We’re back in the thick of it. Divining that perfect balance of nature and melody, Satoshi Sumitani now joins us in this long journey through Japanese environmental music. Part of CBS/Sony’s quite forward-thinking environmental music imprint, Sound Forest, 不思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ (or Fushigi no mori, Mysterious Forest) took ideas that were taking root in Japan’s New Age scene and tried to strike them out in a way that could serve a different purpose. For Satoshi it was to introduce the healing aspects of nature to Japanese denizens who were increasingly getting crowded out of it by all sorts of sonic pollution.
The late Satoshi Sumitani wasn’t a young man to this idea. Born in Tokyo, in the very early ‘30s, he witnessed both the rise of totalitarianism and its downfall. It was the influence of seeing the rapid encroachment of modernization, the rapid decline of environmental cares, and the growth of industrial conflicts that spurred him to study the way music itself can affect the life we live. Early on a love for electronics building would translate into uncovering the ideas of Pierre Henri, Stockhausen, among others. Satoshi didn’t begin his life as a musician but as a builder.
In 1963, Satoshi first began composing his first ideas on what would be “environmental music”. Working at his Electronic Topological Space Music Studio (ETSM) he’d commit to tape sonics using wave generators and the latest self-created sound generators to produce works that would soundtrack modern dance groups or to carve out sonic space in Japanese sound installations. Influenced heavily by the sounds of space (the one above us) and sound design, one can only imagine how impressive those earlier tape works must have been when outré electroacoustic works from elsewhere, rarely touched the realm he began exploring.
The ‘70s, found Satoshi turning more towards creating compositions for spaces. If you can find these, works like “Cyperus Alternifolius beta for orchestra & electronics”, “An Open Space of the Star for Environment Sound”, “Carving Sound for Environment Sound Space”, and many more were being pumped out of Sumitani’s studio and he’d begun to create this group TATA (or Topological Art of Tokyo Association) to function as the beachhead for independent Japanese experimental sound design.
Taking advantage of what seems to be early spatial sound-distribution systems and his own studies as a professor at Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku University, Satoshi was able to bring what was seemingly very chin-scratch inducing sound design away from the campus and introduce it to the masses. In the ‘80s, releases like Space Dreamin’ and Mirror Concave, found Satoshi taking advantage of the longer form CDs afforded his music. Using this increased fidelity and length he was creating richly detailed recordings that moved sound around, that twisted sonic design in a way that seemed organic, when it obviously wasn’t entirely so. His wife would also create multimedia to capture visually what he could only create synthetically.
1986’s 不思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ was his final release put on any major label. Functioning as both a tomé for the promotion of something beyond environmental music, Satoshi Sumitani found inspiration in the work of Eno, the writings of John Ruskin, and so many more intellectuals. 不思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ was his final argument trying to argue that rather than separate nature from our music, we should use nature (or in this case the sounds of nature) as sources to create music.
Four songs were created, in chronological order, “Under the Blue Moon”, “Gold and Silver Stars”, “Whisper of Water”, and “Wind and Bird Dialogue”. On each you can notice how they actually move organically as the nature they were recorded in. Whenever music comes in, it does so in gradients, at levels that meets its innately organic brethren. You can close your eyes and actually put yourself in the environments Satoshi recorded them.
At times, the music sounds like a faraway memory. At times, it just puts you exactly there — because we’ve been there too, before. Not quite mysterious as its title makes it out to be, 不思議の森～Forest Marvelously～ is an exploratory work that asks us to carve out some time to really have those little details come to us as music. The question posed then is: How much of this nature are we still willing to protect for everyone’s sake?