Day 353: Hiroshi Yoshimura – Surround

I just tried to listen to a serious album of the type of music that you have to read about and focus on to truly enjoy, but I just couldn’t do it. I have had a long day, I need something mellow that’s not trying to make me do any sort of deep analysis. I thought I’d explore a bit more of ambient music, this time by someone who happens to not be Brian Eno – I’ve gone a bit too hard with only listening to him, I need to branch out.

Album cover courtesy of Misawa Homes

Hiroshi Yoshimura was a Japanese composer and sound designer who was born in Yokohama in 1940. He was a pioneer in a genre called kankyō ongaku, or 'environmental music', which increased in popularity during Japan’s economic boom in the ‘80s. It consists of soft and unintrusive electronic melodies paired with nature sounds, like birdsong or moving water, creating a soundscape that’s meant to improve the environment that it’s listened to in.

Surround was commissioned by a company called Misawa Homes by their Institute of Research and Development, and they wanted Yoshimura to make music to enhance the environment of their prefabricated homes. It came out in 1986, but it only started gaining traction globally in the 2010s when his music started finding its way to people through the YouTube algorithm. As a result, Hiroshi Yoshimura found new fans posthumously and went from mainly being known in Japan to having a host of international fans who know him as an ambient music pioneer.

In the liner notes, he recommends listening to it at a low volume and with the addition of city noise coming from outside, and describes it as “music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space”

You can see what he meant by that when you listen to Surround. It’s not really music in the way that you’d normally think about it, and at the same time it clearly is music, but it’s skirting on the edge of being something a bit more abstract. It’s an album of clean minimalism with not that much to it, but with the purpose of enhancing the environment that it’s played in, all the while becoming a part of the soundscape surrounding it. I listened to it at home according to the instructions, and it worked exactly as intended.

This kind of sounds like music that my air purifier would make if it became sentient, which sounds like an insult but I promise you it’s not, it just feels like it’s music that cleans the air that it’s played in. It’s cool and elegant, but at the same time it’s approachable in a way that feels almost moving – there’s a comfort to it, it feels like it was made with love. Maybe it’s an addition of organic sounds that makes it so soothing, but something about listening to it just makes you feel like you can exhale and let your shoulders drop.

I genuinely think that having this on is very good for my nervous system. I listened to a lot of Brian Eno when I felt a bit stressed recently, but I think I may have found a more effective tool to incorporate into my arsenal. On days where you just feel a bit tense or on edge, this might be just the thing to tide you over, but I’m sure it’s just as good on a nicer day, too. It’ a 9/10, I loved it.