You’re probably getting tired of reading this but….here’s another big thank you to someone else: here’s one for Austin from Incidental Music for steering me in the direction of today’s focus, Junichi Kamiyama. What he exposed me to was the healing music of Junichi Kamiyama featuring Mr. Kamiyama’s patented “tender sound”, displayed particularly well in 1993’s Aqualy Dew (水の音楽). When I was asked to contribute a guest mix to his wonderful Tone Poem series, I have to confess, Junichi’s ideas were those floating in my head. The idea of using natural sound as music.
Fusing environmental and ambient music with age-old romanticism, Aqualy Dew was one in a long series of BGM (background music) created by composer Junichi Kamiyama, either as himself and under the guise of Crystal Dew or La Muse D’étoile/Étoile, dedicated to relaxation and meditation. Of course, the easy way to make this kind of music you’ll find littered in all those faceless self-help and New Age CDs gathering dust at your local supermarket or record store.
Junichi’s search for something more human, to create his kind of healing music, goes back to finding a way to integrate that outside world — the one that can trigger relaxation — into the inner world (at least, through music). To use nature itself as the sound source.
For this release, Junichi collected various kinds of vessels, all sorts of tubing, and water receptacles, journeying to local streams, hillsides, and mountains around the Yatsugatake Mountains, water transmuting from frozen to liquid from, trying to hear and see how the sound of water changes “tonally” through all these mediums. Then using the latest in sampling technology, he’d compile a library of “water music” to compose with, only augmenting it with electronically synthesized sources that moved in similar vein.
AQ! Ishii would be responsible for making the technology cooperate, making sure his sampled sounds had some just tonality. Gifted pianist Yayoi Kurebayashi would bring her soft touch (and mastery of Chopin-influenced music) to Junichi’s minimal melodic arrangements that spoke of similar vibrations. Somehow, all these water sounds coalesced into music full of the “crystalline” sound and feel of that immense world of dewdrops Junichi experimented with. For all his years composing music commercially or in the jazz realm, that background world of session work felt passe. This background music seemed more in tune with the kind of creations he wanted to make.
1993’s Aqualy Dew was always going to be simple music. Purposefully so. Notes inside the album spoke of Junichi trying to create music that was transparent and beautiful. Something that cleared the air in the room, in a way. Songs like the opening track, “水色の幻想 (Illusions Of Blue)”, sound like modern music box music. Its airs are of sweetness, lightness, and joy, sharing some of that minor-key animism found in Mr. Yoshimura’s Surround. Others like “ミスティー パストラル (Misty Pastoral)” use sounds of water drops and splashes to affect a mysterious nostalgia. The pangs of echoes pulling at you on a song like “イブニング シャワー (Evening Shower)” are simply pretty. Who needs anything more than that sometimes?
In the end, the music of Junichi wasn’t meant to be slaved over (the work was already done for you, by him) but to be listened to as a sonic aperitif, a kind of palette cleanser for weightier things in your day. Heal thyself before you can heal others. And for today, I think that’s just enough for all of us to know.