quête:sano sano

Metti un po' di Musica fottutta, perché ho voglia di niente… anzi Fottutissima!

After a four year hiatus finally Sano is back with Volume IV of Latino Body Music.
Transmitting from the green hills of Colombia - out of the jungle - into your hearts. Heavy
rhythms for mind, body & soul. El Disco es cultura!

This EP marks the first release from a collaborative project between Tokyo based DJ/producer Iori Wakasa and Okayama's Keita Sano, born from a quiet resonance between their musical sensibilities.

In Japan, the academic year begins in April. Though born in 1988 and 1989, the two artists belong to the same school-year cohort under this system, yet within Japan's gengo era structure they stand at the symbolic end of one era and the beginning of another. The title 'A Shift of Eras' points to the moment when one era gives way to the next, suggesting not only the passage of time, but the subtle renewal of culture, perception, and values.

'Filtered Jewels' draws from the image of light shimmering like gemstones, or a space scattered with countless jewels, perceived through an imagined filter that gently alters the way the scene reveals itself.
'Heaven's Door' envisions the ascent of a transparent staircase floating above a sea of clouds, leading toward a quietly resting emerald-green door.
'Shocking Yellow', originally created in response to a specific request, incorporates carefully placed vocal samples while grounding the track in warm, rounded low frequencies and organic textures, shaped with DJ use in mind.
And finally, 'Time To Change' was reconstructed repeatedly with the hope of offering both solace and a quiet sense of encouragement, ultimately becoming a piece that reflects the underlying theme of the EP.

Akhira Sano is a Tokyo-based artist working across sound, drawing, installation, and video. His practice finds generative potential for music in life's fleeting incidents, etching meaning from unassuming spaces and resonances. With releases on 12k, LAAPS, IIKKI, and The Trilogy Tapes, Sano has steadily carved out a distinctive voice within minimal and experimental music - one that privileges attentiveness and patience over spectacle.

"To Material Past", Sano's debut for SWIMS, carries this thread with a single 30-minute work built solely using glockenspiel tones and field recordings from his local neighbourhood. This is a night walk with no map or end point; Sano follows irregular, coiling fragments that extend to form a tessellating luminous whole - like a subliminal mass of tree roots quietly shifting the concrete slabs beneath our feet.

Under this faded gauze of gestures and interactions, Sano's glockenspiel interjects like a grandfather clock, softly marking the partitions that make up a day's collected experience; clicking and chiming like the sleeping brain, as it sifts and catalogues a lifetime's ephemera of thoughts, faces and puzzles.

Akhira Sano is a Tokyo-based artist who has recorded several albums since 2019, released on labels such as Important Records, IIKKI, and recently 12K among others. Working with electronic, instrumental, and concrete sounds, he crafts immersive assemblages of long overlapping tones and blurred resonance, cut through with textural crunch and hiss.

Longevity in dance music is not option.

It is the requirement.

'Don't Stop' is the essential ethos in DJ culture, especially concerning the medium of vinyl records.
Eddie C and Keita Sano link again inside and outside Europe for 3 tracks of hard-edge, progressive Kraut and global House sound.

Don't sleep! Don't stop!

EC x KS 2025

This was definitely NOT on our bingo card for 2024, but here we are !
A monster collaboration with prolific sonic wonder Keita Sano and our very own Eddie C !
Monumental clubbery that's already laying waste to dark spaces.
Mega limited hand-stamped 12"

GǼG, the production unit of Tokyo's leading club sound Monkey Timers and Okayama-based maverick producer Keita Sano, is proud to present this heavyweight, alternative, and leftfield release on the "Sound of Vast."

Over a powerful and mysterious bassline, the hypnotic A1 'Jack' builds up with sharp synth stabs, dark pads, and ACID voices taken from Ron Hardy's open reel soundtrack series Jackmaster Hater.
AA1 is followed by the obscure percussion track 'Yamato.' It is a reinterpretation of the drumming of legendary drummer Curt Cress from the German jazz-rock scene of the 80s in the context of dance music.
AA2, 'Central' takes the funky bassline of The S.O.S. Band's 1982 album 'High Hopes' and infuses it with roaring feedback, cutting guitars, and spacy synth sounds, giving it a fresh, modern twist and elevating it to the realm of cosmic disco.

Monkey Timers' love for the classics of disco, krautrock, and Chicago house, the intensity and immersion of current club music created by their real-life experience in the field, and Keita Sano's unique free-form outlandish sound techniques coexist on this 12" EP.

東京のクラブサウンドをレペゼンしてきたMonkey Timersと岡山の奇才プロデューサーKeita SanoによるプロダクションユニットGǼGが〈Sound of Vast〉より満を持して放つ超重量級オルタナティブ・レフトフィールド・ストンパー！

パワフルで不穏なベースライン上にRon Hardyのオープンリール音源シリーズJackmaster Haterから割愛した”Acid! Acid! Acid!” ヴォイスリフレインを刻み、鋭利なシンセスタブとダークなパッドでビルドアップしたヒプノティックなナンバーA1. Jackを皮切りに、80年代ドイツジャズロックシーンの伝説的ドラマーCurt Cressのドラミングをダンスミュージックの文脈で再解釈したオブスキュアなパーカッション・トラックAA1. Yamato、そしてThe S.O.S. Bandの82年作”High Hopes”のファンキーなベースラインに轟音フィードバックやカッティングギター、スペーシーなシンセサウンドで現代的なコズミックディスコへと昇華したAA2. Central。

ディスコ、クラウトロック、シカゴハウスといった古典への愛情と現場で積み重ねてきたリアルな経験が生み出す現行のクラブミュージックとしての強度と没入感、そしてKeita Sanoのフリーフォームで奇天烈なサウンドテクニックが同居した渾身の3曲を12“EPに収録。

Optimo Music excitedly unleashes Japan’s GǼG and their Anarcho Disco volumes 1 & 2 into the world. We thought we were done with 12” single release, at least for now, but then these tracks showed up and it was instantly obviously ESSENTIAL that they get pressed up on big fat twelve inch singles. Every single track here has been tried and tested and caused delirious delight on the dancefloor over the last year. Now it is time to share them with YOU! Truly Anarchic, Psychedelic dance music for the open-minded and genre-free crews.

GǼG say – 
DISKO KLUBB boss MONKEY TIMERS, who leads Tokyo’s underground disco scene, and KEITA SANO, who has been gaining attention for his releases on labels around the world, have started the project “GǼG”.

Using a variety of sampling and unique FX, our music has created a unique GǼG sound that is psychedelic and anarchic.

This subversive sound is sure to be the key to shaking the dancefloor.

Optimo Music excitedly unleashes Japan’s GǼG and their Anarcho Disco volumes 1 & 2 into the world. We thought we were done with 12” single release, at least for now, but then these tracks showed up and it was instantly obviously ESSENTIAL that they get pressed up on big fat twelve inch singles. Every single track here has been tried and tested and caused delirious delight on the dancefloor over the last year. Now it is time to share them with YOU! Truly Anarchic, Psychedelic dance music for the open-minded and genre-free crews.

GǼG say – 
DISKO KLUBB boss MONKEY TIMERS, who leads Tokyo’s underground disco scene, and KEITA SANO, who has been gaining attention for his releases on labels around the world, have started the project “GǼG”.

Using a variety of sampling and unique FX, our music has created a unique GǼG sound that is psychedelic and anarchic.

This subversive sound is sure to be the key to shaking the dancefloor.

Odopt is back on Especial and this time is in collaborative mode with Sebastian Hoyos aka Sano, who is a regular on the likes of Matias Aguayo's Comeme and Munich's Public Possession. The pair cook up a fine globally-minded club trip that comes with another label return, this time from remixer Jamie Paton.

The original 'Picha' first started as a sketch in 2016 then became a demo in 2019 now finally arrives on wax. It's a raw percussive workout with razor-sharp snares and plenty of cowbells. Next to an instrumental comes the Paton remix and it is a trademark deep and dubwise piece of work with widescreen dynamics.

Following on from recent works for 12k, The Trilogy Tapes, and Important, Far More Decentralized is a new collection of subtle, enchanting pieces from Tokyo-based sound and visual artist Akhira Sano. Working with electronic, instrumental, and concrete sounds, he crafts immersive assemblages of long overlapping tones and blurred resonance, cut through with textural crunch and hiss. The resonant bell-like tones of opener ‘Kouai’ invite the listener in, calling up the warm sound palette of ambient classics like Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music for Nine Postcards, but leaving any sense of compositional anchor behind for a free-floating harmonic drift. Woven through this seductive tonal cloud is a wavering stream of white noise and tactile pops, its textural grit threatening to derail the calmly reflective pool of pitched sounds, but never quite doing so. Each of these seven pieces occupies a similarly ruminative harmonic space while possessing its own identity. On ‘Neow’, lush tonal swells form around fragmented samples, touching on the techniques of early 2000s glitch artists like Ekkehard Ehlers. ‘Orbv’ is particularly subtle in its combination of rippling back-masked tonal wash, almost subliminal suggestions of field recordings, and distant traces of raw electronic interference, as if a Toshimaru Nakamura recording is playing through an open window across the road. ‘Margin’ weaves together a skein of wistful slow-motion melodies while untraceable, resonant clinks and ambiguous static washes rise gradually to the surface. In comparison to his recent Phase Contrast for Recollection on 12k, recognisable instrumental sounds are a rarity here, yet a hand-played feeling is present throughout. On ‘Teens’, filtered electric guitar tones reminiscent of the melancholic miniatures of Andrew Chalk float over aqueous burbles, bringing the album to a magisterial close. In the crowded field of contemporary electronic music tending toward ambience, Sano is a distinctive voice. Like his elegant abstract paintings, here seemingly static surfaces of unhurried calm reveal rich interior worlds of subtle activity and gentle chaos. Where much contemporary ambient music aims for an almost stifling cleanliness of tone, Sano breathes life into Far More Decentralized through the acceptance of imperfection, accident, and rough edges. As the artist himself says, ‘In a world where everything can be made perfectly, I think it’s a beautiful and primal act to touch the fragile and imperfect’

Keita Sano is a prolific Japanese producer who has released on revered labels such as Mister Saturday Night, Lets Play House, Morris Audio and 1080P. His fusion of dark, distorted, acidic textures and crunchy disco beats gives his produc tions a unique sound which works perfectly for Delusions Of Grandeur and the label is proud to welcome him for his debut DOG EP entitled Love Is Emotion.

The title track comes on like a proverbial runaway train with heavy, pounding beats and bassline forging things ahead while the most twisted, tripped out FX rise and fall creating an absolute juggernaut of a track which takes no prisoners. A decept ively simple DJ tool which is loaded with drama for maximum impact on the more left of centre dance floors.

Up next we have Violet which takes a low-slung deep house approach but with the grit and dirt that Keita always brings to the party. The first half of the track teases with tension-building chords and syncopated bassline which bounces around a massive four on the floor kick drum. Things fall away in the middle of the track to reveal a beautiful, heartwarming piano part, setting the scene before things get truly epic with orchestral strings bringing a touch of the film noir to proceedings.

I’m A Man picks up the pace again for an intense acid work out which pushes the sonic boundaries to the limits with seriously warped FX creating mayhem around a simple, percussive disco groove. As secret weapon DJ tools go, this is right up there.

Closing out this mind-bending release Keita remains in experimental mode on Love Is Emotion offsetting melodic arpeggios and sweet chords with off-kilter sonic madness ensuring things remain dark, dirty and deep.

Repress!

RAZOR-N-TAPE PRESENT A SPECIAL 7 INCH RELEASE FEATURING JAPANESE ARTIST KAN SANO WITH A COVER VERSION OF THE ROY AYRES CLASSIC

Akhira Sano was born in 1992 in Niigata, Japan. Focusing on the imperfections and irregularities of form and sound, he creates, observes, records, and extends them secondarily through drawing, graphics, installation, videography, and music composition.
His major works include "Penetrating, For Filtration" (Important Records, 2019), "Particle Dialogue - Observation and Recording" (The Trilogy Tapes, Inc. 2022), and major solo exhibitions include "Perspectives of Possibility" (FAITH, 2021) and "mē on - Seeing the Absent" (TOH, 2022).

Sano ha vuelto! Todos lo conocen por su ya famosa serie de Latino Body Music. Esta vez trajo a Siwo de Mozambique en la voz. Juntos presentan 6 éxitos garantizados para mover los pies. Hi nkensa a misava ni matiku ya Colombia na Mozambique. Khanimambo ni lirhandzu hi nkensa: M&V at PP. Phran & DJ Phidias at Vimana Studios, Barcelona. Mixmaster Leo Li at Mockba. Palma. Bailar es una terapia!

Keita Sano continues to release from prestigious record labels such as "Spring Theory" and "Mister Saturday Night" and his delicate but bold music is garnering attention around the world. After moving to Berlin and further evolving as an artist, he is now releasing four-track NEW EP from his label 'MAD LOVE Records'.

This EP is consists of 4-tracks full of love and explosive power!
A1: Layers elegant deep house grooves over a raw beat in
impeccable balance.
A2: A party tune influenced by the original Chicago house scene.
B1: Disco and afrobeats mixed with obscure sampling.
B2: A striking floor killer tune.

A completely new frontier that combines the pleasure of disco music and the functionality of a techno/house dance track! The jacket photo is by a young Japanese photographer So Mitsuya. The design by ifax!

As usual Culted Edit will takes you for a ride in a folktronic sound !