Another treasure from Sound Process, a Japanese label, book publisher, and sound design consulting firm founded by Satoshi Ashikawa, whose Still Way was included in the label’s short and excellent catalogue (as was Hiroshi Yoshimura‘s cult favorite Music for Nine Postcards). Oscilation Circuit was a four piece outfit, and this was their only release. True to the label’s ethos of sound design not as a means of filling up space, or “decorating,” but instead as a highly-conscientious way of paring sounds down to those that “truly matter,” Série Réflexion 1 is extremely minimal, though it feels uniquely adjacent to minimalism in its more academic Steve Reich-esque sense when compared with many of its Japanese ambient peers (particularly closing track “Circling Air,” which is almost certainly an homage to Terry Riley). There’s no synthesizer. There are no field recordings of birds or running water. No bells. Minimalist minimalism? Ideal winter listening. I started ketamine infusion therapy last year and this has been a favorite soundtrack during my infusions. I hope it brings you some joy too.
We don’t talk enough about the potential of the pop LP, as a form, to construct a kind of auditory theatre. Hounds Of Love, Big Science, Hejira, A Wizard A True Star, Jordan: The Comeback (which I’ve written about here before), more recently Blonde and Blood Bitch–these are records that build distinct sound-worlds track to track, display personalities so disparate, observations so tart, that you’re quick to forget they’re all coming from the same voice. And yet, the cohesion (where does it come from?) still exists.
For all intents and purposes, Jane Siberry’s sophomore LP No Borders Here is such a record. The title tells you everything you need to know before you press play–here she is acerbic, energetic, anxious, socially awkward and beguiled by the people she encounters with the same eye for detail present in Rousseau’s jungles. We step-ball-change between time signatures and synth flourishes as quickly as we shift perspectives from deluded waitresses to enigmatic dance class partners. The storytelling feels like the work of someone too well in tune with the anxiety of urban dwelling (in her case, Toronto) but also able to escape it. For the gearheads reading, you’re not going to find more advanced LinnDrum or Fairlight programming on a record marketed as “new wave.” You’re just not. Sorry.
I could go on about the thickness of the sound palette here, but I don’t want to give the game away, so I’ll end with a quote from Renata Adler’s Speedboat–what I feel to be this record’s literary spiritual sister–that I think sums it all up:
Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love – you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you’re over. You’ve caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind.
Give this a front-to-back listen like you would for any of the aforementioned records, and then go watch this tour documentary and revel in how beautifully she presents this record in a live context (those headset mics! those backup singers!). I’ve seen Jen write this a lot, but it bears repeating here: if this record is for you, it’s definitely for you.
Another dear favorite from Penguin Cafe Orchestra, a project spearheaded by UK-born composer and musician Simon Jeffes. Jeffes saw PCO as the ongoing soundtrack to a dream he had had while suffering from food poisoning in the south of France, as well as a vessel through which to explore his interest in “world” folk music, particularly African percussion. The project that didn’t exactly suffer from under-exposure, if their dozens of commercial song placements are any indication. Still, I think the music very much belongs here. Plenty of ink has already been spilled by much more knowledgeable people about the group, so without attempting to poorly explain what makes this music great, I’ll say that what I love about this record, as with much of PCO’s catalogue, is the way it challenges and subverts what background music is and what it can do.
Though the exuberant “Music From A Found Harmonium,” named after the discarded pump organ upon which it was composed that Jeffes found in an alleyway in Japan, is easily the record’s most famous track, I’m a huge sucker for more pared back moments like “Prelude & Yodel,” which milks little more than three string instruments for far more than the sum of their parts; and the heartbreaking “Isle Of View (Music For Helicopter Pilots).” Elsewhere are hints of reggae (“Music by Numbers”); baroque, as per usual (“Sheep Dip”); and the perfect Latin jazz riff “Heartwind,” co-written by none other than Ryuichi Sakamoto. Lofty, nostalgic, and unabashedly sentimental, but with enough warmth and playfulness to keep it precise and never saccharine. Razor sharp and meticulous musicianship from a group of musicians who, by this time, had fully locked into the ethos of what they were doing and how best to play with each other. I hope you have a great time with this.
In recognition of today’s vernal equinox, I wanted to share a cult classic from the Hosono catalog, originally commissioned in 1983 as background music by Muji shortly after the opening of their first storefront in Tokyo. The tape was packaged in a box set with an 80 page booklet, including photographs, an interview with Hosono, haiku, and work by Nakazawa Shinichi (who I assume made the cover art, though I’m not sure). The story goes that Muji only used one of the tracks for in-store purposes (presumably “Muji Original BGM,” previewed below), and while the tape is still hyper-rare, since then the music has circulated widely online, most famously on YouTube, and has been presented with several different track listings, some including two different versions of “Talking.” I’m including all four tracks here, though the original tape ostensibly only included “Talking” and “Growth.”
Sonically, these tracks are exemplary of Hosono’s brilliance with motif, minimalism, and movement. Those who are familiar with his records Mercuric DanceandParadise Viewmight find Watering A Flower to sit squarely between the two, both in terms of textural density and mood. The songs are sparse, to put it lightly–bare bones, really. They’re not as neutral, or even chipper, as one might expect for storefront use: they willfully stray into eerie, dissociative territory, suggesting hypnosis and foggy, dreamlike states. Dreamlike in the more honest sense of the word, as I think dreams are often more illogical, dry, and bizarre than the word “dreamlike” gives them credit for. Though the whole tape is beatless–a sacrilegious suggestion for the 2018 retail environment–“Talking” is marked by the insistent chiming of a metronomic tone; whereas in “Growth” the chime is slowed down and flooded with reverb, suggesting underwater sonar. Hosono doesn’t hesitate to lean into dissonance and atonality, and it’s plenty disorienting.
Still, by the time the appropriately drily titled “Muji Original BGM” arrives, Hosono has reminded us that he’s very good at making things that are very beautiful. For sixteen minutes the song cycles, mantric, through small variations on two different phrases, one much moreso than the other, and it’s weightless, unhurried, deeply affecting, and perfect. I’d love to go shopping for minimalist home goods in this world, though I’m not sure that I’d buy anything. Enjoy, and happy spring!
Another gem from private issue new age icon David Casper, one of the later follow-ups to his excellent Tantra-La. Like that record, Crystal Waves manages to blend a laundry list of instruments (cello, played by Jami Sieber; marimba, played by Scott Cossu; ch’in [yuequin, aka moon zither, played by T’ao Chu-Chen], h’siao [Chinese bamboo flute], ocarina, crystallophone) into something that never sounds at all busy. That unhurried spaciousness is even moreso the case for this record than for Tantra-La. While a very careful and thorough use of acoustic environment brings to mind open landscapes rather than large rooms, and while there’s definitely some highly detailed multi-tracking going on, the precision and directness of the sounds seem to belie their numbers–which is to say, Crystal Waves masquerades as a very effective minimalist line drawing until you stare at it for awhile and realize it’s a full-color impressionist oil painting. It’s rendered in tones that are so delicate, translucent even, that you might not realize right away that they’re there.
This is particularly the case on the second side of the cassette, which, for our purposes, is the “Crystal Waves I-IV” tracks 4-7. It’s composed entirely of tuned crystal glasses:
Each glass was played individually with meditative attention and recorded, grouped, and re-recorded in a lengthy blending process. In order to attain a broad spectrum of sound from a simple source, tape speed, equalization, and harmonic balance were changed to produce sounds reminiscent of bass and cello, flutes and horns, organs, bells and gongs, and other sounds suggestive of electronic synthesis. Sometimes as many as thirty glasses may be heard at once, each with its own pulsation and timbre, produced acoustically by finger on glass.
The depth of field and texture Casper achieves with glass alone is remarkable, as is his gift with drawing heat out of sounds that might otherwise be predisposed towards frostiness. He’s just as skilled with his treatment of strings as he is with glasses: in spite of the wide openness of these songs, there’s a direct suggestion of reassuring warmth that I find myself feeding on over and over in the wintertime. I also just realized that it’s been a year almost to the day since I posted Tantra-La, so clearly these records are seasonally significant to me. I hope you love this as much as I do.
Another one in a collection of recordings made in locations with amazingnaturalreverb. This one was recorded over the course of two days in September of 1982 at the Abbaye de Senanque, a Cistercian abbey in Provence. Kudsi Erguner is a Paris-based Turkish ney-flutist, composer, and musicologist, and has contributed to a handful of Ocora records. Xavier Bellenger (here on the kena, or quena, flute) is a French ethnologist and musician who went on to collaborate with Jean-Michel Jarre and Vangelis. As far as I know, Conférence Des Roseaux was completely improvised.
With the details out of the way, this is music that speaks for itself. Crystalline, deeply expressive, bird-like flute duets that, despite having been recorded indoors, evoke huge space. To me, the audible joy of two very skilled musicians having fun making sounds together is what makes this such a special record.
So good. Cristina was a Harvard drop-out who was working as a writer for The Village Voice when she met (and eventually married) Michael Zilkha, who was in the process of getting the now-legendary ZE Records off the ground. He encouraged her to record a song called “Disco Clone,” written by a former Harvard classmate of hers, which became ZE’s first release in 1978 and featured John Cale production (and, moreover, is really good).
Cristina (later reissued as Doll in the Box) was the first of her two full-lengths. Short and sweet, it was produced by August Darnell of Kid Creole & The Coconuts, and you can hear his signature brassy tropical camp all over it. The heavily textured Latin-jazz percussion brings to mind some of New York no wave’s more polished, dancefloor-ready groups, except it’s fronted by a snarky, jaded Betty Boop. Cristina’s vocals are simultaneously flippant and flirty, often splintering off into multiple personas in dialogue with each other. She leans into that heavy-handed sardonicism even more on her follow-up, Sleep It Off, a grittier piece of electro boasting a proto-Slave to the Rhythm Jean-Paul Goude cover. While Cristina was met with moderate acclaim, Sleep It Off was a commercial flop (so dumb! it’s really good!), leading to Cristina’s musical retirement (though she’s still a writer). Thank you Caroline for putting me onto this!
Ouch, so beautiful. Seigén Ono’s debut album was released when he was 26 years old, though he had already worked with David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and went on to become one of Japan’s most sought-after producers and engineers. I feel as if this record has been steadily opening up for me over the past year, finally cracking wide during (surprise surprise) a headphones listen. It might feel a bit austere at first, and there are definitely a few explicit nods to western minimalism, but it’s deceptively generous, even lush. Incisive modern classical, a few bits of very Japanese smooth jazz, and an avant-garde sensibility. Featuring some songwriting from Yasuaki Shimizu and a slew of razor-sharp session musicians. An incredible network of moody textures, all perfectly atmospheric. Part of the perennial favorite Music Interior series, the entirety of which will probably be posted here eventually, realistically. The liner notes call this “a perfect production of beauty,” and the statement doesn’t even feel hyperbolic.
Note that this includes two additional tracks but not the two bonus tracks from the recent reissue, which doesn’t seem to be readily available for sale anymore, though they’re well worth it if you find a copy.
Such a cool record. This was Daniel Lentz’s first full-length release (though he had already been working on ambitious large-scale compositions and performance pieces for 20 years by then) and was one of the seven releases on the short-lived Icon Records. Though Lentz’s background seats him pretty squarely in the realms of academia, On The Leopard Altar avoids much of the dryness that I associate with minimalism–it’s more generous, unafraid to lean into pop sensibility and pleasure. (Fittingly, he went on to make two records with Harold Budd.) “Lascaux” is a gorgeous nine minutes of 25 tuned wine glasses resonating in and out, with nothing added but reverb, and it acts as a drone meditation piece, with glasses serving as both shruti box and chimes. “Requiem” attempts to capture the experience of hearing a lone singer in a large, empty cathedral, with big church bell tolls, rolling keyboard chimes, a vocalist bathed in Julee Cruise-esque reverb, and a few pretty incredible overtone moments. The gorgeous title track is very warm, present vocals delivered with a choir boy-esque straight tone purity, over rolling keyboards and (I think) more wine glasses. On “Is It Love” and “Wolf Is Dead…” we hear more typically minimalist long-form weaving of gamelan-inspired rhythmic pulses in the vein of Reich and friends, and vowel-based vocal pulsing in the vein of Monk and friends, but even these are structured in ways that suggest a pop sensibility.
New wave pop from the Republic of Macedonia (then Yugoslavia). This was their only release, and unlike a lot of things in this vein, it’s great from start to finish. Spronky, bouncing, a little bit of angst and grit. Even the obligatory “slow track” is a strung out wash in the best way, with judicious use of fretless bass. If this is for you, it’s definitely for you.
