Very, very special record. Hiroshi Yoshimura was a minimal ambient composer who, in addition to a slew of excellent recordings, also made soundtracks for Tokyo museums, galleries, malls, train stations, and (as is the case here) prefabricated houses. We’ll definitely be hearing more from him later, but this feels like the right place to start during such gnarly heat. Surround sounds very much like the cover looks, not just because of the field recordings of bodies of water but because of the way the music moves: in ripples, ebbs, and flows. This is, for lack of a better word, gorgeous. For fans of Yas-Kaz and Inoyama Land.
A La Izquierda Del Colibrí (“to the left of the hummingbird,” named after Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec deity whose name translates roughly to “hummingbird’s left”) is a collaboration between Mexican prog and ambient cornerstone Jorge Reyes (who has collaborated extensively with Steve Roach) and Antonio Zepada, a dancer, free jazzer, and ambient musician. Both had a strong interest in pre-Hispanic instruments, and they’re used extensively here (ocarina, teponaztli, and omichicahuaztli, among others) alongside a slew of synthesizers. A La Izquierda is mostly instrumental and heavily percussive, dense with tribal drums, purply synth pads, and rainstick textures. It also goes real hard on the wind instruments and field recordings of birds, so if you’re not excited about pan flutes, you should probably skip this one. Otherwise, take it for a drive and enjoy! Note: the last track doesn’t seem to be listed on any of the pressings that I can find, and I can’t find any information about it, but it’s really good so I’m including it anyway.
Deeply weird record. The first four tracks are straightforward enough: dusty-sweet synth pop, toy whirrs and blips, a Joy Division fan on board, pristine vocal harmonies, some half-hearted samba as the amphetamines are wearing off, sulky new wave guitar. Definitely perverse, but somewhere we’ve been before. Things start to get gnarly around track five, “Sweet Sultan,” which sounds like a dirtier Lena Platonos pirated off a broken answering machine. It gets more confusing as new wave decomposes into no wave (“Dead End”) and then into minimal wave (“Dust”), propelled along by what sounds like an 808 that’s been dropped a few times too many. “Ki-Rai-I” is Grape Iris‘s maximum euphoria, with a Sakamoto-esque marimba loop buried underneath Robin Guthrie-esque guitar warps and more static-scratched telephone-speak, the whole thing sounding like a tape that got left out in the sun. After one last frantic guitar stab (“So That Night”), closer “Float A Bort” returns us to strung-out delirium, slowly submerging itself in water as the sun sets. Keyboards and some production by Yoichiro Yoshikawa, who’s worked with Yas-Kaz and is responsible for the gorgeousMiracle Planet soundtrack (I’ll get there soon). Wowowow.
Hooked on this one. World Standard is the project of Sohichiro Suzuki, who seems to still be releasing music as of 2013. Surprise surprise, a few of his releases feature Hosono production. Allo! is full of of the dry genre-referencing that I strongly associate with Japanese 80s pop, especially leaning into cinematic song structures, doo-wop, chanson, and bossa nova. It’s off-putting for some, though I think this is an unusually well-executed instance of it. It’s also an excellent entry point into World Standard’s considerable, and startlingly varied, catalogue. Cleverly built pop songs with swingy vocal layering, shivery synth blips, and several really effective moments of songs “opening up” in very moving ways. For fans of Asami Kado and Miharu Koshi. Thank you Ian for the World Standard tip!
I’ve been keeping a playlist with my partner Kaela for the last few years called “Home Listening.” It’s all albums, about a hundred now, that can be played at almost anytime, and allow us to work or read, to let our listening drift in and out of focus. The albums tend instrumental and spiritual–Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda, Eberhard Weber are some of those who make repeat appearances. There’s a familiarity and comfort to most of these albums now that warm the environment whenever they’re played. I made a zine of the album covers in the playlist for Kaela while on an extended lakeside residency in the mountains of southern Austria last spring. The music was a reminder of our home 3000 miles away, of morning coffee, and reading in bed. You can see it here.
Toshifumi Hinata’s Reality In Love is the most beautiful addition to our playlist. At turns melancholic, nostalgic, ambient, and atmospheric it reminds me of the Japanese film scores from the 80s and 90s I know–or at least, imagine I know. The piano compositions, like in “Passage,” reverberate against taped strings like a vague memory of an emotion. Reality in Love’s consistency and completeness have made it a routine soundtrack to my walks around the city, or while reading on the train. Every piece holds, it’s a record that never needs a track skip and it feels complete, softly ending with a reprise of the first song, where it started.
As an introduction I’d recommend the album’s climax “光と水.” A brief and isolated piano transitions into a melody so lush it shimmers. Chimes and triangles lightly reverberate and fizzle as a harp flutters around a structured melody that feels pulled from the ballroom procession of a film you’re sure you’ve seen. I always visualize a gold color during this part. It’s truly transportive.
Gorgeous album from Joe Hisaishi, the mind behind the massive soundtracks to Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and around one hundred other things, which is to say that if you’ve ever watched anime you’ve probably heard his work. (Fun fact: Hisaishi, née Fujisawa Mamoru, takes his stage name from a Japanese re-transcription of the name Quincy Jones: Quincy is pronounced “Kuinshi,” or “Kuishi,” which can be approximated in Japanese using the same kanji as “Hisaishi.”)
Curved Music alternates between new wave-tinged synth pop songs and shorter instrumental vignettes, often employing more traditional Japanese folk and classical instruments. Highlights include the aching, anthemic “The Winter Requiem,” Sakamoto-esque rolling synth-organ on “Tsuki No Sabuku No Shoujo,” and the minute long plastic violin cream puff “White Silence.” Elsewhere, find a baroque faux-flute interlude (the brilliantly titled “Classic”) and what might be a Terry Riley homage (“A Rainbow In Curved Music”) that seems to nod more explicitly to Art of Noise and Depeche Mode. Ignore the album artwork and enjoy!
A favorite that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Virginia Astley is a British musician who put out a small slew of full lengths and EPs in the 80s, but seems to have flown under the American radar. Her music is distinctive for its sing-songy, little boy church choir vocal delivery, and her lyrics, while sometimes indistinguishable, are as dark and ruthless as they come (“I’ve tasted your tongue like a worm from the grave / Had you inside me, then like a rock beside me”). She also used her extensive collection of field recordings to make a gorgeous instrumental concept album chronicling a summer day in the English countryside, which is way more expansive and less twee than it sounds.
My sister first played me Hope In A Darkened Heart a few years ago and it’s stuck with me since. While the songs are effectively pop in structure, the record defies the specificity of genre: it truly sounds like nothing else. Astley wrote all the songs except for the opening track, which is a duet with David Sylvian. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Astley co-produced the record, and it feels very much like both of them: Astley’s lilting, pastoral nostalgia on top of Sakamoto’s mechanical, off-kilter synth chug. Its darkness is belied by how damn pretty it is. Well overdue for a re-release.
Bill Nelson’s body of work is daunting, to say the least. In addition to his 139 releases, his work as a founding member of the legendary Be Bop Deluxe, collaborations with David Sylvian, Harold Budd, Masami Tsuchiya, and many others, his name is constantly popping up in liner notes and album credits. Over the course of 44 years, he’s made a name for himself as one of the UK’s most singular and prolific musicians. Picking an album of his to share was tough, especially since I haven’t spent time with most of them.
Getting the Holy Ghost Across has a confusing history: it was released in the UK on several different formats with many different track listings ranging from 10 to 18 tracks. Its subsequent US release was clouded by concern over “occult symbolism,” so the title was changed to On A Blue Wing, the album cover was changed, and a good deal of the music was cut altogether. (These fears weren’t completely unfounded, as Nelson had a longstanding interest in Occultism and Gnosticism.) That being said, Getting the Holy Ghost Across (posted here with the track listing from the original cassette release) isn’t all that esoteric: a lot of it is terribly catchy jangling new wave, replete with towering synth hooks and restless, occasionally tropical percussion. Vocally, Nelson is up there with Andy McCluskey, Dave Gahan, Tears For Fears, and Other Famous British Guys, which is to say, many of these tracks coulda woulda shoulda been radio hits. Flanked by gorgeous ambient tracks like “Suvasini” and “Pansophia,” Bill Nelson wants you to remember that he’s still a weirdo genius, and that even though you’ll be too busy bobbing your heads to think about the lyrical content, this is still a theological concept record. No complaints here!
For those who don’t mind a healthy smear of cosmic cheese. Molten guitar streaks, shivery synth grooves, and unhurried drum machines. Very sick and very slick. Makes me want to throw on some mirrored sunglasses and drive a silver convertible along winding cliffside vistas smoking an e-cig in front of a photoshopped sunset. Alternately meditative and searingly emotive, this thing is a few pan flutes shy of Pure Moods (a very high compliment). There’s not much decisive information about Double Fantasy available online, but it seems to have been the project of Klaus Schulze disciple Robert Schröder, who was only allowed to release two records under the Double Fantasy moniker because of legal clashes with his label, Innovative Communication. He went on to release many more records under a slew of different aliases, but both this and the other Double Fantasy release, 1994’s Food For Fantasy, are worth tracking down.
Today I’m posting a record that matters a whole lot to me, and has been an ongoing reference point in my musical conversations with many people in my life. It’s also weirdly overlooked, possibly because there’s confusion over to whom the record is credited, and possibly because Robin Guthrie left it out of the catalog of Cocteau Twins records that he remastered in recent years. As far as I know, there haven’t been any major write-ups about it.
It’s an uncategorizable work, one which far exceeds the sum of its parts. It’s egoless. It’s a fluid, restless record, moody and aloof–it peaks several times, ecstatically, only to retreat back into itself. Startling synergy between these masterminds means that ambient and new age fans will find a lot to love here–it’s Harold Budd, after all, and there are long stretches of huge, hulking instrumental tracks. But the record is darker than typical new age–it feels like climbing through a cavernous skeleton, and the instrumental tracks (like “Memory Gongs”) are echoing and sometimes sinister. It’s not as effusive as Cocteau Twins, and perhaps not as immediately gratifying–many tracks fade out right when you want more the most. It has its rock moments (“Eyes Are Mosaics”) but this isn’t daytime music, and it’s not background music. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, it’s a perfect on-repeat record, folding in on itself like water.
