Trigger warning: “Good morning. It’s 5 o’clock, from the J-WAVE Singin’ Clock…”
My apologies to all of you who’ve grown up in Tokyo, waking up to their radio alarm blasting out J-WAVE 81.3 FM’s ultra-cozy, “singing” time call signal. However, if it wasn’t for Tokyo’s “classic hits” radio station we wouldn’t have the opportunity to listen to this hidden gem of a recording. Serene, sweet, and urbane, Yassue’s A Fine Day belongs in the field of floating healing music that strikes on certain, wonderful notes I’m unafraid to promote.
Why exactly would a Japanese radio station sign and promote an unknown musician, like Yassue? If this is to be believed, what little backstory exists about Yassue Anai points to a J-WAVE radio producer being floored by a pianist holding the floor at some club up the street from their original Tokyo Tower headquarters.
It was Yassue, fresh off short stints in various rock and pop groups, and a recent college grad, that had been that person who decided recently to make her own music, performing her own compositions on that fine day. Seiko Sakurai, producer of J-WAVE’s “Morning Call” just had to find a way to get her music on tape and convinced record heavies from the Alfa record label to sign her (and for J-WAVE to sign off on promoting her).
Initially, Yassue would contribute background music (BGM), creating the iconic, early J-WAVE musical melody, the “Merry-Go-Round” used to signal the top of each hour. On the strength of this theme and its reception by listeners, Alfa and J-WAVE thought there was a market out there to hear more from its composer.
In the span of two weeks in March, Yassue and her brother Masakazu would head down to Alfa’s Tokyo studio in 1993 and record everything you’ll hear today. Although Yassue’s instrument of choice (and classically-trained) study was in the piano, she felt a distinct kinship to nature then. Yassue would pitch the idea of making gentle instrumentals tied to the four seasons of the year. A simple idea would yield something far more multi-layered in practice.
Songs like “Leaves On The River” and “Morning Breeze” pointed to the influence of Japanese New Age music. As Yassue’s piano melodies became ever more impressionistic and romantic, Masakazu dug into his well of modal jazz and experimental sonics to add ambient edges to her playing, making them take the “airy” qualities you can appreciate. It’s impossible to tell what exactly Seiko expected from Yassue but it appears that what Yassue wanted to deliver spoke more not to making music for fastidious everyday workers journeying around the city.
It appears that Yassue, as hinted in the liner notes, looked at the far off, distant, Tokyo horizon many workers glanced at from their offices, in their most trying minutes of the day. She wanted whoever listened to this record to experience featherweight compositions that could soundtrack their daydreaming at that moment.
Not too dissimilar to the ideas of early, George Winston, or to some of the ideas of Liz Story, A Fine Day floated closer to the music of Mr. Toshifumi Hinata and Yukie Nishimura. Here the knots felt tied to the classic “classical” and to the modern “moderne”, showing what very little of its cross hatches remained once Yassue found a way to expand on those ideas, elsewhere. On certain days: perhaps, raindrops on the window and blue skies on the horizon, you’ll demand music, much like this.
So, from the aesthetics of the record to the actual music itself, you can’t deny that Yassue took Seiko’s initial assessment of her music to heart. It was her warm music that quieted some of the pent-up emotions faced earlier that day. This full-length vision simply allowed her ideas to wander around more, journey more, expanding on the space she saw that was left open (with their support). In the end, who wouldn’t want to wake up to something as light as this…