Blue (ブルー): Blue (ブルー・碧い海のイマージュ) (199?)

You know, sometimes you’ve gotta go with what you’ve got. It was over three years ago when I first discovered Blue (ブルー・碧い海のイマージュ) by Blue on yaoiboi92’s YouTube channel (whom you really should subscribe to if you haven’t done so). I was immediately taken by this album’s meditative blend of aquatic ambient music and organic, almost tribal-sounding, contours. I saw his note about the lack of information out there about this artist and this music and made it a goal of mine to provide some kind of provenance to its history and (hopefully) share it on the blog.

As yaoiboi92 correctly stated, it reminded him of “Takashi Kokubo’s “Ion” series and Makoto Kubota and Sandii’s Ambient Hawai’i project.” In time, I’d grown to also compare it with its closer brethren: the environmental music of Shinsuke Honda and other fourth-world sounds of artists like Yas-Kaz and Chito Kawachi, who mixed electronics with “folk” instruments. In the end, for such an interesting album, surely, if I did some digging, I could turn up something?

I’d go to the lengths of seeking out a copy, hoping there was something in the physical version to light the trail. Looking at it, I quickly realized I might be looking at a dead end.

First came the discovery that *Blue (ブルー・碧い海のイマージュ)* has no published date printed anywhere in its material – not something out of the norm, especially for privately pressed or limited-issued products. Any search for information about its record label likewise turned up nothing. Was “Blue Lounge” a label, a defunct Tokyo lounge café, or something else? Nothing proved definitive, other than this CD was its sole release and that it was released in Japan by a musician who wanted part of its proceeds directed towards nature conservancy.

My focus then moved to trying to uncover more about the only person credited as writing Blue (ブルー・碧い海のイマージュ): S.R. Kinoshita. It was S.R. Kinoshita who crafted songs like “Blue” that mix West Coast-style guitar meditations with rich, sonically gorgeous “interior music” that recalls the work of artists like Masahide Sakuma. Others, like “Lagoon,” find a fascinating way to reorient vocoder-led Hawaiian-influenced rock into wiggier, more esoteric realms that recall the more ethereal healing music of someone like Ryokyu Endo. “Moon Shine” belonged to a certain strain of Japanese neoclassical music. Surely, someone, somewhere in Japan, had worked with S.R. Kinoshita?

Once again, my search for any kind of info about S.R. Kinoshita led nowhere. Songs like “Mangrove,” which have obvious ties to the organically created quasi-New Age grooves of artists like Hideki Mitsumori or Daisaku Kume, seem to partly derive their influence from the granola-fed music of artists like Uman and Don Cherry. The same goes for “Water,” a track that combines SE Asian and African influences with whatever S.R. was going for.

For all the touchstones I could point to, none of the info in the copy – neither the presence of I. Kawaguchi’s early ‘90s CGI-generated artwork – left a waypoint for me to follow. I agreed that this album felt like it should have been released in the early to mid-‘90s, right when the “chill-out” music boom had started to crest. I think, as interconnected as we are, I’m happy to report that there are still certain mysteries out there, and one of those is this work.

Perhaps it’s best that all we have to explain this music can be found in S.R. Kinoshita’s words describing the focus of this album:

“The sea breeze carries a message from the ocean, interior music drifting between the waves.”  

“An image of the azure sea.”

“When we climb a mountain the colors of Spring or Autumn descale our eyes in the forest our spirit resonates with sympathy for the life of the forest.

The undersea swells our imagination with its dazzling forms of life and color.

Journies to new lands affect us diverse and inexpressible ways
peaceful sounds for savouring life’s moments open our minds and our consciousness.”

And in the liner notes, Kinoshita’s words about its songs:

1. BLUE (7:56)
A song expressing a calm sea. The sound of dolphins among the coral reef waves. A melody played by the cello accompanied by the guitar.

2. LAGOON (7:20)
An ethnic image. The voices of birds living in the mangroves of southern islands. A mysterious blend of voice, percussion, bamboo flute, and didgeridoo.

3. MOON SHINE (7:56)
The intro expresses the appearance of the moon at the water’s edge at night, with a relaxed cello melody accompanied by the piano.

4. MANGROVE (6:47)
A somewhat sad song. The sounds of insects in the grass by the nighttime shore. The solo, reminiscent of a sitar, leads to a flute melody, with mysterious female vocals.

5. WATER (6:32)
The sound of a seabird colony. Percussion and voice layered over a kalimba accompaniment. A song evoking the image of swimming leisurely underwater.

6. CORAL REEF (8:17)
The voices of dolphins from between the waves. Flute and gentle female voice accompanied by the piano. A song expressing a gentle sense of dynamism.

In the end, life’s too short to sweat the details – especially with music like Blue (ブルー・碧い海のイマージュ) breezin’ in your background.

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