Let’s take what we can from the late Toshiya Sukegawa’s Bioçic Music – Astrology. Another album in the little understood (or heard) environmental music genre, this album tries to add its own notch to a new totem other composers experimented with in Japan around this period. Graceful, meditative, and quite quiet it was meant to function — much like the Sound Process series — as its own form of “interior music” for those that had grown cold to mass-produced muzak and BGM, or felt too turned off by supposed relaxation music.
Like Satoshi Sumitami and Hiroshi Yoshimura, Bioçic Music – Astrology wasn’t the product of a young man but of a seasoned composer. Sapporo’s own Toshiya Sukegawa was born in 1930 after the First World War and by 1954 had begun to compose contemporary and classical pieces around Tokyo, winning countless orchestral awards. By the ‘70s, Toshiya had an enviable career composing music for TV, achieving literary success as a music writer and critic, and gaining work as lecturer and music director for huge educational institutions.
In the ‘80s, Toshiya grew more weary of the classical world. In it he began to see a staidness that seemed distant from contemporary society — especially in capturing or promoting music that could be used to help it inch along. His own music had started to shift, compositionally, more towards creating arrangements that spoke of environmental cues. Gone were the more abrasive earlier instruments with electronic music via tape collage and sound design. Now, around 1987, Toshiya took his study of music therapy and tried to create an institution that could be used to create and promote the creation of environmental music.
The BIOÇIC institute of Environmental Music became this hub where contemporary composers could come and use new electronic synthesizers to create music for healing purposes. Alpha-wave 1/f fluctuation theory, binaural recordings, and more melodic compositions were welcomed. Here two other composers/musicians, Mitsuhiro Nagano and Makiko Hirohashi, younger graduates of the Kunitachi College of Music that would help him create a foundational series dubbed “Bioçic Music” to both promote this new school of musical thought and to find its way to music listeners outside the realm of academia.
Of the music which I have, Bioçic Music – Astrology, is the third in that series making its debut in 1993 with Bioçic Music – Aqua, self-released by Toshiya on its own namesake label. It’s a fascinating listen. Bioçic Music – Astrology is based on a track per zodiac sign. Within each track the trio tries to capture the astrological meaning behind each of the calendar symbols. Liner notes within explain its value as both aesthetic music — something to beautify you both mentally and physically via stress reduction and heart relaxation — and as engaging New Age that is meant to be played at a low level to blend in with your current room atmosphere.
As to what it sounds like? Here, the vast majority of album tracks are dominated by the truly heart-tugging “atmospheric” compositions of Mitsuhiro Nagano, creating a set of songs that belong to the neo-romantic New Age school of Toshifumi Hinata easily heard on a track like “乙女座 (Virgo)”. As for Makiko Hirohashi, her music (see “魚座 (Pisces)”) points to the almost Ghibli-esque, innocent-sounding, panoramic ambient music she’d go on to create shortly for big healing music labels like Della. Toshiya, although largely contributing to production and direction on this album, contributes its most stately, sparse compositions, barely-there musical floaters like “蠍座 (Scorpio)” that point to his own roots in impressionist classical music.
As for you? Let’s see what you can hear with this new collection of environmental music.