I usually don’t gravitate towards writing about something I didn’t include in a mix but I just have to make an exception this time, with the final volume of the Japanese New Age and Ambient series I created for NTS. Satoshi Sumitani’s “金の星と銀の星” (Kin No Hoshi To Gin No Hoshi) from 不思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ is the perfect candidate of what constitutes a better term than “kankyō ongaku” or environmental music, for what all these Japanese artists were doing at that time. Going beyond mere background aesthetics, this was the evolution to become something that could be an active conduit for something else: personal betterment.
Within stores like Japan’s sound ware Blue MOON you can see something called “Melodious Healing” take shape, this idea of having meditative music that could exist outside art spaces, architecture and be something that was more than just BGM or incidental music. Japan has always had a space for a new form of New Age music. Gravitating in and out of the worlds of ambient and world music, experimental composition, and soundtrack commissions, artists like Satoshi or Shiho Yabuki would be tasked to create sculpted music that touched on new theories and treatises written by those who dabbled in art and music therapy, made for those who needed interior music.
Back then, they would be tasked to create music that hit on ideas like alpha-wave 1/f fluctuation, binaural recording, and sound design.
On various records you’d see pictures of sonic charts detailing what sounds trigger certain responses. On others you’d see various sonic contraptions one could subject oneself to, to hit certain personal, emotional goals. Still others, would leave me befuddled wondering why staring at a certain picture (while listening to the music itself) should render a gravitational, sensory pull. To say we’re scratching the surface of Japanese New Age music would be an understatement.
However, in Satoshi’s work, you can hear something that permeates throughout this mix: care. Mixing field recordings with digital conjurings, Satoshi literally creates a sonic forest that takes the idea of “sound bathing” right to your home — in the form of a digitized audio CD. Snippets of music, within the creation, sound like little else you can pinpoint. A mood is set if you take the time seriously pay attention.
Fumio Miyashita had it right, this was a “21st century new sound” creating the unattainable through figurized things. When we couldn’t escape to nature (it was decided), someone had to bring it to us, via button press, and not quite via facsimile. Spirituality is there for those with faith in concepts that aren’t ever fully revealed.
With all the direness around us, it appears we’re always on the mend, when so many good things are plentiful, just in front of us. There’s a reason various artists would move forward to this, new something. This music simply permeates with a different idea. I said it at the beginning and I’ll reiterate it here:
“For me, Japanese ambient music is a meditation on what sound can design within the space of our exterior temples. To compel the mind to get there, as a way to heal ourselves.” Three and some chunk hours later, I feel we’re still scratching the surface at how much there is still outstanding. Here’s to a new beginning…
Ambient Japan 1980-1993, Vol. 4: Air
1. Lyu Hong-Jun – にわとりと蝿
2. Satoshi Ashikawa – Prelude
3. Koichi Inamoto – 刈干切唄 (高千穂)〜
4. Yoshio Ojima – Signe (Ambient-Mix)
5. Inoyama-Land – Sunlight III (木洩れ陽)
6. Fumio Miyashita – 神/Kami (God)
7. Akira Mitake – 夜叉
8. Shiho Yabuki – Pastel Wave
9. Joe Hisaishi – Inner Voyage
10. Toshifumi Hinata – Colored Air
11. Oscilation Circuit – Nocturne
12. Yoshio Suzuki – Touch Of Rain
13. Gontiti – 貧しい王家 – Mazushii Ohke
14. Osamu Sato – My Stupa
15. Genzan Miyoshi, Junnosuke Yamamoto – 虹色のしずく
16. Everything Play – 最愛の友 (Best Friend)
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