Soothing Sunday: The Recently Reissued Flora by Ambient Legend Hiroshi Yoshimura
This series seeks to highlight options for musical escapism for those of us who find the end of the weekend, and the looming resumption of the hustle and stress of the “work week”, with a level of dread. It’s been described as the “Sunday Scaries,” and it’s a bummer. While we actually should work to change this broken system where we are made to feel lucky getting a few hours off before being send back into the gaping maw of propping up a system that only seems to work for billionaires, in the meantime we’re going to suggest some chilled out, calming or otherwise soothing music for you to listen to in hopes of at least sanding off the edges of capitalism’s ongoing dread machine.
I’ve slowly been exposed to the music of Japanese ambient legend Hiroshi Yoshimura over the last few years, soaking the tranquil beauty of his kankyō ongaku, or environment music. I’ve loved his seminal works Music for Nine Post Cards, Surround, A・I・R (Air in Resort) and Green, and have loved discovering his massive discography that seems to have hidden gems around every corner.
The latest discovery is his record Flora, a record he completed in 1987 but not released until a few years after his 2003 death. Now it is getting an even wider release as a reissue, and it was worth the wait. It is gentle and soothing, layers of sound texture blending together in a way that sounds like nature come to live. There are moments of playfulness, synths and soundscapes dancing around each other, and times where solo piano gently blends with found sounds in a way that makes you feel somehow both inside the piano and out in the woods. There are tracks of lush synth swells that wash over the listener like a warm bath.
Like all of his work, it’s both complex and simple, and I’ve found myself in these last few troubling weeks trying to make sense of things that don’t inherently make sense. I’m not sure that is possible with music, but if it is, Yoshimura would be the person who made it a reality. Stream and purchase the album below.
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