Sometimes I have to catch myself. Do I really want to go down the rabbit hole, searching for information…not for some brilliant bit of music…but for…a well-off music production company? If you, like me, have a bunch of records with literally no-name behind who created them, what do you do when you’re staring down Toyo B.G.M. Corp’s Concentration: 作品 Vol.1 – 集中力がつく音楽 (which you can stream here)?
Released in 1992, Concentration: 作品 Vol.1 – 集中力がつく音楽 was the first of a 3-part CD series of healing music conceived to function as contemporary background music for all sorts of corporate environments. Much like myriad nondescript muzak companies, Tōyō B.G.M. had its roots in postwar Shōwa period when the rise of huge manufacturing hubs forced large corporations to explore ways to keep disgruntled employees happy (enough) and spirited towards completing ever-increasing production demands.
When Tōyō began in 1962, as “Oriental Music Broadcasting”, the Japanese distributor for America’s Altofonic service, they spearheaded the use of looping reel-to-reel tapes to pump out instrumental music to serve as ambient background for all sorts of venues, from hotels to airports and stores. Then, as the shifting tastes of consumers landed on: “muzak” stinks, O.M.B. became Tōyō B.G.M., focusing on constructing whole audio systems that could distribute a less obtrusive (or more, depending on how you look at it) form of background music into offices and conference rooms.
By the 1980’s, Tōyō B.G.M. was a multi-million dollar (or multi-billion yen) company with various studios around Tokyo pumping out multimedia – videos, cable broadcasts, and audio formats current to its time – trying to navigate or compete in a world where more “organic” New Age music was serving as a foil to the more sanitized BGM they were creating.
As Tōyō Media’s valuation went to new heights, when New York City corporate offices began to be built, and nary a sign of the “bubble economy” began to show a burst, Tōyō B.G.M. began to explore something prescient. Rather than run away from their main competition, New Age music, they decided to take a studied approach and try to use all sorts of scientific study to subsume its ideas into a more “professional” product. Sensing the rise of burned out suit-and-tie stiffs, the old way of lulling them to a different state of mind, obviously, wouldn’t work in a rapidly dissolving Japanese state of wealth and health.
Under the guise of kankyō ongaku, Tōyō commissioned (or paid for) studies that stressed to their corporate clients the wellness and productivity gains they could achieve if they played pleasing music laced with alpha wave and 1/F fluctuation noise, aka “pink noise”. If you believe your workforce suffered from problems with tardiness, focus, and motivation…well, what if you had a CD sampler of music you could put on that would be hyperfocused on tackling any one or all of those issues? Data doesn’t lie, does it?
In essence, what you’re hearing here, as wonderful as some of this music is, is a group of barely-named, not fully credited, musicians – Masatsugu Shinozaki, Isao Sasaki , and Yasuo Shono – trying to add some humanity into what was, for all intents and purposes, commissioned work to match a stated purpose. Of the two of three CDs I’ve heard so far, the first volume is the most impressive of all.
Although, Concentration: 作品 Vol.1 – 集中力がつく音楽, was never meant for resale, those who got a chance to listen to it, got to hear tracks like “パープル・ラグーン” (Purple Lagoon) that seemed deeply inspired by the more emotionally-arresting forms of environmental music – think of Hiroshi Yoshimura and Yoshihiro Kanno – that were foundational to these musician’s own contemporary vision of it. Songs like “静寂の彼方から” (From Beyond The Silence) have that modern sensibility straddling the line of ambient music and chucking out the more dated and placeable ideas of Tōyō’s muzak past. In reaching for their version of ongaku ryoho, or music therapy, we have to be thankful that whoever created these songs didn’t leave “musicality” outside the factory door.
for me, I’m thankful that somehow there was something worthwhile to share about this creation. It could be because fascinating songs like “虹の架け橋” (Rainbow Bridge) swirl in one’s head longer far than its benefactors expected or it could be that somehow playing this album and the second volume, Retention: 作品 Vol.2 – 記憶力がつく音楽, actually hit the figurative nail on the nose. With full concentration, I was able to retain some direction, some inspiration to finally share something seemingly, that on the surface, is so “industrial” yet so subliminal, and subliminally, something else. What that certain thing is, of course, is for you to decide…