It makes poetic sense that Hiroshi Yoshimura would find recognition and resonance in the 21st century, long after his physical body left us. Or check his nickname, “cloud man.” As the most steadfast practitioner of kankyō ongaku, or environmental music, his compositional process involved becoming as clear and ego-less as possible. Or as he once wrote in a notebook: “My music is not mine, but the sounds which are not mine are also my music.” That long out of print albums like Green and Music for Nine Postcards first gained popularity as non-tactile YouTube videos looping in the background, being unable to actually hold them in your hands feels apt.
Now comes the physical iteration of what many believe to be Yoshimura’s towering statement, 1986’s Surround. The files were loaded on my phone for two recent events of equal hour-long durations: dental filling excavation and replacement and a long bike ride down the west side. Surround sounded perfect for both anxious and gassed physical states. With some noise-canceling assistance, it tamped down the drill-in-the-skull vibrations and it also dissolved in the open air.
That it didn’t register in the west or the music-buying public makes sense, as it was originally commissioned as a set of soundtracks for the Misawa Homes Institute of Research and Development’s line of prefabricated houses. It’s literal wallpaper music, or rather, four walls music. But Yoshimura’s practice always looked to nature, the ambition of Surround was to distill the rhythms of the outdoors into an interior. It’s a magical feat to make something as isolated as a tract house interior feel at one with the much larger world, one of Yoshimura’s most finely attuned gifts.
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