Yumiko Morioka’s work under the “Synagetic Voice Orchestra” and her Mios wouldn’t have appeared to me if it wasn’t by happenstance and luck. You see, for a moment in time, Spencer Doran had sent me a message about some wonderful work by one Alessandro Ravi or Raul Lovisoni (turned out it was Mr. Ravi) that sounded like “Elysian arrangements for viola da gamba and synth” that I should listen to.
It wouldn’t be until he shared his “Etudes” mix that I was able to finally hear that track (or at least what I thought was it)…which for some reason I believe was the one playing at the 25 minute mark. That’s when he shared that this bit was actually the work of the Synagetic Voice Orchestra. So into the ole rabbit hole I went. I had to find a way to discover the rest of the album.
Buying the only copy I could find of it, I tried to dig deep into who or what I was actually going to end up receiving. Hearing “エーテル”, or “A Tale” as it was translated then, was a revelation. It sounded like that Elysian field music, described before, but on closer reveal showed a fuller arrangement that (obviously) had no viola da gamba. I wanted to hear more of it. However, I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard it before, but hearing it then, gnawed at my memory. Then, reality sank down on me: it was through Martin’s wonderful YouTube channel!
I vaguely remember that back then, I was hoping with bated breath that he’d find a way to share a copy of it. I mean, I did a cursory check on Discogs, and saw the name Yumiko Morioka listed in its credits — and knew that meant something. I recognized her name from Resonance, a record listed on Akira Ito‘s “Green & Water” roster. Jen, at Listentothis, had been kind enough to share that work — but that work sounded, largely, nothing like this. Somehow, this Mios work I filed in my memory bank (an easy place for me to forget things!) and I did my worst to not keep up with it…before I lost sight of it altogether and it’s impact then.
However, Spencer’s mix opened that window again. Where was that intimate composer, performing minimalist impressionistic piano in (seemingly) obscurity? What I’m hearing in Synagetic Voice Orchestra has more ties to with a nebulous form of world music and a different kind of intrapersonal communication from Resonance. I couldn’t just let things stay where they are.
With CD in hand, I had to find a way to get the full story (or as much of a story as I could) from her. How did that young artist who had created such earlier gentle music get to this point? Being more than pleasantly surprised that Jack from Metron Records had chosen to reissue Resonance, I had to reach out to him and see if he could get me in contact with Yumiko. I wanted to see if we can pick up her story after Resonance.
Our interview below (which has been edited for clarity and continuity) couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for all these great people involved who, in their own way, took their time out to help me get this going and to Yumiko who graciously offered her time amongst the mighty busy chocolatier business.
F/S: How do you feel about audiences rediscovering your work from that time?
Yumiko Morioka: Well, I couldn’t believe it. For me, it’s like a dead person woke up or something, because when Resonance was released the sales didn’t do that well. It kind of died and I forgot about it. I don’t listen to my own music but the people who had my record, my friends and people, kept telling me they kept listening to it, they liked it so much, but I never thought it was going to be released again. I was so surprised because Jack from Metron found me on Facebook and sent me a message — that’s how it started. So out of blue; surprising.
F/S: When you made that first record did you feel that you were doing it on an island? Like: “That’s your record and you didn’t feel any outside influence by anyone else.” What were your influences when you made that first record?
Yumiko Morioka: Well, I was trained in classical music. I had been playing classical piano forever, since I was very small. My mother was a piano teacher and I think a lot of the influence came from classical music like Debussy and Satie.
F/S: Was there a certain point when that influence changed into something that’s a little bit more contemporary?
Yumiko Morioka: Yeah, when Brian Eno started with ambient music, that was the big thing for me. I was so shocked, like, that you could actually do that. Because that was the kind of music I really enjoyed, that I can play all day and listen. It could be like part of the air instead of just music with melody and lyrics — stuff your mind gets tired of listening to, too many times. However, ambient music, it’s like air. I was so impressed and amazed by Brian Eno and I wanted to make a music like that and that was the concept of Resonance.
Yumiko Morioka: It’s not quite ambient “ambient” music but that was the spirit that was in the base of my idea.
F/S: In Japan, was it easy to discover that music yourself? How did you come into contact with it?
Yumiko Morioka: I always like Brian Eno, back then I listened to new releases and whatever came out new, and I was always checking and buying CDs back then. I read in the magazine Interview about his concept of ambient music and I thought it was like, wow!, that’s so cool. And I listened to it and it was amazing to me. And it was so different, from like, the elevator music of BGM. It was an art. It was BGM but it was also art.
F/S: I know that you were working with Akira Ito.
Yumiko Morioka: We were always friends. And he had a studio outside of Tokyo. I used to go there and hang out and help him out in his music — just hanging out. Then one day he asked me one day: “Do you want to make your own solo piano album?” And I said, “Sure.” He knew this person who had this amazing, big, Bechstein German Grand Piano that the sound on was just so beautiful. We went to their private home and recorded in their piano room. I was lucky it was a wonderful, most beautiful piano I’ve ever played.
F/S: When you played that piano, how did that shape the sound of the record itself, and influence how you created that record?
Yumiko Morioka: Basically, I improvised most of it, except for the songs with violin and oboe and I, I didn’t improvise those. However, for a lot of my piano solos I didn’t know what I was going to make. So I decided that whatever comes out, that’s what would come out.
F/S: I know that in Resonance there were sample sounds and electronics. Was that something you were experimenting with? How did that part of the music come to be — the non-piano parts? This might inform some of what we would later hear in the “Synagetic Voice Orchestra”, I think.
Yumiko Morioka: Well, there was, at the time, what we used to call world music. Not ethnic music but “world music”. In Japan there were a lot of musicians from Africa and India, from all over the world, coming over.
It was a big thing and I wanted to do that, combine everything together too, like sitar and Japanese koto, traditional instruments and shamisen, which is like a Japanese lute. I wanted a Japanese folk singer, who had this very interesting singing method almost like a Bulgarian chorus. They did something with their throat that was really cool.
I wanted to have that kind of singing using lots of musicians from completely different backgrounds. However, it was so difficult because the guy who played sitar couldn’t read music. And then these Japanese koto players, they do have music they can read but it’s very, very different from, you know, the Western treble clef and bass clef staff notation. So, I had to explain things out at the studio because they couldn’t read it. They had to listen to it over and over and, and it took a long time to do it, but you know it was fun.
Most of them were street musicians. I mean the guy who played the drum was selling vegetables. He used to practice in the cemetery because, in Japan, the houses are so small and he could make a lot of noise. He had to take his drum set to the cemetery and practice there. So these members of the Synagetic Voice Orchestra weren’t quite like professional, professionals, but rather very interesting people.
The percussion guy used to work for a recycled electronic gadget store. He took this drum from a drying machine and used that as a professional instrument, using very different sizes for different pitches. And he used that in, in, in one of Mios‘s wonderful songs. I just thought it was so cool.
F/S: That’s what surprised me about Mios. I was expecting something more along the lines of Resonance but when I heard the actual record it was this whole other world of music that seemed to have its own own kind of influence.
Yumiko Morioka: Well, one thing that I can do, that I’m good at, is writing whatever, in different styles. Professionally, I wrote various Japanese pop star songs. That’s how I earned money. But that was not the kind of music I liked or wanted to do. So, even if I didn’t make any money, I chose to do what I wanted in my own private projects.
F/S: Just to backtrack a little bit, what happened in the three years between Mios and Resonance? What explains the change in record label and the change in style?
Yumiko Morioka: Well, a different person asked me to make an album and he told me that I could do whatever I wanted to do. So instead of doing solo piano, I told him that I wanted to do something with ethnic instruments and that’s how it started.
F/S: Was there any kind of kind of music that you listened to that informed the second record?
Yumiko Morioka: Music from India and Africa. Like the music from Mali with it’s beautiful singing and flute. African jazz. Everything I listened to, Ethiopian music, Korean music, Chinese music was there. The music from Okinawa, Japan was very interesting too. The folk songs. It was very different from the mainland music. I used to listen to it all the time and the Synagetic Voice Orchestra evolved into Culturemix.
Have you heard of Culturemix?
F/S: Somehow I found a way to listen to the first Culturemix record. I actually just bought the second one. So, I don’t know how the second one sounds, but the first one sounds amazing — (editor’s note: I’ve heard the second one now and it’s equally as interesting, as you can hear below). It sounds like a continuation of what you started here in Synagetic Voice Orchestra.
Yumiko Morioka: What happened was after the recording of Synagetic Voice Orchestra, we wanted to do a live concert, but it was really difficult because the people in that group were very, very wild. They just didn’t get along.
F/S: Were you the one in charge of them?
Yumiko Morioka: They never showed up for the rehearsal time and things like that. So, I decided that I needed more professional musicians to work with. In Culturemix, we had amazing bass players and drummers. These were real professional studio musicians, they’d done a lot of jingles, for example. They were technically sound and they were very easy to work with. If you explain and show them music, they can play it immediately. So, we did a few live concerts together with these professional musicians. Instead of with those crazy street musicians.
But then Bill Nelson, this British guitar player, came to Japan and he fell in love with my best friend. He stayed in Japan for a long time. One day he came to my recordings and he played something out of the blue and somehow we got along in the studio very well. He’s amazing. I didn’t have to explain anything and he’s like this amazing musician, big artist, and in the second Culturemix album I went to England, near his house in York.
In England, with him, it was very interesting. We’d improvise. I’d play one track. And he played the next track on top. We never knew where it was gonna go, but it was so much fun to do that.
F/S: After that second Culturemix record was released, did you want to release any more music after that? Or was it time for a change?
Yumiko Morioka: Right after that, I think I moved to America and I started my family. I got into baby-raising, changing diapers, and things like that. So, I was away from music and the Japanese music industry, too. I was away. So, for a long time, I didn’t do any recording.
F/S: You, didn’t every once in a while, have demos floating in your head that you wanted to share with others or was it: “Once I flew to America, that’s it.”?
Yumiko Morioka: I did some by myself, but I never recorded professionally. And I lost all of those private recordings in the California fires.
F/S: Let me backtrack a little bit again, just to go back to the Synagetic Voice Orchestra. For a time that’s something, I wondered about, the name itself. What was behind the names of those two groups that you were the brains behind?
Yumiko Morioka: Back then I was into a lot of different things and I was into the philosophy behind the word “synergetic” that came from Buckminster Fuller. I saw this exhibit in Tokyo and I thought his philosophy and ideas were just amazing. But in Japan, you know, nobody knew that word and nobody could pronounce it, I guess.
F/S: I imagine you were trying to apply his ideas to the music itself. Correct?
Yumiko Morioka: Yeah, yeah. Synergetic means working together. And, synergy is six people working to put their energy together, producing a result that becomes multiplied not only six times. The result is always much bigger and that makes it stronger. That’s why I wanted to use that name.
F/S: Did you have the name of the group before the album? Or was it something that happened after the recording of the album? Why put that name instead of your name as you know, you were young, you already had a record under your name. And in this one is just your name in the credits.
Yumiko Morioka: I didn’t care about my name, being in there or not. I mean, I just wanted to make what I want to make even if it’s with a bunch of people. As for Mios, it means a moon goddess. Back then Japan was still very strict and we had a lot of weed even though it was still illegal in Japan. I just thought I was having a good time and I had a great time, experimenting a lot and making music. Just feeling relaxed about things.
F/S: That leads to another question I had for you. Because Mios sounds more free and loose, does having the record label just tell you to do whatever you want lead you to act a certain way or did you need, a structure behind this record?
Yumiko Morioka: I had to write down the backbone in order to work with a lot of people here like sitar and a lot of instruments. They just couldn’t read the music. They would improvise and take what I liked from what they played and then put their own spin.
F/S: Since there was less pure piano playing by yourself on Mios, were you as a musician discovering the electronics part of it a little bit more, too?
Yumiko Morioka: Yeah, I was into using sampling and synthesizer. We used to use a lot of that because sometimes it’s cheaper than you know asking the real acoustic instrument players to come in record. In a lot of the percussion and rhythms we used samplers. For the harp, I used a sampler, too.
A lot of sampling of strings and voice I used but I didn’t like because it sounded so cheesy. Back then the sampling sound wasn’t that good. And still, even now, I think the string sampling and the voice sampling it’s not that good either. Because if you’ve heard the real one you know the acoustic sound is too different.
F/S: Was there any specific track or tracks on that record that you still remember real fondly of? Any favorites that you still feel proud of?
Yumiko Morioka: The one song “Ether”. I don’t know the English title. It’s the one with the sampled harp and a flute. It’s a meditative one. It’s a split sampling phrase with repetition. When we created it, we were so high, [laughs] and as we created it just felt so relaxing and calming, so much so that we fell asleep in the studio. Later I redid it with Bill Nelson. He wanted to put more like a rhythm thing and he made it completely different.
F/S: Since Culturemix and Synagetic Voice Orchestra were released under the same record label, I couldn’t find any other info about other artists under the label. Were you the only bands under that record label?
Yumiko Morioka: There are a few others. I don’t remember the names but it wasn’t just me. There were other kind of ambient musicians released, but I don’t know what happened to them. Because the label itself disappeared. And I don’t know who to ask about the label anymore. I don’t know where they are other than they are from Kyushu Island.
F/S: That was just a big question mark I had. Where did this label come out of the blue to release your records?
Yumiko Morioka: The company was a music promotion company that used to bring musicians into Kyushu Island and then host concerts. That’s how they earned money by managing live concerts. But this was their first trial to release records.
…Anyway, can I ask you one question?
Why is this becoming a thing, again, outside of Japan? I mean, why are people interested? I mean, out of blue I’m kind of amazed, like, I wanted to ask you guys why do you listen to my music, now? Is it because it’s kind of old and different?
F/S: I think the key point is different.
I think a lot of what we know we already know so well — like the names Brian Eno and Harold Budd. Big ambient names and people we already know, we already have their history. Right? And with a lot of Japanese or music from the “east” like yours, there’s a language barrier. We don’t know what’s released over there. We don’t know what’s good. There’s just so little written about Japanese music.
And I know in my blog, we try, I at least I try to, provide some context so that people don’t just think that just because they’re or it’s Japanese, or doing something different, it’s something else, it’s something foreign. I just wish other people could listen because what somebody in Japan created might be of worth to their culture.
It’s like you said it’s a cultural mix. I believe all cultures have something of worth that another culture could and should learn from. Let’s take for example this ambient music. It comes to it’s creation from a different direction, one that could inform our direction, too.
And just to, just to quickly answer your question about. Why are people over here interested in your music? I think it’s because it’s like a mirror to that moment in time.
Back then it was you who were looking westward, in a way, for inspiration, and now, it’s like the mirror reflecting back at you. The West is looking at you for inspiration.
Yumiko Morioka: Is it because there aren’t many interesting new things coming up that they have to look back?
F/S: That could be the case. It could also be the case that a lot of this music was never sold outside of Japan.
So there’s this market that we just didn’t know it existed. And a lot of music nowadays you could listen to on Spotify, and many things they’re already in some kind of computer already telling you that you’re supposed to like this, and you’re supposed to like that.
And this is music that sort of falls through the cracks. This is music you actually have to discover before somebody tells you should like it or not.
So, that’s a really good question. Because that’s the reason I had to find out information about you. Because I write about music and I try to get the story behind it correct.
And I felt it would be false to write a history that’s not true. That’s why I wanted to get your voice. Because it’s you who could tell the story, because you lived it. I don’t want to put words in your mouth or write about situations that were false — do you know what I mean?
Yumiko Morioka: Well, thank you so much for being interested in me. I appreciate it, I’m so happy.
F/S: Do you feel you want to perform this music again? How do you feel your connection to this music now?
Yumiko Morioka: Well, that was a band. It might be difficult to redo it because there are so many people involved and they’re all, I don’t know how old they are now. But the solo piano, I would like to do those live again with this completely new music that I’ve been doing. This project is called “64 Times”, the repetition of a piece 64 times that each time it evolves. So, I could do that live by myself and I have been thinking about doing it. Maybe next year, but who knows how it goes.
I mean, you know, you can’t even predict how the world is going to be next year, too. I don’t know if having a concert is possible next year, but you never know. So, we’ll see.
F/S: Just one (true) final question: What are your plans now for you? I know you’re a chocolatier, which is amazing to hear.
Yumiko Morioka: Well, I’m quite busy as a chocolatier right now, but next year, I was asked to write for this very famous Japanese pop singer. So, I think my time making music is going to be more dominant than making chocolate. Jack wants to reissue a few more albums and he keeps pushing me to make a completely new album.
I want to do the 64 times project. I think next year it’s going to be much more music dominant than chocolate, but this year I’m busy making chocolate, because I think that the people staying home want to eat something sweet. So, I’m busy, shipping online.
It’s very demanding, which is nice because you know, a lot of shops had to close because they, you know, their business went down. So, I can’t complain.
F/S: Is the chocolate business easier than the music business?
Yumiko Morioka: I think it’s just different. I wouldn’t say easy. And I enjoy both of them.
Making chocolate can be creative because every month I switch the flavor I make. So I will come up with a new idea. Since I came back to Japan, I’ve been using a lot of Japanese ingredients — something like wasabi and sencha spice. There are many new spices that I want to use.
Making chocolate lets you use just various, different things, Japanese herbs, for example. In the end, it’s always fun to create something.
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