Yoko Kanno (菅野よう子): 大航海時代 II (Uncharted Waters: New Horizons) (1993)

With nearly everyone transitioning into late summer, my mind (and ears) lately come back to Yoko Kanno’s music. It’s not Yoko’s out-there jazz for Cowboy Bebop nor her cyberdelic contemporary work on anime like Macross Plus. No, it’s Yoko Kanno’s little-heralded, windswept, breezy, Balearic soundtracks for Koei’s 大航海時代 (aka Uncharted Waters) video game series.

Before Yoko Kanno was given free rein to blend and mutate all sorts of genres in her music, she was a young 20-something musician trying to find her footing as a composer. Just years removed from her beginnings in the rural outskirts of Sendai, Yoko appeared at a juncture in her career where she had to decide whether to pursue a career in literature or strike out on this nebulous path called scoring.

Unlike her peers, Yoko was not raised on music or born with prodigious talent. Her entry into creating music was always through discovering it on her terms and doing the hard work of breaking down what makes it click. Early musical stints in university led Yoko to understand what it took to create pop songs and what kind of personal language she had to develop to do things like orchestrate, arrange, and compose—tasks that might come easier to more “learned” musicians.

What’s fascinating about her earliest published work—in the realm of video game music—is that you can hear Yoko’s imaginative ambition being trained to hyperfocus on a specific theme or canvas, allowing her to express who she could be as a composer within a chip-based sound system. It was this limitation—the very small tonality of an FM sound chip—that spurred Yoko to commit to making melodies that had impact.

It was Japanese video game publisher Koei, transitioning from early eroge, “adult-themed” video games into historical RPGs, that commissioned Yoko to compose music for what would become their most popular video game: 1985’s 三國志 (Romance Of The Three Kingdoms). Building on the strength of the music of that military simulation game, Yoko followed up her work by composing the martial-esque, Japanese folk-influenced music for Koei’s next big game: 信長の野望・全国版 (Nobunaga’s Ambition).

Nobunaga’s Ambition – Zenkokuban marked a distinct turning point. Rather than think of video game music as a distinct entity, Yoko composed the music for this game knowing full well that Koei would let her create an orchestrated version of it with real-life musicians. Koei had floated the idea of “Soundware,” soundtrack releases of their games where the game’s composers could flesh out their music as originally intended.

Yoko Kanno’s “Soundware” turn yielded the glorious and sweeping 信長の野望・全国版／三國志 (Nobunaga’s Ambition – Zenkokuban – Sangokushi), a collaborative work mixing electronic instruments with a small orchestra led by Aska Kaneko and Toshiro Nakanishi, while Chinese and Japanese folk instrumentation were seamlessly integrated. Throughout this “arranged” reimagining, one could hear Yoko’s spirited, singular personal musical style emerging from the musicality literally hidden in the game’s chiptune video game soundtrack.

What’s fascinating about Yoko Kanno’s next work, 維新の嵐 (Storm of Reformation), is that she shifted her focus towards expanding her palette. On this album, she set her sights on more contemporary influences—at least if you consider transforming Romantic-era music into whatever funky bit of fusion she stumbled upon on its “Soundware” version.

What sets Yoko Kanno’s 大航海時代 (Uncharted Waters) soundtracks apart from the rest of her work is just how inviting they still sound. Tasked with giving life and sound to what was ostensibly a seafaring role-playing game, Yoko drew inspiration from the locales and music influenced by the European nations depicted in the game.

Seemingly inspired by fusion and European jazz, Yoko wrote songs that ran the gamut of ideas spawned by Spain and Portugal. Whether it was samba, bossa nova, choro, tango, Afrobeat, reggae, or flamenco, no musical stone was left unturned in creating sunlit, breezy, aquatic-sounding music befitting a game largely set at the water’s edge. Gorgeous melodies in the game like “Southern Twilight ~ Dance on the Cape of Good Hope,” “Portugal,” and “The Card Master” were fleshed out to remarkable results. The first “Soundware” 大航海時代 (Uncharted Waters) release in 1990 felt like a great taste of what was yet to come.

If the first iteration sounded like a love letter to the madrigal sounds of the Iberian Peninsula, the second album 大航海時代 II (Uncharted Waters: New Horizons) luxuriated in a certain strain of inspired “resort music.”

On songs like the opener, “～ウィンド・アヘッド～ (Wind Ahead),” a lightly chorused guitar, sweeping violin, and synthetic whistle tone take us to the smoothed-out vistas of ECM-inspired background jazz. “～リュートの為の奇想曲～ (Caprice for the Lute)” harkens back to the more overtly influenced Iberian music of the prior game.

You hear it in “～インドの象使い〜 (The Mahout),” a far-flung transformation of a lightly Eastern-sounding tune into something more tantric and hypnotic in its fully arranged version. Where the sights of India were present in that track, the equally hypnotic sound of the Middle East and North Africa makes its mark on the group’s “～イスラムの踊り〜 (Moslem Dance),” a fiery interplay between Ry Cooder-esque slide guitar and electric violin. Little-known songwriter A.T. Goupee joins the group for their most lightweight yet positively endearing track, “～エメラルドの海～ (Empty Eyes),” another breezy, sand-kissed, romantic song nodding to the music of Brazil and Yoko’s longtime interest in reimagining its bossa nova into her own musical language.

“～黄金の地～ (Land Of Luxury)” allows us to explore the more esoteric, experimental side of Yoko. Bringing the music back to Japan and East Asia, this more minimal track (largely full of Yoko’s startling orchestration) straddles the midway point between folklore and modernity, creating a solemn reflection on the series’ lack of acknowledgment of the damage real-life colonialism caused. The expressive minimalism of “～霧の港～ (Mast In The Mist)” recalls the work of Steve Reich before seamlessly segueing into some beautiful, meditative solo piano where Yoko shines as a performer.

大航海時代 II (Uncharted Waters: New Horizons) plays to the end as this yearning slice of musical fusion. You hear it in the Metheny-like “～チェイス～ (The Chase),” a track the sailor-shirt-wearing guitarist would have counted as one of his best works. “～船乗りたちの酒場～ (Fiddler’s Green)” leans into nostalgia for the music of Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. The album ends on the gorgeous, bittersweet “～クロース・トゥ・ホーム～ (Close To Home),” a Mediterranean-influenced song that unfurls the yearning of both starting and finishing a journey.