01 Summer Water

Piano Diary - 1st May 2024

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 - Green [1986] [Full Album]

First track from the new Jon Hassell album 'Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)' - Out now:
http://smarturl.it/listeningtopictures

pen·ti·men·to / noun
Reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over.

Forty years since its creation, Jon Hassell's Fourth World aesthetic remains a powerful influence on modern electronic music. Continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing, fragments of performance are sampled, looped, overdubbed and re-arranged into beguiling unexpected shapes. Hassell applies the painterly technique of ‘pentimento’ to the arrangements, teasing out texture by the overlaying of sound upon sound, or a carefully timed reveal of the delicate bones pinning the frame of a track together.

The release of this new album also sees the launch of Jon’s own label, Ndeya (pronounced “in-day-ya”), which will be a home for new work as well as well as selected archival releases, including re-presses of classic sides and some astonishing unreleased music.

FURTHER READING ON JON HASSELL:

Fourth World in the 21st century: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2984
Brian Eno on Jon Hassell: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/nov/09/jazz.urban
https://www.jonhassell.com/

Jon Hassell - Dreaming

from "Gave In Rest," Sarah Davachi's new album out September 14th, 2018, from Ba Da Bing Records, Preorder here:https://tinyurl.com/y93h4zbl

Gave In Rest

Pre-order

Sarah Davachi - Evensong

Arve Henriksen - Pink Cherry Trees

Hiroshi Yoshimura

Warner CD - Steve Reich - Piano Counterpoint (Vincent Corver)

Harold Budd - Templar

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

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

Empire of Signs

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