Yoshio Ojima

Une Collection des Chaînons I: Music for Spiral

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

Boomkat Product Review:

Selected music pieces conceptualized and produced in 1988 for sound-designing the Wacoal Art Center in Aoyama (Tokyo) also known as Spiral, a hub for a wide range of sophisticated cultural proposals spanning visual arts, theatre, music, design, fashion, and lifestyle. RIYL ambient, experimental, environmental, minimalism, avant-garde, synth, field recordings, Midori Takada, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa, Yutaka Hirose, Vanity Records, sound design, architecture, the Metabolist movement, and spirals...

"First ever reissue for both volumes of Yoshio Ojima’s superb environmental music project Une Collection des Chaînons I and II: Music For Spiral, originally released in 1988 and sourced from original masters.

Named after its curled-shaped structures laid in a vast atrium, Spiral is a monumental work of architecture by Fumihiko Maki, designed according to the principles of Metabolism, a movement advocating the fusion of the notions of megastructures and organic biological growth - in essence, evolving designs and constructions, adapting to human needs naturally.

Evolving, organic, adapting, these are notions that perfectly describe Yoshio Ojima’s divinely designed brand of environmental music. Based on a meticulous work on timbres and textures, it approaches sound design in relation to various contexts, sizes, and feelings. CD 1 flows from the eerie and levitating "Entrance" to the quirky "Esplanade (LIVE)", the gentle and reassuring "Flius", and the measured and ravishing escalation of "Mensis". On CD 2, the nanoscopic neoclassical lullaby "Les Trois Grâces" brings attention to the importance of small details, "Pulse at Soothe" starts with the minimalism of a Satoshi Ashikawa piece and slowly drifts into mystical landscapes and cavernous echoes, "Entomology" and its melancholic artificial forest evokes a Twin Peaks mirage, and "Atrium" literally feels like a floating visit of a gigantic open space structure.

Sitting alongside Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass, Satoshi Ashikawa’s Still Way, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green, or Yutaka Hirose’s NOVA, as a pivotal work of Japanese environmental/ambient/minimalist music, Une Collection des Chaînons (which translates as a collection of links) is a delicately laid out sonic landscape connecting space and emotions, architecture and humanity, adjusting and transforming through the ears of the listeners. A note from Yoshio Ojima: "Please listen to this album at around the same volume as daily life sounds such as air conditioners and refrigerators."

2LP (10)