HARUMOI HOSONO

Haruomi Hosono has produced so much music over the past six decades that he often can't remember much about making it. In his early musical pursuits, the Japanese legend committed himself to creating "sightseeing music", and exhibited the curiosity of an idealistic nomad in his exploration of exotica, psychedelic folk, J-pop, Eastern music and ultimately, later in life, ambient and electronica. As a former member of two career-defining Japanese bands, Happy End and Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), his early and mid-career works retained the imprint of his lifelong love for American music. Lesser known in his catalogue are the dense and world-building ambient techno records he released in the '90s and early '00s—a time when he collaborated with the likes of Japanese experimentalists Tetsu Inoue and Miharu Koshi, and worked with vital names in the burgeoning illbient scene, such as Bill Laswell and The Orb.

Recent reissues have begun calling attention to the solo work following his 1984 departure from YMO. In the '90s, Hosono started his own Daisyworld label, which signaled his entrance into the abstract haze of his most adventurous electronic music production. N.D.E., a 1996 sojourn through ambient, trance and tabla rhythms, was the pinnacle of this musical era, though it would also ultimately close his solo explorations within it. "Ambient represented a musical and psychological reset for me," he told RA in 2018. "As the new millennium dawned and the 21st century began, that period of reset ended."

N.D.E. is by turns swampy, deliriously haunting, transcendent and contemplative. Its textural makeup is complex, joining the bleeping psychedelia of Hosono's 1978 album influenced by his trip to India, Cochin Moon, the spacious ambient and acid house of 1993's Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge (on which he paired up with ambient legend Laraaji) and the uplifting New Age pop of his 1995 project Love, Peace & Trance. N.D.E. features a genre-defying cabal of collaborators, including house pioneer François K, Yasuaki Shimizu—an innovator within sparse electropop—and Laswell, who lent his smoke trails of '90s dub to the record.

The album sounds like it could have easily been put out today, especially considering modern electronic music's fixation on mid-'90s nostalgia. The album is best appreciated with headphones, as percussion snakes from one ear to the next, and more delicate sounds come to life through insect chatter or the faintest chime. On "Spinning Spirits," whispered consonants glitch and blur, while tabla rhythms, speaking to Hosono's love for Indian composition, flit in and out like a mosquito suddenly finding its way near an ear before being swiftly swatted away. Eastern influences flood the album on tracks like "Higher Flyer," across which a wooden flute trills and moans, chants coast round, walloping drums and a cloud of New Age stardust settles. These pathways of calm turn into a triumphant finish when, on "Edge Of The End," mallets drop from the sky onto massive taiko drums. Earlier on the LP, Arun Bagal's eerie violin wisps give "Strange Attractor" a funereal resonance, and a nu jazz-like cacophony of squeaking and twisting acoustic and electronic instruments joins. Ultimately, it is all gracefully usurped into bouncy progressive house.

Other sections of N.D.E make clear why Hosono's '90s and '00s works are often likened to albums from ambient techno greats like The Orb. "Navigations" ushers the album's tropical opening moments into 4 AM dancing territory with its sludgy, timeless trance. But even the album's functional cuts retain the muggy environment of N.D.E.'s more liberated regions. Amid the abundant bleeps and bloops are high-pitched tongue trills and tangles of percussion that lasso bleating horns.

When the album's activity recedes, the busyness passes over to unveil calm, verdant land. The spacey dub of "Teaching Of Sphinx" underlies the all-consuming reverberations of what sounds like church bell chimes recorded from great heights. Carrying the playful energy of Hosono's 1986 album, Video Game Music, "Heliotherapy"'s arpeggios are bright, airy and bursting with life. Closing the album is one of Hosono's most beatific accomplishments—"Aero," home to winding violin, distant bird cries and cotton-candy sweet melodies fit for a music box.

Hosono's interest in releasing solo electronic albums after N.D.E. might have declined, but his influence was certainly felt across the electronic music world. His Daisyworld imprint was home to releases from Mixmaster Morris, Atom Heart and Jonah Sharp. In the early '00s, he would debut the sweetly sung, nostalgic electronica of his collaboration with his former YMO bandmate Yukihiro Takahashi, Sketch Show. The music he made and championed in his later years materialised his insatiable curiosity for all manner of sounds, resulting in a gorgeously textural meeting of ambient, drone, deeply melodic electronica and Easterns sounds that proved his genius in producing timeless and enticing sound collages, regardless of genre.

Kiana Mickles (courtesy of the Resident Advisor website)

The fact that Haruomi Hosono is best known as a co-founder of the Yellow Magic Orchestra does a slight injustice to his solo work. Records have been regularly released under his name since the seventies, sometimes several in one year. »N.D.E.« from 1995 was originally available on CD only, but now a complete vinyl edition is being released for the first time. A late tribute to an adventurous journey between ambient, tribal sounds and the occasional foray into techno. Right from the start, »Spinning Spirits« sets the tone with contrasting Indian percussion and sharper electronic frequencies. The noisy dub track »Teaching of Sphinx«, created in collaboration with producer François Kevorkian, also successfully blends the soft with the rough. Then there is the electronic easy listening exoticism of the relaxed and flowing yet beautifully playful »Heliotherapy«, with its up and down floating sounds. It goes far beyond that with the sitar-like effects and otherwise ethnic floating sounds on »Edge of the End«, co-produced by Bill Laswell. The equally ambient-loving saxophonist Yasusaki Shimizu also appears on »N.D.E.«. This is a record bursting with sonic oddities, held together by Hosono’s sure pulse and sense of wonderfully idiosyncratic groove.

Tim Caspar Boehme (courtesy of the hhvmag website)

Haruomi Hosono's 'Near Death Experience' Lives On

The musical polymath's oft-overlooked 90s gem, now on vinyl

For many pioneers of electronic pop music, the 1990s presented an identity struggle beyond the usual midlife crisis. Synths and drum machines were now widely accessible and ubiquitous: your $4000 synth isn't so special anymore, your $5000 sequencer that constantly broke down on stage is a relic of the distant past, and any Detroit techno producer, Manchester acid house enthusiast, or some smiling dude from Cornwall could render your entire career obsolete. Past innovators mostly trudged through this era, attempting merely to stay afloat in the market. In 1991, Kraftwerk reworked (you could say ruined) their classics with "modern" digital synths on The Mix, while Brian Eno spent the decade churning out meandering ambient works, reaching his nadir with 1997's The Drop, a 74-minute CD of him redundantly pressing buttons to produce possibly the most grating sounds imaginable.

In 1993, Yellow Magic Orchestra reunited for Technodon, an ambient house record that unlike their original run of LPs from 1978-1983, found them catching up to everyone half their age instead of breaking new ground. Electronic music was now a full-fledged industry with its own section at your local CD emporium, and styles changed drastically within months. Technodon is better than its reputation suggests, but it downplays the attention to detail and compositional flexibility that made YMO special. The individual members handled the 90s with varying artistic success: Yukihiro Takahashi started the decade with schlocky adult-contemporary balladry before adopting a more current downtempo sound; Ryuichi Sakamoto made some watered-down, guest-heavy pop records until correcting course with bare-bones piano works; Haruomi Hosono’s 90s output is harder to describe in one sentence.

Any pocket of Hosono's fascinating solo discography is dizzying, yet particularly schizophrenic during this time. Two months before Technodon, Hosono released Medicine Compilation From The Quiet Lodge, a "fourth world"/tribal ambient record showcasing his sense of stylistic exploration. In the liner notes, he said, "I used to often be referred to as a 'frontier musician' but these days, I think that the frontier of modern civilization is at the center of our hearts. The frontier = the heart. Isn't this perhaps the secret to ambient music? […] It’s possible to say that this album is my own clumsy prelude to the changes that are occurring as we enter the 21st century." "Sight seeing," or the observation and incorporation of music from around the world, is a recurring thread in Hosono's work. At a time when "world music" was a reductive catch-all for non-Western-originated music, Hosono created another sort of "world music": music that incorporated elements from around the world into a singular, unified hybrid accessible from any perspective. His pre-YMO late 70s works Paraiso and Cochin Moon planted the seeds of it, but it truly came to the fore on albums like 1989’s Omni Sight Seeing, 1993's aforementioned Medicine Compilation, and 1996's N.D.E, the latter an often overlooked ambient techno gem long out of print and now reissued on vinyl by Amsterdam record shop Rush Hour.

Information about N.D.E, at least in English, is scarce. Maybe Haruomi Hosono had an actual N.D.E.—near-death experience—or maybe it was just an academic fascination of his. The latter wouldn't be surprising, as Technodon features a spoken sample of John C. Lilly, the scientist who gave acid to dolphins and later first coined the term "near death experience." Whatever the case, the almost entirely instrumental N.D.E showed Hosono in the stylistic present of 1996 while maintaining and continuing to explore his own musical fascinations. Bassist Bill Laswell, saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu, producers Francois Kevorkian and Goh Hotoda, and others contribute, yet it's distinctly Hosono in how sharply evocative it is. The entire record sounds like you're blasted at supersonic speeds through a dark tunnel while simultaneously blinded by a painfully bright light at the end—commonly reported elements of near-death experiences.

You could listen to N.D.E's entire 57 minutes at once or listen one side at a time and be equally rewarded. I prefer it split up, as it's a bit long, repetitive, and intense, not that that's a bad thing. "Spinning Spirits" starts the album with hypnotic tablas, followed by the trance-y "Navigations" which features harrowing synth screeches popping in and disappearing seemingly randomly. "Teaching of Sphinx" is especially atmospheric and dubby, while the short "Heliotherapy" has those familiar bubbling 90s synths in the background. Laswell and Shimizu both appear on "Edge Of The End;" that and the preceding "Higher Flyer" are N.D.E's deepest, most ominous tracks, especially when the massive drums kick in. Closer "Aero" ranks among Hosono's finest (that's saying something since there's a lot to choose from), its ambient drone capturing a feeling of coming back to one's earthly body yet floating towards a more enlightening place, whatever that is. Like much of Hosono’s 80s and 90s work, it's about sound images more than structure, which is only a loose frame. There's a lot of room for that to go wrong (and he's certainly got his duds), but when he gets it right, as he does in N.D.E’s best moments, it’s magical beyond adequate description.

Rush Hour's new 2LP vinyl reissue, the first vinyl release with the complete album, is everything a reissue of a 1996 electronic album should be. Newly remastered and cut by Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering, the high frequencies are clean and clear, the midrange vivid, and the bass absolutely punishing. I haven’t heard the album in any other format, but this has the most bass I’ve ever heard of anything and it works. It's truly an audiophile-grade production for more adventurous listeners (it seems like it was originally a digital recording, which for electronic music is perfectly fine).

The original abridged single LP release sold in a stickered DJ sleeve has the bonus track "Rain Dream" that doesn't seem to appear anywhere else, but I doubt it’s worth paying $100 to hear. The new reissue's packaging is a simple direct-to-board widespine jacket with black polylined inner sleeves, which is adequate enough for the $30-40 import price. No pressing identifications (maybe R.A.N.D. Muzik in Germany?) but the EU-pressed discs are flat and quiet despite the first LP's overly tight spindle hole. Weirdly enough, N.D.E was one of Hosono's few solo works released internationally at the time, though you'll still have better luck finding this Rush Hour reissue than the original US Antilles CD. I advise anyone seeking an entry into mid-period (post-Emulator, pre-Great American Songbook) Hosono to get this, Omni Sight Seeing, and Medicine Compilation as the essentials. Sony Japan's Great Tracks imprint did excellent reissues of the latter two in 2020, cut by Bernie Grundman and pressed on absolutely dead quiet vinyl at Sony’s Japanese plant. Be warned that if you take my advice, you’re stumbling into a very expensive rabbit hole that will occupy all of your shelf space and "disposable" income, but it’s worth it!

Malachi Lui (courtesy of the Tracking Angle website)