Despite his status as a key figure in the history of Japanese ambient music, Hiroshi Yoshimura's music remains tragically under-known outside of his home country. Empire of Signs – a new imprint co-helmed by Maxwell August Croy and Spencer Doran – is proud to reissue Yoshimura's debut Music for Nine Postcards for the first time outside Japan in collaboration with Hiroshi's widow Yoko Yoshimura, with more fully licensed reissues of Hiroshi's work to follow in the future.

Working initially as a conceptual artist, the musical side of Yoshimura's artistic practice came to prominence in the post-Fluxus scene of late 1970s Tokyo alongside Akio Suzuki and Takehisa Kosugi, taking many subsequent turns within Japan’s bubble economy afterward. His sound works took on many forms - commissioned fashion runway scores, soundtracking perfume, soundscapes for pre-fab houses, train station sound design - all existing not as side work but as logical extensions of his philosophy of sound. His work strived for serenity as an ideal, and this approach can be felt strongly on Music for Nine Postcards.

Home recorded on a minimal setup of keyboard and Fender Rhodes, Music for Nine Postcards was Yoshimura’s first concrete collection of music, initially a demo recording given to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art to be played within the building's architecture. This was not mere background music in the prior Japanese “BGM” sense of the word, but “environmental” music, the literal translation of the Japanese term kankyō ongaku [環境音楽] given to Brian Eno’s “ambient” music when it arrived in late 70's Japan. Yoshimura, along with his musical co-traveler Satoshi Ashikawa, searched for a new dialog between sound and space, a new way of listening: sound not as an absolute, but as something that interlocks with a physical environment and shifts the listener’s experience within it. Erik Satie's furniture music, R. Murray Schafer's concept of the soundscape and Eno’s ambience all greatly informed their work,  but the specific form of tranquil stasis presented on releases like Nine Postcards is still difficult to place within a specific tradition, remaining elusive and idiosyncratic despite the economy of it's construction. This record offers the perfect introduction to Hiroshi's unique and beautiful worldview: it's one that can be listened to - and lived in - endlessly.

Music for Nine Post Cards

Hiroshi Yoshimura (吉村弘) - "Dream" from Music for Nine Post Cards (EOS01) OUT 11/17/2017

Hiroshi Yoshimura (吉村弘) - "Dance PM" from Music for Nine Post Cards (EOS01) OUT 11/17/2017

Hiroshi Yoshimura (吉村弘) - "Water Copy" from Music for Nine Post Cards (EOS01) OUT 11/17/2017

Almost completely unknown in the west, Masahiro Sugaya has been composing and producing music since the 1980s in an exceptionally wide range of fields and practices. From arrangements for musical acts like the acoustic guitar duo Gontiti to acousmatic diffusion at spaces like Paris’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), Sugaya's reach is almost exhaustive in its breadth, but it was in the 80s bubble-era kankyō ongaku scene that he first found his musical voice. Horizon, Volume 1 presents a window into these works, culled from Sugaya’s early scores for experimental Tokyo theatre group Pappa Tarahumura. 

As a teenager, Sugaya would visit the avant garde hub of record/book shop Art Vivant run by Satoshi Ashikawa of Sound Process, guided by Ashikawa’s recommendations into the worlds of experimental composition, jazz and ethnographic music. It was there he also met musician Yoshio Ojima—the two would become close friends and contemporaries, working within a circle of Tokyo musicians that also included Midori Takada, Hiroshi Yoshimura and Satsuki Shibano. Ojima, an early adopter of new musical technology, would introduce Sugaya to the possibilities of composing with computers, synthesizers and samplers, which would become a trademark in Sugaya's early works. Surprisingly, the sound sources on Horizon are entirely digital, showcasing Sugaya’s ability to organically recreate complex musicianship approaches via keyboard using hyper-realistic samples. Much like Ojima and Yoshimura’s work, the results eschew electronic music’s usual coldness for something more warm and inviting, the feeling of a human in deep conversation with technology.

Flourishing within the boom of experimental theatre subsidized by corporations during the bubble economy, Pappa Tarahumura forged a unique dream-like style that merged performance art, modern dance and fantastical installation-like stage sets. Sugaya fashioned multiple soundtracks for their productions in collaboration with director Hiroshi Koike, the first two of which, The Pocket Of Fever (熱の風景) and Music From Alejo (アレッホ - 風を讃えるために), he self-released in 1987 on cassette, handing them out at Tarahumara performances. The third, The Long Living Things (Zoo Of The Sea) (海の動物園) followed in 1988 as a CD on Yukio Kojima’s ALM records. Aside from his brief inclusion on Light in the Attic’s Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990 (compiled by Empire of Signs’ Spencer Doran), Horizon presents this work outside of Japan for the first time.

Available exclusively via Light in the Attic: https://lita.fanlink.to/Sugaya

International Press Contact: Gamall / Backspin Promotions - g@backspinpromo.com

Horizon Vol. 1

Masahiro Sugaya - "Future Green" (Horizon, Vol. 1)

Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita's Inoyama Land project spans nearly four decades, still active to this day. A portmanteau of their family names, the “Land” of Inoyama hovers between imagined mythical space and concrete reality, extending beyond physical releases into installations, site-specific sound design and theatre scores. After their famed Haruomi Hosono-produced 1983 release Danzindan-Pojidon, the duo became involved in the budding environmental music business that was taking shape in Tokyo during the development boom of the asset bubble - working directly with figures like Hiroshi Yoshimura (with whom they developed sound design for the International Stadium in Yokohama) and Takashi Sekiguchi (Bamboo from Asia). This collection expands upon their sound heard on Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990 (LITA 167) to illuminate material that is even lesser known outside of Japan - some of it presented publicly for the first time.

Working initially with Munetaka Tanaka's Sound Process Design (an acoustic consulting company formed by Tanaka with Satoshi Ashikawa, before Ashikawa's tragic death in 1983), their commissioned work mirrors the sound world first fleshed out on Danzindan: chiming synthesizers, pastoral hues, childhood memory – all pulsing with a distant, emotional resonance. This material – culled from limited CD issues of the material on Tanaka's Crescent label, Kazunao Nagata's Transonic Records and self-released CDRs – presents a window into this process, illustrating how Inoue and Yamashita's idiosyncratic musical identity gelled perfectly with all of the disparate environments of their commissions. Included is music written for the Kankaku (Sense) Museum in Miyagi, an exhibit on slime molds at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno park, the 1977 stage performance Collecting Net (which also included music that would later become Danzindan-Pojidon) and their score for a Tokyo re-staging of New York avant-theatre pioneer Richard Foreman's post-modern stage piece Egyptology.

Available exclusively via Light in the Attic: https://lita.fanlink.to/InoyamaLand

International Press Contact: Gamall / Backspin Promotions - g@backspinpromo.com

Commissions: 1977-2000 (Music for Slime Molds, Sensory Museum and Egyptology)

Inoyama Land - "Hair Air" (Commissions: 1977-2000)

9/23/19: Inoyama Land "Commissions 1977-2000" 2LP/CD/Digi: https://lita.fanlink.to/InoyamaLand
10/11/19: Masahiro Sugaya "Horizon, Vol. 1" LP/CD/Digi: https://lita.fanlink.to/Sugaya

Empire of Signs

Popular tracks