Japanese ambient mix

To be honest I can’t quite remember the exact reason how this started. The real origin of the seed of the idea could have come from anywhere, perhaps just the need to have a basic concept to tie a mix together. Why Japanese in particular I cannot really say anymore. I don’t remember if there was a particular album or anything that triggered it off. But in any case, I remember discussing it with my good friend, fellow music lover and radio presenter Josh/DJ Tropical Breeze  while in Melbourne at Christmas time. The idea from that time was that we would each prepare a mix of Japanese ambient music and publish them around the same time. Since then it has been a steady immersion in as much Japanese ambient, synth pop and experimental music as possible, around 6 months of focussed listening. While we did exchange names of artists and albums, there was no other insight into what the other was doing until we shared our mixes and track lists this week. Several of the artists consequently overlap, although in the end there is only one track that is the same between mixes, Hidekazu Imashige/Gallery Six’s Hakasui [Shimmering Moods].

My shortlist for the mix was 100 tracks clocking in at around 12 hours of sound if unedited and unmixed, so about one third of the tracks made the final cut and plenty more that didn’t make it. Consequently there is also quite a bit of overlap between tracks, with the first 17 tracks all fitting in to the first 25 minutes alone. That is, for the first 25 minutes there is generally at least two and sometimes up to four tracks playing at the same time. It’s a bit less crowded by the end.

One thing that surprised me making the mix, which was assembled carefully on Adobe Audition and in no way was mixed live, was that the tendency was to mix down tracks and not up as is usually the case. Not sure if this is something specific to Japanese ambient or it relates more to the superimposition of multiple tracks at the same time. In any case, the mix uses a lot of dynamic range and tries to emphasise the noise and the silence where possible.

I have seen quite a few Japanese artists complaining about lazy Western journalists describing their music in terms of Zen and related concepts, probably without really understanding anything about Zen and having only a post-card image of what Japan is really like. In any case, I really appreciate a lot of the material I found was based on field recordings and even in some cases people playing instruments as if joining in with nature and natural sounds as well as of course some temple sounds and related audio phenomenon. It would be interesting to talk directly to a lot of the artists and to see what terms they would use to describe their sounds and if Zen is a genuine interest or it is just a coincidence.

Artists who didn’t make the final mix but who deserve a shout out include (in no particular order): Artman (DJ Kudo), Tujiko Noriko, Ikue Mori, Ken Ikeda, Nobuo Uematsu, Fumio Miyashita, Akio Suzuki, Saito Koji, Yuya Ota, Masayoshi Fujita, Iluha, Takuya Yamashita, Eitetsu Hayashi, Hiroshi Sato, 吉村弘 (Hiroshi Yoshimura), Koss, Hirotaka Shirotsubaki, Tomoko Sauvage, Pass Into Silence and of course Takehisa Kosugi. Apologies to anyone I may have overlooked.


Cabeza de Vaca Facebook

Track	Artist	Title	Label	Year
1	Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.	La Novia - Speed Guru (Live in Tokyo)	Acid Mothers Temple	2002
2	Tetsu Inoue	Background Story	Instinct Ambient	1996
3	Ametsub	Faint Dazzlings	Mille Plateaux	2010
4	Ghost	Masttillah	Drag City	1996
5	Geinoh Yamashirogumi	Shohmyoh	Victor	1988
6	Ground Zero	Paraiso 1	Trigram / ReR Megacorp	1995 / 2005
7	Gallery Six	Hakusui	Shimmering Moods	2015
8	Yui Onodera	Rhizome 4	Gears Of Sand	2007
9	Buddhastick Transparent	Labyrinth (Lunatique Lux)	Sharira	1997
10	Adzuki	秋 / Autumn	Adzuki Self-released (Bandcamp)	2014
11	松本 一哉（Kazuya Matsumoto）	たゆたう水月（Tayutau suigetsu）	Spekk	2015
12	Chihei Hatakeyama	A bronze pike	Room40	2015
13	松本 一哉（Kazuya Matsumoto）	秋霖（Shurin）	Spekk	2014
14	Yasuaki Shimizu	Kono Yo Ni Yomeri #2	Better Days	1982
15	Tetsu Inoue	Remote	DiN	2005
16	Stilllife	彗星	Nature Bliss	2014
17	Ippu-Do	Alone	Epic	1982
18	Stilllife	やがて霞とともに	Nature Bliss	2014
19	Ametsub	66	Mille Plateaux	2010
20	Michiru Aoyama	World	Shimmering Moods	2015
21	Yoichiro Yoshikawa	Crater On The Moon (Short Version)	Eastworld	1987
22	Yamaoka	Late in summer	Twice Removed	2015
23	Fourcolour	Double	12k	2016
24	ENA	Absorption #2	Samurai Horo	2014
25	Go Hiyama	Hiku	Stroboscopic Artefacts	2011
26	A.O.T.	”フィードバック (Go Koyashiki Remix)” (Rundgång)	SonuoS	2013
27	Yui Onodera	Semi Lattice Part 5	Baskaru	2015
28	Dumbtype	Drawing #3	Digital Narcis	1997
29	Toshifumi Hinata	Colored Air	Alfa	1986
30	Maki Asakawa	Onna	Honest Jon's Records	? / 2015
31	Fruit Of The Original Sin	Interscape (-X)	Kin Sound Recordings	2001
32	Susumu Yokota	Shinsen	Leaf	2000
33	Buddhastick Transparent	Morpheus (Eve Eva : X)	Sharira	1996