Iori

Hailing from Okinawa, now-Tokyo-based producer IORI once cut his teeth as an assistant for David Mancuso’s revered party, The Loft, in New York City, where he learnt a meticulous sonic mentality from his audiophile mentor. This permeates his carefully-handled arrangements, which have helped make his name and define a series of spacey, atmospheric originals and remixes for proponent imprints like Phonica and Prologue to name but a few. Since his striking 2009 debut, Galaxy, which took its cue from Basic Channel and Manuel Gottsching, the Japanese producer has developed an immensely expressive dubbed-out sound in his own right. The first culmination of that is 2012’s excellent Nexus album for Bitta, a label owned by Far Eastern rising star DJ Nobu, seeing his ambient productions sit nicely with his hypnotic dance tunes. Two year stay in Berlin in early 2010s helped IORI gain a foothold in the international stage. He has since traveled across Europe, validating his characteristic meditative techno set, which is just the tip of his huge musical iceberg that ranges from low-slung house to leftfield oddballs. Despite his return to Japan in 2015, his presence remains strongly felt through frequent European tours. 2016 saw IORI release the Cold Radiance album, where his sci-fi ambient side grew fully- fledged. For an artist that has produced immersive and spacious pieces, it was a logical continuation of his extensive career as a producer. Eschewing the club-orientated perspective, it certainly proved IORI’s expressional depth and does justice to his artistic intention, his acute ears for spellbinding details standing out in sharp relief, which raised expectations of his promising future. (by Yusaku Shigeyasu)