Since the dissolution of Yura Yura Teikoku, Shintaro Sakamoto has refined a solo language built on understatement. Where his former band favoured volatility, his solo records proceed at lower pressure, privileging texture, spacing and grooves that remain deliberately underdeveloped. On his fifth solo album, Yoo-hoo, that approach resolves into a two-part movement, the record gradually shifting from suspension into motion without ever announcing the change. ‘Is There a Place For You There?’ establishes the album’s opening register, its unhurried and blown-out vocal and flattened delivery setting a mood of controlled inertia, melting against, even slowing the beckoning rhythm of Yuta Suganuma’s drums. The early stretch is governed by tactile…

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