How does one describe Ken Muramatsu’s music? If I can compare it to anything, it’s to enjoying an apéritif on a hot summer day. Filed under the “ambient”, “jazz”, or “New Age” banner, it’s his music that never completely traffics in any of those spaces. It’s deeper, much easier, listening. Like a good Alvarinho or Gewürztraminer, Ken’s musical touch is much too light and a tad too sweet to give you that full mouthfeel that others in inhabit in such realms…but on certain occasions…in certain seasons…and in certain periods…his ideas still sound so refreshing, as you’ll hear on his Devoirs Pour Les Vacances, that you can’t help but be moved by his music.
Ken Muramatsu began his journey in music at the age of three in Tokyo when he chose piano over judo. Growing up in a music-loving family, he was exposed to a wide array of genres from around the world, including Eastern folk songs, Western classical music, jazz, and Brazilian rhythms. By third grade, he composed his first piece, “Tetsubo,” setting a melody to a poem written by a child. His teenage years saw his prodigious piano playing talent translate to him working as a studio musician, though he longed to establish his own unique musical identity rather than simply emulating the styles requested of him.
In 1983, while attending Tokyo’s Seijo University, Muramatsu made his solo debut with Sony. This marked the beginning of a remarkable career characterized by self-composed and self-performed music. From that early period one can sense that his taste in music was in one heavily steeped in nostalgia. In a different time, perhaps, his contemporaries would have been someone like a Gershwin or Vince Guaraldi. However, it was in bubble-era Japan where had to find a way to fit his musical sensibility with the prevailing trend of the time.
Early CBS/Sony albums like Still Life Donuts and +Blue featured the featherweight groovy jazz-funk that would turn Ken a star on Japanese Lite FM radio (and make them impossible for me to embed via YouTube). Choice cuts from such records, like “Summer Lament – Early Morning Avenue” and a “Long Afternoon”, painted the picture of a talented composer trying to find new spaces to take his easy breezy ideas that painted at the instrumental edges of what we now call City Pop.
It wouldn’t be until 1985’s Green Thoughts that whatever Ken had struggled to shape as his sound, became his sound. His distinctive style came to be known as “resort music,” music that evoked nostalgic feelings and was often featured in commercials (from the likes of Sony, Mizuno and JR East Japan) and television programs. Perfect for soundtracking that expanse we call leisure time, it was this album that found him reshaping his music towards a different sensibility.
This idea of centering his music on gentle and evocative melodies, to capture the essence of relaxation and escape, as heard on “緑のささやく島” (Green Whispering Island) from Green Thoughts found a way to resonate with an even larger Japanese audience. Likewise, his boyish good looks and equally twee visual aesthetic sensibility served as pure catnip for both older and younger crowds who needed some of their own sense of self: in music. All the touchstones were there in his music – Impressionistic leans, romantic melodies, and innocent-sounding electronics – to create BGM that aspired for more, one that showed serious depth beyond its tranquil surface.
This idea of exploring “resort music” while in the urban recording environment began to feel increasingly incongruous to him. This discomfort led him to seek out new recording locations, from the forests of Hokkaido and Niigata to the far reaches of Ireland, where he immersed himself in the local ambiance to create this kind of music.
From 1986’s 夏のぽけっとに (In The Pocket Of Summer) and Winter Music-白銀は招く– all the way to late ‘80s albums like The Field Song and Joy Of Tea, melodies inspired by the changing seasons yielded interesting songs that found him exploring new ways to take such relaxing music and to carve his own niche in a much larger instrumental scene being taken over by more esoteric New Age music.
Of all the albums he’d release during this period, I think, my favorite remains his 1990 release, Devoirs Pour Les Vacances (夏休みの宿題). Functioning not just as a perfect entry point to Ken’s featherweight ambient jazz, it simply puts you in a lighter, brighter more reflective mood, musically, and that’s a gentle nudge I can get firmly behind.
Hovering in the same mood of one of my jazz favorites – Bill Evans’s You Must Believe In Spring – Devoirs Pour Les Vacances (夏休みの宿題) captures that feeling of not summer itself…but the wait and anticipation building to it. It’s one’s memory of what summer embodies (in its most yearnful ways).
Songs like opener, “朝をひとりじめ – on the first train -” (Enjoying The Morning Alone – On The First Train) and “幼い日の君に” (To You In Childhood Days) embody some wistful melodic musicality that puts Ken front and center on what he pines for. Others like “ともしびの歌” (The Song Of The Lamp) and “太陽に近い街” (Summer of the Rugosa Rose) use modal jazz and fusion to sift through absolutely gorgeous moody feelings.
Stripped of nearly all the things that dated Ken’s earlier music – its synthetic, electronic touches, it’s affectation of certain themes – the “resort music” of Devoirs Pour Les Vacances (夏休みの宿題) sounds impressively graceful and timeless. Released during the rise of the CD era, Ken released an album that sounds like it was owed an 180g pressing, played on a McIntosh HiFi system.
In the same way Keith Jarrett injected his breath and voice into his playing, so to does Ken reveal in songs like “金魚のまどろみ” (The Goldfish’s Nap) and “クジラと泳ぐ日” (The Day Swimming with Whales) just how much he put of himself in his piano. Unable to find the singers to sing for his song, he let the keys sing for themselves and used his voice to color the edges.
In the end, as with any wanderlust, it’s not so much the idea of being there that moves anyone, it’s that feeling, that expression, that vision in one’s head, of what one imagines is found elsewhere that strikes the fancy. And with music like Ken’s, on an album like this, every sense of lightness can’t help but make you dream that little dream again.
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