Hiroshi Yoshimura - Surround

Probably not the most celebrated of Yoshimura's pioneering ambient works from the 80s, Surround is nonetheless my favourite, and, I would argue, amongst the most emotionally affecting contributions to the kankyo ongaku canon/Soundscape series. Recorded in the same year as the much loved Green, Surround was a commission by Misawa Home's in order to soundtrack the show properties of their newly built living spaces, what might be generously understood as a utopian re-rendering of the muzak concept where sound and space can operate in symbiosis. The inherently corporate nature of such an endeavour notwithstanding, Yoshimura seems particularly masterful here in balancing light and shade, inspired by the functionality of Eno's Ambient series and imbuing it with his own sense of micro-emotion, encouraging the very act of listening and understanding of subjectivity. Apparently Yoshimura saw this music as part of the same family of sounds as footsteps, air conditioners, the "clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup", and while it doesn't feel as incidental as that - these are very much composed, deliberate pieces - it does identify a romantic notion of music as present within all experience. Surround, then, is programmatically titled. Our homes, our lives, are suffuse with it. If you just listen, then you can hear. It's hard not to be moved by such an ideal, harder still when the sounds you're being gestured towards by Yoshimura appear so finely balanced between being there and not, an expert treatise on minimalism that positions the subject at its centre as if, in a way, performing the music through how they choose to hear. It's an ever empowering concept.