Let no one tell you different: describing ambient or so-called “environmental” music can sometimes feel like more of an art than a science… until it’s exactly the opposite—as it is in the case of King Records’ Cosmo Music Series, and a specific release I’ll be highlighting here: Hideo Hasegawa’s Meditation Black Hole. Before the ideas heard on this album could even come close to being created, certain devices had to exist to make its combination of cosmic and audible sound happen.
It was in 1986 when the University of Tokyo developed schematics to build a 300-inch telescope with the aim of studying the heavens. Working in conjunction with the University of Hawaii, they forged an understanding to construct the telescope in Hawaii and began setting a base in 1991 atop the summit of the dormant volcano Mauna Kea.
Construction of what would become the 320-inch Subaru Telescope was completed in 1998, and access to several of the telescope’s cutting-edge cameras and spectrographs was “officially” made available for scientific use in 1999. Using tone prints from far-distant cosmic waves, one could capture all sorts of data.
The sound you hear on this release began by capturing electromagnetic waves—like radio signals or cosmic energy—using a parabolic antenna. The waves were converted to lower, more manageable frequencies and refined through a series of receivers and converters. Once the signal was properly tuned, it was analyzed to break down its structure and patterns over time, revealing hidden details within the wave.
After deep analysis, the signal was transformed into sound through specialized acoustic processing, using techniques that interpret its pitch, tone, and texture. The resulting audio was then enhanced and mapped in a way that could even reflect three-dimensional characteristics of its space in a stereo field—before finally being amplified and played through speakers. The end result: an audible representation of invisible electromagnetic phenomena—essentially letting us hear something that normally can’t be heard.
If this all sounds quite mad, we owe some of its conception to someone like Dr. Suzuki Matsumi, who—together with producer and composer Shigeaki Saegusa (best known for his songs for animes like Astro Boy and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam)—convinced five music artists to “express their messages in the form of music composed and played according to their own sensibility.” It was the duo’s idea to reimagine the ancient esoteric concept of Harmonia—of space having an “orthodox order and harmony… which somehow resembles a musical scale.” That space itself rings with a magnificent music that can actually be reformed as true “celestial music,” scientifically driven and conceived as contemporary music featuring actual, normally inaudible sounds that already exist around us.
It was sometime in the early ’60s when a young Suzuki Matsumi, a fresh graduate of Osaka’s Kinki University, took his engineering degree to Japan’s National Police Department’s Communication Section and the National Research Institute of Police Science (NRIP), and involved himself in the study of audio and acoustics as tools to aid the criminal justice system. It was Suzuki’s research into voice printing—a technology you’re likely familiar with if you’ve ever used a voice assistant—that led to the arrest of high-profile criminals.
By 1969, Dr. Suzuki’s technological curiosity led him to work with Xerox, eventually earn a doctorate, and begin dabbling in music, recording 1978’s Encounter With the Past (過去との遭遇), an experimental release that reimagined field recordings and found dialogue as musique concrète—forming one of many inspirations for his founding of the Japan Acoustical Research Institute, a company focused on audio analysis, noise reduction, and “voice prints.” Then in 1991, Dr. Suzuki would put his studies on the map by releasing ビックリVOICE TARAKOの聴く歴史 (The History of Listening to Bikkuri VOICE TARAKO), a CD that used photos or portraits to reportedly reproduce the voices of historical figures with synthesized audio.
It’s this “Cosmo Sound” which owed part of its creation because of Suzuki’s work that led to this recording. Thankfully, it’s something described on the CD as:
“Space contains billions or even trillions of stars of many different kinds. Many of them emit electromagnetic waves and the waves are divided into X-rays, visible rays, infrared rays, submillimeter wave and milliwaves, and the wavelengths of these range from centimeters to hundreds of meters, according to the stars’ particular characteristics.
The sound used in this series is mainly milliwave and submillimeter wave; the electromagnetic waves of these were received and given electronic treatment, then transformed into sound.
The reception was done near the top of Mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii (4,206 meters above sea level), called the closest point to space on the Earth, and on which the Subaru Astronomical Telescope is set. Two or three parabolic antennas were set up at a certain distance apart and electromagnetic waves ranging from a few GHz to some hundreds of GHz (depending on the objective star) were caught by receivers connected to each antenna.
These received signals were modulated by a frequency transformer to the neutral frequency of 10.5 MHz then given time-series analysis by a frequency spectrum analyzer. The obtained signals were transformed again to an electronic signal (electromagnetic wavy sound) which can be treated as sound through several detection methods suitable for these purposes—FM, AM, SSB, DSB, PC, Ring Method and others. Then spectrum analysis for sonic analysis was done to them and the results were further given time-series alteration.”
It was the use of spectrum analysis that presented an opportunity, in 1998, to divine what exactly the far reaches of space sounded like—with the help of the Subaru Telescope. For Shigeaki, it brought him back to a time when, as a contemporary classical composer, he merely tried to make music that aimed for the stars on records like 1978’s 30億光年の宇宙 星たちの軌跡 and 1981’s Radiation Missa. Now, he had true star stuff to let others work with.
So in 1998, they gathered initial test data received at Mauna Kea, converted it to audio, and sent it off to composers like Naoki Satō (now best known for his incredible work on Godzilla Minus One), Toshinori Konno, Michihiro Nomura, Hiromitsu Ishikawa, and Koji Tagaito—composers who straddled the line between experimental and overground—who in turn worked collaboratively with noted musicians like percussionist Sumire Yoshihara, guitarist Takao Naoi, organist Genzo Takehisa, saxophonist Kiyoshi Saito, and keyboardist/synthesist Hideo Hasegawa, who unfortunately passed away in 2003.
It’s Hideo Hasegawa’s Meditation Black Hole that I think gives you a perfect example of just what was possible with what I imagine King Records saw as a “relaxation” series made to ride the wave of telescopic hype. Rather than merely use what we think of as stereotypical space noise to create “cosmic-sounding” music, it appears that all those involved took the inspiration to heart and went deeper into disparate wells of ideation.
For Naoki and Hideo, it appeared they used the space sound they were provided as a springboard to create “take-a-breather” music that leaned heavily into musicality. On Meditation Black Hole, actual sounds recreated from black and white holes form an impressive background to music equally indebted to ambient techno and to the idea of meta-spiritual “deep listening” music—best embodied by the likes of Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman, and Laurie Spiegel.
It’s a fascinating record. On songs like “エクアミニティー” (Equaminity) and “イン・ザ・ホール” (In the Hole), you get actual melodies and arrangements that run the span from dancefloor-ready head-boppers to awfully ruminative “interior” music that feels otherworldly in its scope. And rather than bore you by trying to explain such instrumental music—music better heard than described—I’ll leave you with this bit of original liner note explication that can settle in your head as you try (much like me) to wrap your mind around it:
“From deep space, many kinds of electromagnetic waves fall on the Earth. When these are transformed into audible sound, we can hear them as messages and imagine an unknown world. In this series, five artists express their messages in the form of music composed and played according to their own sensibility.
*The Ultimate Laser Cutting Technology enabling the reproduction of almost perfect original sound is utilized for this CD.
* The sounds used on this CD are electromagnetic waves from black holes converted into audible sound.”
Hopefully, in the future, we’ll get back to revisiting three other messages from the stars I’ve received from this series.
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