Mix: 13. JAPANESE AMBIENT, ENVIRONMENTAL, NEW AGE & HEALING MUSIC 1980-1993 (VOL. 1, WATER)

I think, no undertaking is ever as enriching if isn’t done with a purpose in mind. For myself, trying to understand and (most importantly) differentiate what makes Japanese Ambient music different than other ways to music led me to an idea. It’s one that I thank NTS for giving me a space to do so and illustrator Laura Gomez for capturing visually what I was aiming for.

At the base of this umbrella genre are obvious musical roots: minimal, New Age, environmental and healing musical styles/ideas. However, beyond them, if I probe further, the difference I found is that Japanese Ambient music has a palpable tie to one’s environment. The Japanese Zen ideal perfectly encapsulated this: one must know their true nature before one achieves any sort of enlightenment.

By breaking down this music in terms of our environment (water, earth, fire, and wind) — the base elements that move it, I could get beyond the micro idea of different works, or styles, and get to the total connection.

This is music that uses all our human tools (both organic and synthetic) towards an attempt to get to our “spirit” through nature, as nature is connected itself. In the end, doing so, by employing aesthetics, expression, and atmospherics that evoke a place (or notion) we’ve felt before, or somehow, know intrinsically. It’s something Satoshi Ashikawa motioned perfectly to before his untimely passing, this idea of sound design as opposed to background music.

For me, Japanese Ambient music is a meditation on what sound can design within the space of our exterior temples. To compel the mind to get there, as a way to heal ourselves. And today, our focus is on water.

Ambient Japan 1980-1993, Vol. 1: Water

1. Ippu-Do – “Aqua” Nostalgy
2. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Creek
3. Kazumi Watanabe – Ti-Fa-Let
4. Masatsugu Shinozaki – 5億年の水 (5-Hundred-Million Year Water)
5. Yoshiaki Ochi – Beat The Water
6. Takashi Kokubo – Underwater Dreaming
7. Tomoyuki Asakawa – かげろうたちの夢
8. Ken-Ichiro Isoda – マジエルのまどろみ (with Raindrops)
9. Yutaka Hirose – Humming The Sea

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