Catalog: INNER164
Format: Tape Cassette // Digital // Streaming

Transparent Blue Tapes // 75 copies worldwide

Music for the Ninth Silence the first full-length ambient album by TOMC, is a work that speaks of "uncategorizable emotions and silence”, comparing them to the metropolis. The duration of all the tracks is unified at 4 minutes and 33 seconds, and each track is given a name based on psychologist Carl Jung's eight typologies and the places in Tokyo that TOMC recalls.

All of the music is produced with TOMC's electronic piano playing, with a nod to Hiroshi Yoshimura, Erik Satie and Steve Reich, and without sampling from existing music. The fusion of tones reminiscent of 1980s Japanese ambient / new age music and the three-dimensional sound textures of contemporary ASMR culture, free from the constraints of the grid, is a reflection of his vision of Tokyo.

The vibrant Japan of the 1980s is considered by many young Japanese people to be a fantasy far removed from the present day. On the other hand, much of the culture and urban landscape of modern Japan undeniably originates from the 1980s. TOMC, who lives in Tokyo, the largest city in Japan today, has been thinking about the "uncategorizable emotions and silence" that suddenly come to the minds of people living in the city, which is faced with various problems unique to developed countries and sometimes has to embrace a sense of stagnation, and depicted them in this album.

TOMC sees that ambient and new age music is not a form of "escapism" but an art form to connect the self with reality. When people who are in the midst of "uncategorizable emotions and silence" (i.e., you in someday) come into contact with the tracks and reclaim themselves, this album will be truly completed.

 This stage is on-going today, and is full of questions: What does it means to be oneself? What assumptions are accurate? What’s been an act all along? It’s a period of her life, and on the album, that’s deconstructive and lighter in tone. In its entirety, Yesterday & Tomorrow is deeply personal, but there’s a message for all of us to internalize: no matter how dark things get, there’s always hope. Even when you think it’s completely out of reach.

https://fanlink.to/ninthsilence

Music for the Ninth Silence

LIMITED EDITION TAPE

TOMC - Introverted Feeling (Nihonbashi)

played with 2 bows on vibraphone.

dedicated to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in japan and to their family.

Cloud - (Acoustic Vibraphone Solo by Masasyoshi Fujita)

Celestial

An instrumental odyssey through the infinite. *The Endless Symphony* translates the mathematical beauty of π into music — patterns without repetition, harmony without end. Each movement explores a facet of infinity: creation, balance, entropy, and return. Through orchestral textures, ambient electronics, and minimalist design, Avaline Ingels constructs a sonic architecture that feels both divine and human — precision guided by emotion.  
Piano, harp, and strings trace circular motifs while choirs breathe in golden ratios. Tempos shift by Fibonacci values, phrases extend by digits of π, and melodies evolve like galaxies forming. The album’s structure loops perfectly: the finale’s final drone blends into the prelude’s first chord, forming a seamless circle of sound.  
*The Endless Symphony* is not a story but a mirror of eternity — a composition that, like π itself, continues forever, revealing meaning only through motion.

Harmonic Crust

c 0 t t 0 n .

c 0 t t 0 n

Buy on Bandcamp

Nobuto Suda - Anim

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

Healing Collection: Quiet Comfort

The Blue Planet Seen Far Away

Forest Falling Night

- GAIA -
Format: CD/Digital
full album here: https://takashikokubo.bandcamp.com/album/gaia

All tracks by Takashi KOKUBO
Release date: 1990

Infinite Sunset

- SERENITY -

Format: CD/Digital
full album here: takashikokubo.bandcamp.com/album/serenity

All tracks by Takashi KOKUBO

Songs For Water

Inner Ocean Records is a platform and collective for emerging artists to release music and visual art. Based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the label was conceptualized in 2012 as a vehicle for artists to have their music heard and seen, to build a community of passionate people.  We designed the label to be what we would have loved to have as artists ourselves, redefining the rules in an ebb and flow to the changing landscape of music. We have made a conscious commitment to be transparent, adaptable and always for the people.

We are a label for artists, by artists. 

We’ve built the backbone of this label around great sound and feeling; laid back, honest and forever chill. We have released a lot of different sounds; Ambient, Lofi Hip Hop, RnB, Modern Funk, Future Soul and Indie. Since our inception, we have prioritized natural evolution and organic growth in the music – we value the process and accept change.  Expect the unexpected; we want to delightfully surprise you;)