If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a recent trip to Japan, it’s this: I might be too ahead of the curve. And no, not in the way you might think. It’s in turning my recent focus towards music lost in the shuffle of the CD era.
As I wandered through Japanese record stores—both big and small—scattered across the Kansai region, I kept encountering shopkeepers who were honest enough to admit there’s no real money to be made selling old compact discs. For as often as I asked them:
「ニューエイジのCDや、ヒーリング音楽・BGMのコーナーを教えていただけますか?」
I was one of the increasingly rare few to make such a request. And in those shops catering to like-minded collectors, it was clear they were struggling to stay afloat amidst the surge of “record collecting” and online streaming, making their inventories seem more obsolete by the day.
Yet, for example, when the wonderful older ladies who run Kobe’s Dynamite (ダイナマイト) music shop took precious time and energy to help me dig through a dusty trove of cut-rate “healing music” CDs, their efforts weren’t in vain. Together, we rediscovered intriguing albums—like today’s highlight, Dream Up by Yuhki Nakajima—that felt worthy of someone’s time (and hard-earned money). Reasonably priced and sporting captivating cover art, these finds rekindled the spirit I thought I had lost amid the vinyl resurgence.
As I sift through my haul of forgotten CDs to unearth treasures worth sharing, it feels fitting to begin with one of these rediscoveries. Dream Up, Yuhki Nakajima’s little-known venture into healing music, is a brilliant example of the hidden gems waiting to be uncovered.
Released in 1991 on King Records’ jazz and world music imprint, Seven Seas, Dream Up offers nearly 40 minutes of purpose-driven ambient music, created for their “Sound of Tranquility (SOT)” series. Conceived by Shigeo Watanabe, Director of the Emotional Science Research Institute and a board member of the Japanese Society of Health Science, the SOT series aimed to combine alpha-wave 1/f fluctuation theory with subliminal messaging, crafting music designed to deliver psychologically and physiologically impactful states of consciousness.
For artists like Hokkaido’s own Yuhki Nakajima, who began in genres like neo-prog and fusion, this was an opportunity to explore more minimal and esoteric sides of their music while tempering their bombastic tendencies with grace. For listeners, this translated into meaningful distillations of “interior music,” a concept embraced by forward-thinking New Age artists seeking to evolve the genre.
On tracks like “Dream Up,” Yuhki’s dreamy, earnest qualities take on a new air of weightlessness, where four minutes of introspection give way to five minutes of ambient stargazing. “Bio Sleeping” shifts into a more minimalistic mode, sculpting the contours of rhythmic, almost meditative music.
Gorgeous pieces like “Hammock Waltz” channel the Impressionist motifs of Debussy and Satie, reframing them with a contemporary, electronically-tinged dreaminess. Rather than relying solely on a textural wash, Dream Up features simple yet striking melodies, showcasing a respect for its medium. It’s music designed to play in the background of its owner’s everyday life, gently providing solace amidst the stresses of modernity.
Listening to the unfurling ocean waves, arpeggiating tones, and human-driven acoustics of tracks like the closing “Time After Time,” listeners can carve out a little haven for themselves. Yuhki envisioned these compositions as “adult lullabies,” supporting restful sleep and dreamlike states. And sometimes, the best way to conjure dreams is to create music that feels as ethereal as the dreams themselves.
As I look at the rest of the stack I’ve unearthed—and consider the world as it is today—I can’t help but believe that there’s more music like this waiting to be rediscovered (and being pulled out of my collection).
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