September 12 2023
The “greatest ambient album of all time,” hitting bottom in LA with Elliott Smith, 9/11 at Elixir Juice, the five kinds of music I do not want you to send me, a Kompakt mix, and a little bit more
The 1986 release that Joshua Minsoo Kim called “the greatest ambient album of all time” is being reissued. That album is Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Surround, originally titled Soundscape 1: Surround. This is literally ambient music, commissioned by “Misawa Homes, intended to function as an ‘amenity’ designed to enhance the company’s newly built living spaces.” I am practicing abstinence around saying things like “the greatest of all time,” though I understand why JMK said it about Surround. The music is not entirely top-to-bottom smooshed electronics, though some of it is, and the overall mood falls in line with a lot of music we need never hear again. (See below.) Which is not Yoshimura’s fault! Surround came before all the lavender scroll beats. Yoshimura’s music doesn’t have flatlined screensaver dynamics; Surround is a series of active parts. (The synthetic marimba/empty tube sounds in “Time After Time” are not all that passive, for instance.) You can tell someone is in the house.
All of that might be less relaxing than these eleven minutes shot in 1986. Yoshimura runs around filling garbage bags with air and playing with kids. Apparently a performance? I can’t say.