Interior music. It seems that this is it, everyone. We’ve spoken before about Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Soundscape 1: Surround, our introduction to Misawa Home’s foundational environmental music series for Japanese prefabricated houses. You’ve probably heard elsewhere Yutaka Hirose’s entry into the series, a collection of peaceful electroacoustic minimalist pastorales aptly dubbed Soundscape 2: Nova. Then, somewhere, lost to time came this fork in that road: K2’s Daydreamin’ (unofficially Soundscape 3) — a deep return back to the historical roots of this series.
Daydreamin’ would come around in 1986 to share the sonorities of 1988’s 大地の詩 (Songs Of The Earth) by Lyu Hong-Jun. Rather than a turn to the early electronic experimentation of the Soundscape series, this recording drilled down to another essence of Misawa’s prophetic aesthetic. Here it gave us, the listener, a way to fill the void of modern indoor interiors with impressionistic music painting the colors normally devoid of inside these kinds of contemporary units.
For Lyu Hong-Jun, it was to have a meeting of minds between his Pan-Asian traditional experimentation and Hiroki Miyano’s melodic-strung string minimalism. On K2 we hear two impressive composers — Kan Ogasawara (ne Utollo Teshikai) and Ken Shima — use solo piano performances, as means to a way to blend seemingly, differing aesthetics. We hear on Daydreamin’ these two use of either a classically-tuned or treated piano trapezing them through various roles, stretching their resonances on some truly gorgeous pieces that do more than just stay in the background.
Ken Shima would be entrusted to perform all the compositions. It’s his surprisingly tasteful, almost jazzy feel across the keybed (possibly a byproduct of his large, wildly varied session career) that lends these songs an unsurprisingly touching heft to it. On songs like “湖のある風景 (Landscape)”, “月の収穫 (Harvest Of The Moon)”, and the title track, long sustain pedal notes linger like the foggy winter mist enveloping the album cover, enclosing the almost neoclassical music within. In the music of Kan Ogasawara you can also hear the longing qualities that would adorn his equally inspiring work soundtracking animation like 銀河の魚 Ursa Minor Blue. Daydreamin’ gave you a glimpse at his intriguing toe tip, melodic style.
You don’t need me to describe a forty-two minute album full of solo piano. What you need is to picture yourself in those faraway places you sometimes turn to, where the simpler memories are remembered the most hazy. And since this album was the first to move away from being only given out with property purchases, Daydreamin’ served as this unlikely gateway into that interior music world.
Meditative, romantic, and quite engaging when you really prick your ears to listen — just like some of the touchstone ideas of obvious influences like Ravel, Debussy, and Satie — so too does K2 traffic in that sense of a kind of “salon” or “furniture” music. In the end, one must really sit down with simply beautiful pieces like “自転車 (Bicycle)” and “積み木 (The Blocks)” to contemplate what’s truly around you. And although it’s quite dissimilar to the rest of the Soundscape series, these Daydreamin’ soundscapes have a certain environment that anyone can easily get lost in.