Yoshifumi Sodeyama has been a mainstay of Japan’s electronic dance music scene for about two decades now and while with his better known moniker, DJ Sodeyama he explores techno music with tracks ranging from upbeat and club-friendly to deep, dark and minimal ones, under his somewhat lesser known The People In Fog alias he is doing the same with house music. His first release under this name was a split double CD with fellow Japanese producer Kikiorix back in 2013, and while that album had its moments, it was far not as memorable as its follow up, 1977, released in 2021. That one was filled with gems, covering a wide variety of different house music sub-genres and this year’s Too Much Knobs And Cables takes us even further down that road. But while 1977 was more of a typical house album of its time, Knobs is more like a journey thru the history of the genre, with a special focus on its early days, when the sound what we know as house today was still taking shape, taking cues from disco, funk, soul and who knows what else.

The opening Red Morning already takes us back to those days, with a massive, old-school bassline, some wonky horns and a very strong overall late ’80s feel and while the following Dance To The Air goes back to the same era, instead of Red Morning’s soulful feel, it brings in the disco vibe and is one of the album’s highlights with its slower tempo and fun jungle noise samples. And it goes on like this, with each and every track offering us something new, recalling a different era or type of house music. One of the album’s absolute highlights, Night Driver considerably slows down and has the kind of moody, neonlit ’80s feel, the sort that some synthwave producers were aiming for. The groovy Jack Out hits us with some aggressive, badass Chicago vibes and when you think that things just cannot get any better, CC Love, sampling Aretha Franklin‘s A Deeper Love comes around and from a very simple, stripped down start it builds up into an excellent soulful disco tune. Near the end, the album takes a turn towards somewhat more modern sounds with the excellent New Life and Miraval it recalls the days when French filter house was dominating the dance music charts. There are only two songs that does not fit that much into the album’s journey thru house theme: the rather strange Animal Kingdom, which displays the genre’s more experimental side, but doesn’t work as well as the rest of the album. And the closing Sun Moon Lakes, which has nothing much to do with the genre, and adds to the diversity of the album and returns to the ’80s feel, but with a very different take on that decade and it actually serves as a very nice outro to the release.

It is a great, almost flawless album and it is especially nice to see Sodayama keeping up the high quality of 1977, while taking us into a whole new direction. Knobs is out on Sound Of Vast, which is a Japanese label, that also organizes parties in Tokyo, however based on its Soundcloud site, it is actually a “Japanese label based in Amsterdam” (or “Amsterdam & Berlin” if we look at their Bandcamp page). Besides all The People In Fog material since 2014, they also released stuff by the likes of Iori Wakasa, Akiko Kiyama, Shinichiro Yokota or Monkey Timers, so it is more than worth to dig around in their archives.

The People In Fog: Too Much Knobs And Cables
2025.06.03. / Sound Of Vast
digital, 2×12″
01.Red Morning
02.Dance To The Air
03.Animal Kingdom
04.Jack Out
05.Night Driver
06.CC Love
07.New Life
08.Miraval
09.Sun Moon Lake