Let’s take a step back. Let’s take a breather and rediscover the music of Hajime Mizoguchi. Romantic, sunny, and surprisingly graceful, Halfinch Dessert notched another special rung on Japan’s wonderful New Age music from that era. In 1985, it was that debut, that gave us a taste of the string-laden, pining sound Hajime was inkling to explore even further. Back then, it was a car accident that made him rethink his original ideas of making staid classical music and instead turn his eye toward electronics and neoclassical theories to truly get to the core of his own musical voice. A year later, in 1986, in the aptly titled Oasis – Behind The Clear Waters we find Hajime now an artist at the peak of his exploration, driving toward an even more personal sound.
Just to refresh your memory, Hajime was a classically trained Tokyo musician whose vocation and talent came from his amazing violin and cello technique. It was Hajime who would quietly sit on sessions for other FOND/SOUND favorites like Gontiti, Killing Time, and Seigén Ono (to name a precious few). Instantly recognizable, his cello sound (always clean and longing) instilled a warm, timeless sound to countless great works. On his debut, he turned to newfound technologies like samplers and digital sequencers to sketch out, then flesh out the dreamy music he had in his mind when he wanted to sooth his way through a troubled time. With such technology, Hajime was able to blend all sorts of non-Western styles with the more ornate, classically-oriented, music he had been taught under.
Oasis – Behind The Clear Waters, presents Hajime trying to turn the ecological into the personal. Inspired by very earthly matters and by the fear of nuclear destruction (hello Righeira!), this album tries to affect the spirit of places like the South Pole, Pacific islands, Space, and Guernica, to revolve within them the ideas (and sounds) which, emotionally, can put you there. What does all this word salad mean? It means that where Halfinch Dessert made you dream, Oasis – Behind The Clear Waters makes you afford the time to pause and reflect.
It begins with the light-glitch of “A Library Music”. In it, Hajime uses a simple, sophisticated-pop beginning to swell out the arrangement, through cello and all sorts of atmospheric drum samples into something with one foot in the timeless Mediterranean sound of Italian canzone and the tripping-zen of newfound, Japanese ambient music. “Dinosaur And A Skyscraper” touches on the better spirits of Windham Hill and takes a plaintive piano and cello duet into a journey full of widescreen drama, all within the shortest of time — perfect some rainy day listening.
Personal favorite, “Panorama”, throws you for a bender you really don’t see coming. Swirling electronics try to intone some mystical thing, only then to fully reveal themselves as Hajime glides in with some absolutely sublime cello motifs that encircle the whole sound in this thing I’d like to call a “short-form, saudade-esque techno”. Some of the best dance tracks have this underlying sadness to them, and this one goes there and takes it elsewhere, equally as precious (with equal panache). Just listen to all the little bits wandering in and out of that track, for an example.
Certain tracks will remind you of VGM, OST, or CM work, of which Hajime would shortly do, but a lot of it seems to take inspiration from the overwhelming sonority of Tom Jobim’s similar exploratory work, trying to match the “classical”-stilt of the past with freer, less meter dependent driven-by-emotion music. “Laughing … South Bound Island” my second favorite track, harkens elsewhere, to spirit of Eberhard Weber’s work at ECM and his own countryman’s Yoshio Suzuki’s equally meditative work.
For me, it parallels music that just slips and seeps through all sorts of crevices, taking “jazz” and “classical” as ideas to mean something else altogether. Here, it’s a striking long form, instrumental ballad that cycles through unfettered, fretless pining sound and the swirling romanticism of strings and counted time (both electronic and acoustic). Can I leave you, by stressing how much of the rest of this album will go further to explore this powerful meditative sound? Timeless, timeless stuff.
I’ve enjoyed Oasis – Behind The Clear Waters — thanks in huge part to Francis (who also shared Kazutoki Umezu’s Diva with me) — trying to figure out a time to best share it. Now, when the sun is at its peak strength, I truly think, is the right time for everyone else to enjoy it. It’s a breath from the season, for sure…