseudonym, and re-emerged as Artman, with the aim of evolving a more “organic” ambient sound. He released the album, Re:Sort, the title a nod to its transportive, meditative, music, but also a reference to his own need to “re-set”. 

While no stranger to the studio, Artman’s primary focus is performance. In both his incarnations, this has made him a big festival favourite. Now, though, 23 years later, he’s ready with Re:Sort 2. Armed with congas, bongos, kalimba, marimba, and gamelan gongs, he showers the 10 tracks with cicadas and birdsong, and everything appears, to a certain extent, live, improvised. Woodwinds, cowbell, and plucked pizzicato string patterns mix with whistling, warbling, modular synth melodies. Asian’s Dreaming rings with droning, dissolving, treated sitar-like raga sequences. The loops of chilled chimes and hang drum harmonics in the main summoning a temple-like serenity. A soundtrack for prayers at dawn, or twilight. Portal, however, takes the tempo up, and Good Vibes, with its groovy, growling b-line, takes a bite from Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express (borrowing the same beat sampled by electro-funk landmark Salsa Smurph). These spiritually-leaning, inner space explorations, could be direct, more electronic, descendants of the folky kosmische of ground-breaking bands like Munich’s Between. Highlights are We Are All Passengers Of Life, Hi!King, and the opener, Light Of The World. The latter recalling a collision between fellow countrymen, Coastlines and Kaoru Inoue’s Aurora Acoustic, or Kunyuki’s classic Earth Beats pitched way down, and John Beltran’s seminal Ten Days Of Blue.

Artman’s Re:Sort 2 is out now on Qooki Records. I think there’s a Bandcamp link on the way, but until then Newtone Records have it in stock.